Videos aren’t just for marketing. They can also be leveraged for internal communications, training, collaboration, and in client deliverables.
In those types of scenarios, it’s critically important to be able to restrict your audience to a select group. In this post, we’ll walk through seven examples of when curtailing sharing is necessary, and best practices for securing your videos with the exact settings to use.
Project Collaboration With Your Team
Picture this: You are part of a marketing team at a tech company that has multiple teams working on a variety of projects. Project X is one such product, and is due to be released in two months. The team working on Project X wants a promotional video for the launch, which your team has been tasked with making.
Naturally, there is a lot of collaboration between your team and the Product X Team as they develop the new product. They have to communicate how it works, all of its benefits, and the type of people who will be most interested in it to your marketing team.
Your team must then translate that information into an attention-grabbing video. It has to make the new product look good, and appeal to the target audience. This will require a lot of back-and-forth between the two teams, especially as you finalize the video.
This is where the ability to easily allow Product X Team access to the unfinished video, while ensuring no one else can see it, becomes imperative to a successful launch.
Video Privacy Settings to Use
Since every person involved in the project is an employee at the same company, three specific factors shape the optimal video security options for this situation. You probably log onto the same network, possibly through a VPN. You might also have existing company credentials for accessing your company’s admin or intranet.
If you can’t easily embed your video, or just prefer the ease of sharing an automatically generated landing page, single-sign-on (SSO) is a great option. It requires a little setup, but once it’s in place, SSO allows anyone at your company to use their existing credentials to access your videos on a SproutVideo hosted website. Viewers are authenticated by your existing Identity Provider, like Google Apps, OneLogin, or ADFS.
A second option is to embed the video on a secure page, for instance, in your company’s intranet. You’ll want to leave it set to Private on the SproutVideo platform, so your video will only appear where it’s embedded. You can also leverage allowed domains or signed embed codes to make sure the embed code can’t be copied and shared elsewhere.
Since you are all on the same network, IP address restriction is an easy third option for ensuring your videos will only load for viewers on a whitelisted connection. It’s seamless for the viewer, and easy to set up if you know your company’s IP address. This setting also works regardless of whether you are embedding your videos, or sharing via a website or landing page hosted by SproutVideo.
Sharing Updates With Your Customers and Clients
Ken and Dana Design are a customer of SproutVideo. They’re purveyors of high-end jewelry, with a beautiful range of engagement rings.
Since their customers are usually anxiously awaiting the final product, Ken and Dana leverage video to engage them in the production process. Given the nature of their rings, these videos normally have to be kept top secret.
Video Privacy Settings to Use
Your business might not work with precious gems, but client deliverables are often for their eyes only. When working with parties outside your organization, you have a couple options for video security settings.
Password protection works perfectly in this situation. It’s simple for the client – they just need to know the password for the video to watch it. If they want to show the video to anyone else, they can share the password and the link easily, while still keeping the video secure and under wraps.
For additional control, login protection is a powerful and simple way to deliver video to clients. With login protection, you create a secure viewer account for each person. Then, you can grant video access to each individual. You can also determine how long their access lasts, whether they can download any versions of the video, and how many times they can login to watch.
Video Campaign With Influencers
Imagine you are the owner of a toy company known for its specialization in Montessori toys for young children. You’re preparing to launch three new toys this holiday season, and have done your research. You’ve identified social media influencers in the Montessori education field to help add credibility and get the word out to potential customers.
Not only do you want to ensure the influencers understand exactly how your toys work, but you also want to ensure that absolutely no one else knows about your offerings until launch day. Video happens to be the best tool for the job.
Video Privacy Settings to Use
Tracking is incredibly important since you are trusting third parties with insider product information. If word gets out to competitors, they might have time to beat you to the punch. You also want to preserve the element of surprise for your product launch.
As we just reviewed, login protection provides lots of control over the terms of video access for individuals. It also provides lots of tracking information about your viewers. You can audit your viewer log to make sure credentials aren’t being shared without permission.
Training New Hires
The new Montessori toys range has sold beyond expectations. You are now in need of new staff over the holiday period to keep up with demand. To quickly bring new hires up to speed, you’re planning to use video during the onboarding process.
Video Privacy Settings to Use
Similar to internal project collaboration, training videos typically contain sensitive company information. For new hires, SSO or secure embeds are great options.
If you want them to get a jumpstart on their training before their official start date, login protection is another great choice. Login protection can be setup for anyone inside or outside of an organization.
Geo-targeting an Audience With a Special Offer
The Montessori toys range has sold well, new staff have been trained, and it’s time to go international. The problem is that you need to offer slightly different prices in foreign countries. For example, the videos marketing the product in Europe are going to show higher pricing compared to the US.
Video Privacy Settings to Use
Since these are marketing videos, you want them to be shareable and publicly accessible. However, you still need to prevent videos with different pricing information from being watched in specific areas.
Geo whitelisting allows you to designate the specific countries or regions where your videos can be played. Once enabled, your videos will not load or play in countries or regions that are not included in your whitelist.
Sharing Meeting Minutes Internally
Whether it’s a board meeting or a town hall, you might need to go back and review the discussion down the road. Video is a great way to capture and preserve important information.
Video Privacy Settings to Use
Company meetings usually include sensitive information, so privacy is always important. If the information and discussion shared in the meeting is particularly valuable, opting for SSO will give you control over who is able to view your videos.
Alternatively, login protection is also a good choice for this type of video. Login protection allows you to grant video access to individuals. That means you can adjust which videos each team is able to see when they log into your video website.
Special Offers for Members or Subscribers
Say you’re at a non-profit organization throwing a limited-seating event that will sell out quickly. You want to ensure your biggest donors, supporters, volunteers, and sponsors get first dibs on those tickets. This means you can’t just send a video about the event to your regular mailing list.
Video Privacy Settings to Use
How can we get the word out to select people? Secure embedding of the video in a members-only section of the website. Or, use login protection to grant video access to individuals.
Have any questions about sharing your video securely? Share with us in the comments below or on Twitter @sproutvideo
