Introducing Wistia's Agency Partner Program

 

We’re launching a new Agency Partner Program to help all agencies use video to provide better results for their clients. Over the years, we’ve seen lots of agencies help their clients succeed with video marketing. Not only have the agencies themselves improved their client close rates and increased existing retainers, they’ve helped drive business for their clients, all while demonstrating the value of video with Wistia’s analytics. We’re grateful for the support of our agency friends, and we’re excited to start bolstering your efforts with dedicated resources and support. Oh, the places we’ll go! ### What is video marketing? So, let’s dial it back a bit. What is video marketing and how could it benefit your agency? To put it simply, people love watching video. In the US alone, adults watch over an hour of video every day. And it turns out that when you put video on a business’s website or in other content, the results are pretty amazing. On-site video has been shown to grow website traffic by 200-300%, boost lead conversion rates by 80%, and increase email open rates by 19%. We’ve been paying attention to the great work agencies are already doing for clients, and we’ve seen customers like BluLeadz use video and Wistia’s platform to generate lead conversion rates of up to 62% for clients. Not only do clients benefit, but video can help an agency to grow as well. BluLeadz increased their own client close rate by 28% using video. Why is video so powerful? Because it helps make online business more human. It makes a business memorable, and even better, approachable. Video marketing is the process of using video to drive traffic, increase lead conversions, and nurture prospects—all while measuring video performance. ### What does the Agency Partner Program involve? When you sign up to become a Wistia agency partner, you’ll get training, support, and resources to help you increase client results and grow your agency through video. The following is a rundown of what you can expect as a partner. #### Video marketing training You’ll learn best practices for increasing traffic, converting leads, and nurturing prospects, so that you can become expert video marketers. You’ll also learn strategies for leading successful video marketing campaigns for your clients. #### Wistia training We want agencies and their clients to be able to get the most out of Wistia. You’ll be introduced to all of the Wistia features that will deliver impactful results for your clients, and you’ll learn how to prove ROI using Wistia analytics. We’ll also give you sneak peeks at new features before they’re released to the general public! #### Sales and delivery strategy training Wistia is committed to helping agencies sell video marketing services. Agency partners will get training about how to package and sell video marketing retainers, and how to successfully deliver those services to your clients. #### Marketing and sales resources We want to help agencies grow, so we will be providing agency partners with marketing and sales enablement materials to repurpose and use—both to increase the size of your existing client retainers, and to bring in new business. #### Direct Wistia support We plan to fully support our partner agencies every step of the way. Agencies that successfully refer clients to Wistia will work with dedicated account managers who’ll be ready to answer any questions or concerns. #### Agency partner community Wistia partner agencies will join an online community of agencies. You’ll be able to share your experiences and learn from each other’s successes and failures. ### We want your feedback Most importantly, though—this program is brand new! We want to develop the program with the input of the agencies involved and make this a true partnership. Early agency partners will have a voice in how the program is structured and run. Even if you don’t want to join, we’d still love to hear from you! Feel free to share what has worked well for you and your clients in the comments below.

BLOG » PROGRAM PAGE

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Focus on Your Customers to Create Valuable Partnerships

In 2014, 500 million Apple users received an unexpected gift on their iPhones: U2’s latest album. In a statement on their website, Apple called it the largest album release ever. “This is a big moment in music history. And you’re part of it,” Apple said. Music industry experts speculated that Apple paid U2 a pretty penny for it, too. Apple expected the free album to amp up its iPhone 6 announcement. U2 apparently assumed that everyone wanted to listen to their music. Both parties were caught off guard when the marketing maneuver was a total flop. Music lovers balked at having their storage space invaded by a band they didn’t like. Customers revolted to the point that Apple was forced to offer a removal option. At Wistia, we’ve found success in marketing partnerships when we flip the conventional notion of a business alliance on its head. Instead of asking what we can get out of a situation, we ask, “What can my potential partner and I accomplish together for our shared customers?”. Start with the goal of creating value for your customers, and build up from there. ### Collaborate on content people want to read A classic approach to internet marketing is the guest blog post exchange—I write on your blog if you’re allowed to write on mine. We each push our message to a new audience, and both companies win. It sounds great in theory, but in practice, you’ll find that companies typically save the best blog posts for themselves. The other company ends up sending you a hastily-written or regurgitated article. Naturally, you respond in kind. What you end up with is poorly crafted content on both companies’ blogs that no one wants to read. It’s the “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” mentality, and it often accomplishes nothing for the end user. Instead, you should get together with your partners and ask, “What kind of content can we produce together that our customers will love?”.

“It’s the ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’ mentality, and it often accomplishes nothing for the end user.”

By changing your mindset, you’ll create unique, brilliant, shareable material. Shift your focus towards building value as a partnership, rather than extracting value from the other side. #### How we built a long-term relationship with Moz Two years ago, we interviewed Rand Fishkin, co-founder of SEO software company Moz, on how to start and grow a scrappy video marketing series. It was just another feature in a whopping 30+ mentions of Moz that we’ve made on the Wistia blog. Even though we really admired Moz’s marketing, we never explicitly set out to build a relationship with them through our content. Instead, when we needed a great case study, Moz was often a company whom we could turn to as an example. We used our own small microphone to say great things about Moz, offering them exposure to our audience without the expectation of anything in return. As a result, Rand and the people who work at Moz ended up becoming Wistia promoters. And it wasn’t out of superficial obligation to reciprocate. It happened because they actually used and liked Wistia, the product and company. Rand and his team’s choice to use Wistia to host and embed the videos for their wildly popular Whiteboard Friday series—where they give quick, weekly marketing tips—provided us with their endorsement and amazing distribution. It got us in front of hundreds of thousands of potential new customers. ### Product integration for better UX When you’re considering potential product integrations, your business interests might push you to team up with a company with a large audience. Integrate with Big Co., and they might give you a taste of their massive, 100,000+ contact email list. It’s ridiculously tempting, but that’s the kind of thinking that leads to integrations that prioritize business benefits over customer needs. You’re liable to spend months building the integration, networking with the right person, and getting some recognition from your coworkers, only to see poor adoption of the integration you built. After that, you and your partner part ways, never to speak of what happened again. The bedrock for a lasting partnership is the ability to help make everyone’s customers more successful than they already are. That’s why you’ll find more fruitful integrations by first looking at what tools your customers are actually using, then determining how integrations with those tools might help them save time and achieve their goals.

