Whether you’re telling your companies story, having your co-workers speak about the company or showing how to get work done in a safe manner, how you decide to do it tells your audience a lot about your company. You wouldn’t get someone off of Fiverr to write your company profile. Someone who doesn’t know your company and isn’t an experienced writer. You wouldn’t build a safety program without the expertise of experienced & qualified safety people. The real fact is that everyone can build content, but is it any good? Content matters, doesn’t it? As builders of eLearning and Video based products we ensure that prior to beginning any project we go through our needs analysis, the ICEPAC Process, to ensure that we achieve your goals with a plan in place. We work with Subject Matter Experts, and for our training packages we work with Instructional Designers to ensure that we are providing interactive graphical, video & audio experiences which make the acquisition of knowledge and skill more efficient, effective, and appealing. 3 key elements on the design side that should be ‘cause for a pause’ are: Using comedic tone (let’s not try to be funny if it’s not) Appropriate gamification for the task (please, no drag and drop dressing the worker in PPE… unless children are the audience) Avatar usage found in template packages (cheap cartoony characters do not relate to the viewer as it’s not Family Guy or The Simpsons) Now to the technical aspects of production. We all know you wouldn’t get Uncle Fred to take your wedding pictures with a Polaroid, so you should get a professional when delivering content to a large audience or a small but critical audience. If you’re building your own content and you’re thinking of using these 3 tools in your production, you may want to rethink your plan: 1. Filming using cell phones (It often costs more to make it look good than for us to have filmed it. At least have a plan how it’s to be used.) 2. Using Captivate for screen captures with computer audio (Please don’t call this ‘training’ or eLearning, it’s really only good for help desk, interface and keyboard instructions.) 3. Voicing your own projects (This isn’t Karaoke at Ducky’s Pub after all. Probably the cheapest way to make your content more professional, so get a pro voice.) After all of this there is still content that you can produce in house. Impromptu celebrations, happy birthday messages, and long distance messaging work well. Usually content of a personal nature where people don’t judge quality but the thought. Content is King, so let’s make it so together!