In any business, effective communication is of utmost importance. While traditional written forms of communication, such as emails, memos, bulletins, etc., may be able to provide more detail and clarity, they’re far from perfect. Often, the information can be hard to understand, difficult to visualize, be presented in a confusing tone, or – let’s be honest – it’s simply difficult to keep the reader’s attention. Moreover, with almost 130 billion business emails sent and received on a daily basis, it can be easy for some things to get overlooked. Thankfully, to combat these shortcomings, video newsletters are changing the internal business communication landscape, but, to understand why the change is necessary, let’s have a look at the term and why the idea can be a better fit in some applications.
Breaking down the root term newsletter, which is a combining of the base words news and letter, the word is literally and originally defined as ‘a letter written in order to communicate news’ and was first used in the Stirling Common Good, dating from 1665, which records: “To Robert Buchanan for a year’s carriage of newsletters from Edinburgh.” As for the preceding adjective video, this simply implies the addition or usage ‘of moving images on magnetic tape or digitally’ and was first mentioned – in its sense of relating to the creation and distribution of video content,- in the 6 November, 1952 edition of the Rocky Mount Evening Telegram (North Carolina), stating that: “Essentially a video tape recording would resemble an ordinary home-recorded tape of Junior playing the piano.”
From a communication tool between ancient Roman officials to medieval reports on available goods, prices, and news that would affect trade exchanged between merchant families, newsletters – and, when their information became broadened or more in-depth, newspapers – have always been an effective way to communicate relevant information to interested parties. Though newsletters themselves have quite the history, it is the modern addition of video, especially over the last decade, that is changing the communication dynamic.
As a means to disseminate company news, health and safety information, or product updates, video newsletters offer a medium that is more engaging (personally), more understandable (especially for complex concepts), more in tune with modern technology and attention spans, yet still retains metrics to assure the correct information was seen/viewed.
Still, just because the visual element may reduce the need for written text, it doesn’t eliminate the need for language: whether sending your business communication across several borders or several dozen borders, it’s worth knowing that the language used in your videos and text communiqués is being translated correctly. Make your video newsletter content engaging for a global audience with EVS Translations’ in-house video engineering and localisation solutions.
For further information, download our white paper: “A marketer’s guide to creating video for a global audience”