“The bedrock for a lasting partnership is the ability to help make everyone’s customers more successful than they already are.”

#### Why Wistia teamed up with HubSpot Wistia’s product integration with HubSpot works well because our two companies offer complementary services. For marketers using video, it’s super valuable to see video data within HubSpot’s inbound marketing and sales software via the HubSpot-Wistia integration. When you integrate HubSpot with Wistia, your marketing and sales teams will be able to see which videos your visitors watch and how they engage with the content. This data indicates which marketing content is working and what needs improvement. The sales team can better qualify leads and address questions and concerns based on a prospect’s viewing patterns.

 

The idea didn’t come from business development; our own customers suggested it via support, social media, and other channels. In fact, a lot of our best ideas come directly from our customers who make requests about improving our product. These kinds of integrations not only help with co-marketing and distribution, they make our product fundamentally more useful. Because this integration delivers real value, HubSpot’s sales team frequently recommends the Wistia integration to their customers. On our end, we share step-by-step documentation on installing and using HubSpot with our customers. By focusing on customer success together, we’re building a mutually beneficial partnership that lasts. ### Curate events that people want to attend In 2015, South by Southwest partnered up with McDonald’s as a “super sponsor” for the event. McDonald’s gave SXSW a lot of money in exchange for the opportunity to host a McLounge area with free “wi-fry” at the conference. It was a bit jarring to see the McDonald’s street team walking around distributing coffee out of backpacks at a “counterculture festival.” Did SXSW make a poor choice in business partner when they accepted McDonald’s as a sponsor? A lot of conference attendees complained that their experience of the event was devalued by the proliferation of corporate sponsors like McDonald’s. One could argue that SXSW let dollar signs take precedence over their attendees’ experience. #### How SaaSFest focused on community When Price Intelligently hosted SaaSFest, a conference for leaders and innovators in the SaaS ecosystem, they could have partnered with big sponsors and turned the event into one massive sales pitch. They did the opposite. In his opening remarks, Price Intelligently CEO Patrick Campbell kicked off the conference by explicitly asking attendees not to make sales pitches. Instead, he emphasized that SaaSFest was an opportunity to learn, get to know one another personally, and build a community around a shared passion for SaaS. The hosts vetted all their speakers to find out who could bring the most relevant insights, not who could command the highest ticket prices or the most sponsorship bucks. There were a few big names, but mostly, the conference featured speakers who were just knowledgeable—who could offer stories from the trenches. That’s what attendees wanted to hear.

“The hosts vetted all their speakers to find out who could bring the most relevant insights, not who could command the highest ticket prices or the most sponsorship bucks.”

Rather than treating the conference as a revenue center, Price Intelligently saw it as a long-term investment. They focused on what attendees wanted to learn, and provided a time and place for people to solidify their connections in the SaaS community. This focus on attendee experience is why people walked away saying that they couldn’t wait until next year. ### The lasting benefits of authentic partnerships This past summer, Wistia sponsored Moz’s marketing conference, MozCon, in Seattle, because we knew that we had a ton of customer overlap. But Moz, without any prompting from us, helped us take our involvement to the next level. In between speakers, Moz didn’t want any downtime. However, they were too busy to create their own high-quality content for these time blocks. That gave the Moz team an idea—they would play educational Wistia videos in between speakers. This was the introduction video for the series:

 

Thanks to the trust and tight-knit bond that comes from doing business together for 5+ years, Moz lent us their audience at their yearly showcase event. At MozCon, we got to see, first-hand, the value that our partnership helped to create. Business alliances can seem like imaginary handshakes between abstract corporate entities, but really, they’re relationships between people, that affect real people. By focusing on the end user, you’ll create a lasting bond between everyone involved.

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Why Most Company Side Projects Are Destined to Fail

In 2011, my co-founder Brendan and I thought of a killer idea for a company side project: a video production marketplace.

 

Ever since we launched Wistia back in 2006, we’d come to realize that the core problem a lot of our customers had wasn’t finding good video hosting. The problem was actually making videos. Very few companies back then had in-house video teams, and finding a production company could be an intimidating and mysterious struggle. Sometimes customers would come to us for help. We’d ask where they were based, what kind of video they were looking for, and what kind of budget they were working with. Brendan and I would discuss the people and companies we were familiar with and combine our mental Rolodexes to figure out the best option. After we did this a few times, we had a eureka moment—we could remove ourselves from this equation entirely. We could set up a site where businesses and production companies could talk to each other, agree on the details and pricing of a video, and start making content right away. And this wouldn’t just be for Wistia customers. It would be for any business trying to make videos. That’s how 50 Grove, named after the street address of our Somerville, Massachusetts office, was born. This was a problem that the Wistia team seemed perfectly positioned to fix, and we thought we had the perfect way to do it. Instead, we learned a lot more than expected about how company side projects are often set up to fail.

 

### Right in our wheelhouse Brendan and I had enough experience in the video production space to know how marketplaces had failed before. It really excited us to think we had the solutions to mistakes that we’d seen others make, like: - Inconsistent quality: Marketplaces weren’t curated enough, which meant highly varying levels of quality. To solve this, we had video producers and production companies send us portfolios of work in order to get listed, and we did the picking. - Unclear pricing: Companies on other marketplaces often didn’t list their prices, which resulted in a lot of mismatched connections and wasted time. To address this, we had everyone on the production side list their approximate costs. That gave businesses a sense of their options and made things easier for the video producers, too. We built the 50 Grove website fast, launched it, and immediately got tons of great feedback, both from videographers happy to be working and businesses happy to be getting amazing videos. But as time passed, 50 Grove started to drag. The biggest problem was a lack of resources. We didn’t have the time or means to give 50 Grove what it needed, so the enormity of the project put us all under a lot of strain. A few years later, as Wistia packed up to leave Somerville for our new office in Cambridge, we left the other 50 Grove behind as well.

“We didn’t have the time or means to give 50 Grove what it needed, so the enormity of the project put us all under a lot of strain.”

What happened? Why weren’t we able to invest in the resources 50 Grove needed? It’s a question we’ve thought a lot about, but haven’t really written about until now. It’s not the brightest moment in Wistia’s history. We made a couple of big mistakes, and since then, we’ve examined what those missteps were and why we made them. We’re writing this now because the “company side project,” as an idea, is really beginning to take off. If you’re thinking about starting your own side project, save yourself some stress, and learn from our mistakes. ### Mistake #1: No one took direct ownership 2011 was a huge year of transition for Wistia. That was when we made our first real video and started understanding how video marketing might actually drive Wistia’s growth. Our ragtag team of five was beginning to expand, as was our workload. But we also had this idea for a video production marketplace. It felt important that we do something about it, but none of us had the time or the energy for it. We decided to get some distance from the idea by hiring a contractor to build the site for us. While we were busy hand writing embed codes, tinkering with Final Cut, and chasing down deals, our amazing side project would come to life. Then we could focus 100% on Wistia again, but we would have this cool thing called 50 Grove in our back pocket. The contractor finished the site and sent it over. It went live. People liked it, at least at first. Then they’d run into a semi-debilitating bug or get a 404 while checking out a video production provider. They’d email “50 Grove Support.” Then they would wait. And wait. And then wait some more, because all of those support emails were going to a shared inbox at Wistia. No one had been assigned direct responsibility for dealing with 50 Grove even though technically, working on 50 Grove was on everyone’s to-do list. It was just ranked consistently near the bottom. That was when we had to face the harsh truth that we’d hired a contractor to build 50 Grove because we never really wanted to build it at all. When we finally shut 50 Grove down, a gigantic weight came off everyone’s shoulders. It was disappointing to let our customers down, but the relief that came as a result of wiping it off our to-do list was palpable. We’d hired a contractor to build us this site without thinking through the long-term strategy. Who would be responsible for fixing bugs? What work would be required for day-to-day maintenance? We had never really thought about that kind of stuff. We were five people. We just figured it out as we went. Growing companies just don’t do low-priority objectives. You can make a to-do list, but by the time you’ve worked through the most important items, 10 more high-priority things always seem to crop up and demand your attention. If you want something to actually get done, you have to make it a high priority for your team and enforce it, or assign responsibility to a specific person. Otherwise, it’s just going to drag your team down until the day you decide to scrap it.

“Growing companies just don’t do low-priority objectives.”

### Mistake #2: We didn’t have the right incentives in place As soon as we conceived of 50 Grove, we knew that it had to be free. We’d seen other production marketplaces charge businesses, and even video producers, for things like listing or closing fees. We didn’t want to do that for a couple of reasons: - Video producers and businesses are both our allies. Nothing that we do at Wistia would be possible without the creative geniuses behind the companies and the creators that work with us. The last thing we’d want to do is profit from bringing the two together. - We weren’t used to charging extra fees. Wistia ran (and still runs) on recurring subscription-based revenue. To this day, the reliability and regularity of that model is the reason we haven’t had to raise significant amounts of money, and we didn’t want to mess with it. In other words, we thought that we were doing something nice for our customers. We didn’t expect anything in return. It was just the kind of thing that an idealistic young startup is liable to do. Little did we know, we’d already set 50 Grove up to fail, because our team’s incentives and 50 Grove’s incentives were in total conflict, and the two couldn’t co-exist. Our team was small and totally flat in structure at the time. Every team member had the freedom to choose the projects they worked on, and this was usually highly effective. We didn’t want bosses telling people what to do. In flat teams, that doesn’t happen: people self-organize and gravitate toward the projects that have the biggest measurable impact. We built a tool for automatically transcribing videos, we optimized our homepage for conversions, and we got our videos to load way faster—all of those improvements clearly bumped up our growth, increased our revenue, and gave us profits that we could reinvest back into Wistia. But no one chose to work on 50 Grove. Since we didn’t charge for the service, working on Wistia’s core product always took precedence. In the end, our effort to do something nice for our customers actually wound up hurting them. We had to shut down 50 Grove, but we learned something important. A flat team will always neglect projects that aren’t expressly valued by the company. ### Mistake #3: We thought it could just be a side project When we first started 50 Grove, it wasn’t supposed to be an extension of Wistia. This was something we were doing for our customers, not for us. We didn’t want to make it seem like we were promoting our hosting service or getting involved in video production. We bought a new domain name for our passion project—50grove.com—so it could take off in its own way separate from Wistia. We didn’t get much traffic. When we moved it to “50grove.wistia.com,” people started signing up almost immediately, but we still didn’t take the hint. We imagined 50 Grove as its own entity, even as it became increasingly clear that 50 Grove grew in popularity the closer we associated it with Wistia. Despite this, we never looked into the conversion data to see if 50 Grove users were becoming Wistia customers or vice versa. When you look at companies successfully building side projects, one thing sticks out. They build tools, often free, that people in a particular niche find genuinely valuable. Then the company uses those tools to drive people to their core business: - Crew, an online marketplace for designers and developers, started Unsplash—a repository for high-res, commercially-allowed images they weren’t using anymore. It’s now the number one referral source to Crew. - StatusPage.io, a tool for communicating with your team and users about downtime, started Better Error Pages—a free tool for building customized error pages. They tracked that about 0.2% of visitors converted to paid accounts, which sounds low until you realize it led to $116,000 in annual revenue for StatusPage. We, on the other hand, started a side project that didn’t support the needs of our core business. 50 Grove didn’t generate revenue, and if it sent traffic to Wistia, we weren’t tracking it. We thought our side project was supposed to be compartmentalized—something kept nice and tidy and totally on the side. But because of that compartmentalization, we neglected it, and that didn’t do any good for either 50 Grove’s users or Wistia’s reputation. This is the paradox: In order for your side project to succeed, it needs to become more than a side project. It needs to either generate its own revenue or send traffic to your core business. Otherwise, what you’re really doing is starting a whole new business, and you can do that. You just can’t treat it like a side project.

“This is the paradox: In order for your side project to succeed, it needs to become more than a side project.”

### Community resolution Fortunately, as humans, we’re all capable of learning from our mistakes. In 2014, we launched the Wistia Community. In this space, Community members (Wistia users and nonusers alike) ask for advice on technical issues, learn how to find good video producers in their area, and discuss the nuances of putting together a great piece of work. They’re sharing lessons with one another and building relationships. This project is going a lot better, and that’s because we set out to avoid the mistakes we made with 50 Grove. That’s why we did things so differently: - We hired a community manager to oversee the project day-to-day. This full-time employee would be responsible and accountable for the success of this project - We integrated it into Wistia and the needs of our users. The benefits that 50 Grove gave to our users were abstract. With the Wistia Community, our users have a designated place on our site to talk video production and marketing. Wistia users now have access to the exact kind of information that was on 50 Grove, except now it’s vetted by their fellow entrepreneurs rather than us. The people that use Wistia are a valuable resource. They’re video producers and marketers, all of the people we wanted to be part of 50 Grove. Now, these knowledgeable members of our community can help each other!

 

50 Grove wasn’t meant to be, but it did turn out to be necessary. When we saw how enthusiastically people were commenting on our blog, and Facebook, and Twitter, we knew that we should build a community where we could bring all of that together—but we also knew what mistakes to avoid along the way. If you’re still thinking about starting a side project at your company, go for it. Just take our missteps into mind. And remember: you will make your own mistakes, but it’s the way you bounce back from them that will define your company.

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New Stats Are Here: Our Video Analytics Get a Major Update

One of video marketing’s biggest challenges is working out what kind of content your audience will find valuable, and then creating compelling videos that will keep them engaged. At Wistia, we’ve been working to make it easier to determine whether you’re reaching the right people, keeping those viewers engaged, and turning those viewers into leads. We’re excited to introduce some major updates and new features to our Stats tools. We hope the new information these tools provide will help you understand how your videos are performing in a more meaningful way.

 

### A comprehensive view of your audience Measuring your video’s view count is important, but that metric alone doesn’t dictate success. You can get a much clearer picture of how your videos are performing if you can demonstrate that you’re reaching the right audience and that your videos are generating leads. That’s where the new Audience page comes in. Now you can see your entire audience and differentiate between the viewers that you know and the viewers that you haven’t identified yet. The Audience page provides an overview of your audience: how many viewers you’ve turned into leads and which videos they’ve played. Detailed information about each viewer who completes a Turnstile email collector or gets synced from your CRM/marketing automation platform will be visible within Wistia. With a more detailed view of your audience, you can keep track of how well you’re engaging with your known contacts and with new viewers. ### More insight into your viewers Turnstile allows you to capture the names and email addresses of viewers, but an email alone doesn’t paint a complete picture of who the person is. As marketers and sales reps, we need some additional information to gauge whether or not we are reaching the right people and converting qualified leads. To help you get that information quickly, we’ve enriched Viewer pages with data from Clearbit. Along with each viewer’s video engagement history, you can now see their picture, play count, location, and other publicly available information on the Viewer page. When this data syncs back with your CRM or marketing automation platform, you’ll be able to incorporate the information into your lead scoring process or pass the contacts directly to your sales team so they can follow up. ### Watch your views roll in As data-driven video marketers, we all love to see instant updates to our stats. With real-time performance updates, you can determine viewing patterns quickly and adjust your promotion strategy accordingly. When a launch video’s getting lots of attention, the View Stream will be your new best friend.

 

In the View Stream, you’ll find a record of every view, as well as its engagement details. At a glance, you can spot which videos viewers are checking out and engaging with every day. This offers you early insights on the views and leads captured for a recently published video or any sudden increase in views or conversions from one of your existing videos. This data can inform decisions about video placement, promotion, or Timeline Actions. ### Measure your success When you want to check on how a specific video is performing, the quickest way is to view the individual video or project stats within Wistia. However, sometimes you need to compare videos or see how all of your videos performed over time. To manage that reporting, we created the Trends report. The Trends report allows you to drill into which of your videos have received the most views over the long term and understand which videos have performed best in a given timeframe. You can sort your report by the number of plays, play rate, or engagement rate. ### A weekly performance reminder Making time to report on your videos can be hard, but it’s important to keep an eye on how they’re performing. Ideally you’d be able to check on which videos are getting the most plays and if there are any spikes or declines in views on a regular basis. Keeping a close eye on your video performance will provide you with insights that inform how you adjust your video promotion, placement, and content. To save time, we’ve created the new weekly Stats Digest email, which provides an overview of your video performance. Now, you can proactively keep track of your progress by setting up the new Stats Digest to be sent to your inbox weekly. Use this email report to identify opportunities to convert more viewers into leads or to adjust your promotion of videos that aren’t getting the amount of plays you expected. Head to Settings > Beta Features to enable the emails to start being sent. From there, you can see all of our Beta releases and turn on the ones that you’d like to try.

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It can be hard to understand the business benefit of your videos, and for many of us, proving ROI is essential. That’s why we want you to be able to quickly identify how your videos contribute to your goals and make sure you’re reaching the right people. Each of these tools work hand in hand to provide you with insights about the viewers who make up your audience. With Wistia, you can now easily see who your viewers are, how they interact with your videos, and how video is impacting your business. Check out the new tools, enroll yourself in the Stats Digest Beta, and let us know what you think in the comments! Can’t find Audience page? Your plan might not include this feature. If you’re interested in trying it out for two weeks (for free), email support@wistia.com.

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7 Adobe Premiere Lessons from Editing My First Video

Before coming to Wistia, I had never dabbled in editing videos beyond your average 30-second clip of a cute puppy or cartwheel attempt. When I joined this community of video enthusiasts as the community manager, I wanted to become a part of the awesome video culture that feels so close to everyone at Wistia. ### Start shooting your own footage I knew I wanted to commit to learning as much as possible about video production and editing, so I skipped over my Apple iMovie basics and jumped straight into Adobe Premiere Pro. I started by editing my own short videos taken during local adventures, weekend trips, and vacations. As you can see, there was tons of panning, and not much audio outside of the background music. These videos were pretty low-risk to play around with—I didn’t have to deal with figuring out a storyline, writing a script, or directing actors (including myself). If you’re just starting with video, I recommend shooting a bit of your neighborhood or vacation, and starting to edit that footage. There was tons to learn, and with the help of our creative team, I tackled editing these beginner videos right away. After hours of practicing, watching Adobe videos, and learning from the video team at Wistia, I started editing videos I was proud of.

 

From organizing footage to adjusting audio, the following are some of the most helpful things I’ve learned along the way. ### Organize your folders Ever get that dreaded “Media Offline” notification when you try and go back into your project after saving and closing? That plagued me for far too long before I figured out proper organization skills. Once you download your clips to your computer, make sure to put them in a folder where they’ll stay until the project is completely done. On my Macbook Pro, I have a desktop folder called “Wistia,” in which there’s a “Videos” folder. For each new video, I create a new folder with the title of my video project (let’s call it “New Video”), and import the footage to that folder, before ever opening up Premiere Pro. After all your footage is in the folder, open Premiere, start a new project, and save that puppy right in that “New Video” folder by clicking browse and finding it on your computer. Get in that “New Video” folder, select everything you need, and drag it into Premiere to never see the evil “Media Offline” message again. It took me way too long to figure this out, and it is probably the most stress-saving editing tip I have. ### Your shots are too long Ah, the cut. Every time I cut a clip, it feels like I’ve lost a part of myself. Well, not really, but having to cut frames off of a scene you think is especially beautiful can be tough. The real lesson for me was learning to think like my audience. We only have so much time or patience to watch a video. To start, try cutting sections of b-roll into shorter snippets to make your videos more digestible.

 

For talking head videos, try to begin the clip right before your subject starts speaking. Most of the time, there’s no reason to keep those extra frames before your actor begins their line. I’ll cut right up until I hear their voice. That keeps my video snappy and to the point. ### Don’t go without great audio Behind a great video, there’s even better audio. In order for your video to seem polished and engaging, it has to hold the viewer’s attention with quality audio. From the actors to the background noise and song of choice, I have learned to pay close attention to how I edit the audio in my projects. In Premiere Pro, it took me a while to figure out how to adjust the audio levels of my actors’ voices and the background music. These are a couple of my go-to tactics: #### Unlink audio Sometimes the audio from my video clips doesn’t need to be there. When this is the case, I make it easy for myself and unlink the audio from the video. To do this, click the audio from the clip (the bottom section), and choose “Unlink” from the dropdown menu. From there, I go ahead and delete the audio bit altogether. Bye! There’s more info on this topic in our blog post about background music volume—a lifesaver. #### Get the right music Where do you get the tunes behind your video? For starters, our creative director, Dan Mills, and his bandmates produced some quality tunes that are free to use non-commercially. You can also check out some of the Community conversations we’ve had about different sources for background music. Once you’ve found your song, pop it into that “New Video” folder and drag it into Premiere. From there, drag that file to the third line (under your video’s existing audio). When you’re ready, press play on your video—is the music too loud or too soft? Right click on it, and choose “Audio Gain.” You can also just select the track and hit “G.” You’ll be able to adjust the volume as you see fit. If it’s too loud, start by adjusting by -5, if it’s too quiet, try +5. Go from there until you find the perfect fit! ### Add a text or an image Sometimes you might want to end your video with a text note, or perhaps some sort of logo or image. I often end my videos with a Wistia flag logo. If you have an image you want instead of text, you can drag it from your computer into Premiere Pro, then drag it to wherever you want in your video. Cut it to perfection, and throw it in. If you’d like your image to show up while the video is still playing, move it up to the row above your footage, V2. No image? You can add text instead. Do this by heading into “Title” up top, clicking “New Title,” and choosing your effect. I usually still go with something simple, so the text just jumps on the screen, but you can select from all different types of effects. Next, add your text and move it into your desired position on your video’s timeline. Remember—if you drag and drop the title above your video timeline, the text will be overlaid on your video. ### Get to editing! That’s all folks—learning to play with Premiere doesn’t have to be a laborious and boring process. It’s way more fun if the videos you learn to edit with are your very own. Take videos of your neighborhood, friends, and adventures, and make sure to shoot lots of footage to play around with. Then pop it into Premiere and see what you can do!

LIBRARY » PRODUCTION

Editing Basics for Business Video

A guide to some basic editing theories that you can apply in any software

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5 Wistia Videos. 5 Engagement Graphs. What We Learned.

As a video team, we’re interested in view count, yes, but we’re more interested in overall engagement. Did our concept land? Did our message resonate? After we publish our videos, we keep a close eye on our Engagement Graphs. Sometimes our graphs provide evidence-based pats on the back, while other times, they let us know when something’s not working. This post outlines five public-facing videos, their Engagement Graphs, and our learnings. ### Validation for creative risks   We wanted to launch our Enterprise Plan with a killer video. When we were brainstorming, we kept coming back to the idea of staging a parade in front of our office. It just felt the best. We thought that a one-shot video without any camera motion would be the coolest way to execute our vision. This way, our audience could experience the parade as if they were watching the whole thing from the sidewalk. As we started scripting and planning the video, we knew that we had to hook the audience early. With only one take, we were sacrificing our normal video tricks—multiple shots, creative editing, etc.—so the actual parade had to pique our viewers’ interest in a big way. That meant we couldn’t half-ass it. We needed to go as over-the-top as our little 48-person company would allow, which required tons of time and resources. So after the video launched, we were more curious than usual to see if it worked. And based on the Engagement Graph, it did! We were able to retain most viewers for the entirety of the video. We started losing people toward the end of the video—turns out people don’t love watching penguins struggle to keep up. This drop-off didn’t bother us because the message had already been delivered, and we didn’t have a Turnstile email collector or CTA at the end of the video. Being able to point to this successful data has already empowered us to dream a little bigger in our brainstorm sessions. We also maintain a close relationship with Hot Tamale Brass Band. #### Save-the-date success Turning a save-the-date announcement into a video is tricky, because the message is so simple. There’s a time and a place. That’s about it. When we turned to our trusty Trello board for concept ideas, we noticed the dusty “Wistia Answering Machine” card from 2013, and knew it was finally time.   Since this answering machine concept relies so heavily on compelling audio, it’s easy to see how it got overlooked for the last two years. But a save-the-date video and the answering machine concept were a match made in heaven. When your message is so simple to get across, you’re left with more space to be adventurous with the delivery. We went into the scripting of this concept knowing full well that there would be a high risk of drop off, so we front-loaded the video with the core message. As with the parade video, we took a big departure from our usual style, which is always a little scary. Compared to our other more authentic, people-centric videos, this was an experiment in fictional characters, voice-acting, and visual minimalism. Even though we saw lower engagement than usual for a video of this length, the video still did it’s job. Without looking at the stats, one could argue that we didn’t need to go through the trouble of creating a 1:40-long video to get this simple message across. The design of the landing page, and the first 15 seconds accomplish that. However, this Engagement Graphs shows us that ~1,200 people did stick around to hear the jokes and experience our brand. This data encourages us to take chances. With every new video, you have the chance to delight your audience and create a lasting impression. ### Inspiration for future content   Every so often, we see significant spikes in our Engagement Graphs. In this video about DSLR lenses, we saw a large spike in rewatches when we showed a side-by-side comparison of shots using two different 50mm lenses. With this insight, we were inspired to produce our first gear review video about a new 50mm lens that Canon released—something we had never done before. Here’s the kicker: the new video has it’s very own spike! Maybe our audience is telling us that they’d like to see more video content that compares lenses. Maybe they’re trying to get the biggest bang for their buck. Either way, this data helps us focus our efforts on what people actually care about. ### Direction from drop-offs   When we looked back on this video about “Making Better Help Videos,” we weren’t satisfied with the 65% engagement rate. More specifically, we weren’t happy that we lost 3,420 out of 15,328 total viewers in the first 52 seconds. We quickly realized that we needed to cut to the chase. Introductory fluff and context could be included in accompanying text. When we redesigned our Library and began to include more text on our video pages, we began scripting differently. Today, our Library videos start with the meat. No time for fluff. We have Engagement Graphs like this to thank for these changes in design, scripting, and production. #### Signing off too soon   There’s a dip at the end of just about every video we’ve made at Wistia, but some are more costly than others. It’s not a huge deal to lose people at the end of your video if they’ve already consumed the message, and you’ve achieved your goal. On the other hand, if you have a Turnstile or a CTA at the end of your video, a dip could translate to less leads. Over time, we’ve learned just how precious every frame is, and we’re very careful about all of our editing decisions. In the video above about lighting for a webcam, I say, “So, there you go” at 1:10. Now, be honest, would you stick around after a line like that? Phrases like “Well, that about does it” (another one of our favorites) signal to the viewers that they’ve already heard the critical information. It may sound obvious, but try to avoid any messaging cues like these until your video is actually wrapping up. You’d be surprised how often these expressions sneak in! #### Logo animation Speaking of engagement dips at the ends of videos, we stopped closing our videos with our logo animation for this reason. After noticing some serious dips, we began hard cutting to a static Wistia logo at the end of our videos. While we sometimes miss that sleek logo build, this concise ending ensures that any CTA or Turnstile we place at the end of a video is seen by folks watching the entire video. It’s a small change with a potentially large impact.

LIBRARY » STRATEGY

Understanding Audience Retention

How to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of your video by breaking down its analytics

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#WistiaChat with Caleb Wojcik: All Things Video Editing

Whew! What a #WistiaChat! A huge thanks to everyone who joined our chat all about mastering the edit, with guest Caleb Wojcik of DIY Video Guy! We had folks join from cities all over the world, including Brazil, the UK, New Zealand, and India! From tips and tricks to best practices on any software, we were flooded with information for video editors of all levels. Find some in-depth editing questions and Caleb’s answers in the Community thread. ### Software loyalty We all have loyalties to our favorite software. When asked which video editing software Wistians preferred, we heard an overwhelming cry for Adobe Premiere. We use Premiere Pro at Wistia too! You all loved the built in workspaces and seamless Adobe integration. Final Cut Pro came in second, with folks citing the integrations and simplicity as key reasons for use. Some Wistians take a different route using Camtasia, Stupeflix, and Screenflow for their video editing projects. Whatever your software choice, you probably have your own workflow.

A1: Adobe workflow FTW. Prelude -> Premiere -> Audition -> AfterEffects -> Speedgrade -> Media Encoder Love it. #wistiachat

— IAN (@iservin) January 7, 2016

See which software everyone chose as their loyal editing companion in this part of the chat. ### Editing challenges are everywhere—and there’s always someone around to help Wistians agree—the biggest challenges come when you sit down for your first pass at the edit. Organize your folders first and develop a vision for your video. From there, sort out the basics and note what to focus on during the next editing pass. You can’t fix everything at once.

@wistia #WistiaChat A2: On the first pass, don’t fix every little thing. Add a marker and come back to color correct, fine tune, etc.

— Caleb Wojcik (@CalebWojcik) January 7, 2016

Audio challenges came in second. From audio gain adjustment to finding the right music—it can be tricky to get your video to sound perfect. If you’re looking for a song, try our Wistia music library, where you can download free, quality tracks.

A2: Audio is always my biggest hurdle. It takes a lot of preparation and execution to get it just right. #WistiaChat https://t.co/E3aqlyu24j

— Todd Patton (@ToddPatton) January 7, 2016

Find out what other Wistians noted as their biggest editing challenges in this section of the conversation. ### Shooting for the edit In order to sit down to a simple and clean editing process, you need to think about the edit while shooting your video. Wistians had a ton of suggestions. From hand motions and snaps to audio cues, mark every take to make your editing process simpler.

@wistia #WistiaChat A3: 1. I give audio notes to the future editor by saying things like, “this is video XYZ” or “use the third take”.

— Caleb Wojcik (@CalebWojcik) January 7, 2016

Sit down for a pre-shoot interview with your actors. Get to know their story, make sure they’re calm and loose, and let them know how the shoot is going to go. Relaxed actors make for an easy and fun shoot—and less takes for you to edit.

A3: Spend face-time with the client, know their objectives so you can find the right story, then spend time with the subjects #wistiachat

— IAN (@iservin) January 7, 2016

Put together a shot list—many Wistians use Trello to get organized. The extra planning will make sure you have the footage you need without missing anything.

A3: Prepare a detailed shot list and make sure you get multiple shots to give your editor choices to help tell the story. #WistiaChat

— Stanley Meytin (@StanleyMeytin) January 7, 2016

You can see what all our Wistian editors said about shooting for the edit here. ### What we wish we knew as beginner editors There’s a lot you can do to get better at editing in a snap. For starters, Wistians depend on keyboard shortcuts. Knowing the shortcuts for your platform can save you a ton of time editing your videos. Keep this Adobe Premiere Pro shortcut cheat sheet handy when you edit your next video and watch your editing time shrink—there’s also a sheet for Final Cut Pro. We heard a ton of support for hand tricks and snaps during good takes. You can see our very own Chris Lavigne explain how he marks a good take in this video.

A4 I totally stole @crlvideo’s hand trick a long time ago. One of my all-time favorite production tricks! #WistiaChat

— Allison Book (@allisonbook) January 7, 2016

File organization is critical. Make sure your projects all live in the same place and that they’re easy to find. You’ll end up having more copies than you thought—especially if you have to get approval from a client or higher-up.

@KevinKnechtion Like this? #WistiaChat http://pic.twitter.com/uXKx0wOA0I

— Caleb Wojcik (@CalebWojcik) January 7, 2016

Most importantly, stay positive and don’t get overwhelmed. Play with your editing software and see what you can do with a short personal project. From there, keep on learning—there’s always something new to try. See everyone’s favorite newbie editing tips here. ### Ask for feedback and advice when you need it Great videos take time, several passes, and a lot of feedback. Ask for help and consult other video producers and editors before letting it into the wild. During the chat, Wistians had a ton of great resources they turn to when seeking help.

#wistiachat A6: I love sharing to the community. Definitely some good technical advice there when you’re looking for it

— Phil Wesson (@Philwesson) January 7, 2016

- The Wistia Community has a handy “Feedback” section just for you! Post your videos, ask for advice and support, and Wistians will eagerly get back to you with ideas on making your video as good as can be. - Film Riot, Story and Heart, Levi Allen, and others have great tips and tricks for moving your video from good to great. Definitely something to bookmark! - Lynda and Coursera are educational platforms where you can learn more about your craft. You can find all sorts of video editing tutorials to move you forward. - Your good friend Google can also lend a hand. Don’t know how to get around something? Google it! Thanks to the internet and the power of SEO—we can find the answers to our video editing challenges, in .02614 seconds. Want more info? Go through the Storify to see what we thought were empowering answers to our #WistiaChat editing questions. Then jump in the Community and give your take! (Get it? Because video lingo? Take? It’s funny!)

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Webinars: The Unsung Heros of the Video World

Webinars represent prime opportunities to generate more leads, nurture audience members, and deliver useful content, but they rarely reach their full potential. Unlike other traditional video marketing content, like product videos or testimonials, webinars are often treated as opportunistic, isolated events, separate from larger strategies. Until recently, this was our approach to webinars at Wistia. A few months back, we began experimenting with our webinar strategy and applying some of the tactics we use for other video marketing content to webinars. It didn’t take long to recognize exciting opportunities for improvement. ### The webinar challenge This past spring, I ran a skunkworks project at Wistia. I wanted to jumpstart our webinar strategy and do at least one webinar per month with partner companies. Aside from the basic goal of teaching people about video marketing, I also set a goal of generating at least 1,000 leads from each webinar. ### The results In 3 months, I did 5 webinars, each with a different strategic partner: Sprout Social, LeadPages, Uberflip, Telestream (the makers of ScreenFlow), and Celtx. These are the leads that resulted from each respective webinar: These webinars collectively yielded about 8,000 leads—not bad in terms of ROI, considering the time I put into these wasn’t that significant. I know what you’re thinking. How many of those leads actually converted? The following chart displays conversions to trial accounts as well as conversions to paying customers: If you do the math on the conversion rates, you’ll notice that they’re not so hot. Since this was a skunkworks project, and I’m not a lead nurturing expert, these results were not all that surprising. Still, the customers and long-term value that these webinars generated made this project worthwhile. Not to mention all of the new things I learned along the way! ### Where to Optimize Aside from creating a strong nurturing campaign, there are a number of other ways to optimize a webinar program. #### Partner selection Choosing the right webinar partners impacts the number and quality of the leads you’ll get. It also impacts your brand identity and image, so choose wisely. #### Topics and slides Ideally, you want to choose a topic that’s appealing to the audience you want to reach and aligned with your strategic goals. One of the webinars that didn’t perform as well for us was about “Scripting a Video.” We found that the webinars that were more targeted towards video marketing performed better for our business. Optimize your slides by making them as engaging and clear as possible. I love this blog post on how to build a great deck from Erica McGillivray at Moz. #### Landing page We didn’t “own” the landing pages for any of these webinars. In the short term, this made our project easier, since there was one less piece for us to deal with. Unfortunately, it also meant that some of the landing pages weren’t up to Wistia’s standards, and we couldn’t keep a close eye on lead collection. #### Video on registration page We used video on almost all of the webinar registration pages, and received great qualitative feedback from attendees. Adding these videos gave life to our webinars by making them feel more human and personable. We tied it all together by using the video thumbnail image as the CTA within most of the email invites. For the sake of experimentation, we tried sending some invite emails with regular buttons instead of the thumbnail images, and we saw that on average, emails with video thumbnail images had higher click-through rates. There’s a certain je ne sais quoi about that tempting play button over a friendly face. We’re excited to properly A/B test these CTA options and report back! #### Webinar recordings Because we were merely co-hosts and guests on other companies’ webinars, we didn’t “own” the webinar recordings. Had we run and hosted the webinars ourselves, we could have leveraged the recordings as evergreen assets and used them to drive new leads. In fact, while conducting this project, I learned that webinar recordings—not the live events—tend to capture more leads. ### Getting extra mileage out of webinars Webinars should be a key part of our lead generation strategy. We’re making strides in this direction and building it out as a core competency. Heck, we’re a video marketing company, and webinars are videos! I also learned that many companies think of webinars in the same way that we once did: you do it when the right opportunity presents itself. They’re opportunistic, rather than a regular facet of your marketing strategy. At Wistia, we try to work against a “one and done” approach to video. We argue that videos are like blog posts or other content. You don’t write one and consider yourself finished. You point back to them, reference them in other content, and ensure they get the mileage they deserve. Like other video content in your funnel, webinars should be part of your larger marketing strategy and integrated into marketing automation. ### An expert’s opinion Mathew Sweezey, Principal of Marketing Insights at Salesforce, visited Wistia recently, and we talked all about optimizing webinars for lead generation. He also agreed to jump into the studio for a few minutes, so we could share his thoughts with a wider audience! What a champ.

 

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Though they feel different at first blush, webinars and other standard marketing videos drive towards similar goals. At the end of the day, it’s all about generating good content and distributing it efficiently. So, leverage those great webinars you’re making, and let us know if you’ve discovered any useful best practices!

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Wistia’s Hackathon: 48 Hours of Chaos with Snacks

Back in October, we hosted an in-office hackathon, working on internal projects based on our company values. We spent two days running around, collaborating, and learning from each other. It was amazing. And we only set off the fire alarm once. This was the video pep talk that we played at an all-hands meeting to introduce the idea to our team:

 

### Why we did it Brendan (our CTO) and I had been looking to produce another hackathon for more than a year. In the wake of the great Labstock of 2013, we craved days we could devote to projects we couldn’t make time for. We believed this time would lead to: - Diverse and valuable ideas and projects. - A stronger team. - A redefined sense of how fast we can move when we coordinate and focus. Additionally, the disruption to our work routine was an opportunity to give each of us a new perspective about our work, our colleagues, and Wistia as an organization. As we began to plan, we leaned heavily on this article about DropBox’s production process, and took this quotation to heart: “The best results from a Hack Week may not be finished products, but rather momentum toward the improbable.” We talked at length about what failure looked like in this environment and how we wanted to encourage uninhibited experimentation (or “the right amount of chaos,” as Brendan would call it). After endless hemming and hawing, we finally pulled the trigger, picked a date, and dove in. ### How we did it Early on, we decided to be as prescriptive as possible about the goal of the hackathon. Each project had to either improve the Wistia customer experience or improve the Wistia employee experience. The projects would be peer-reviewed based on our core values: pioneering, simplicity, fun work, impact, and act fast, learn faster. During the weeks leading up to the hackathon, we dedicated two family lunches to planning. The first was an open forum for brainstorming, where folks were encouraged to call out ideas or projects that they wanted to see happen. This list included everything: the near-impossible ideas, the whimsical ones (“Ben Whistles the American Songbook”), and the practical “why haven’t we done this yet?” projects. The following weeks were spent claiming the projects we were most interested in, calculating resources, and finally, pitching ideas at another family lunch to solicit buy-in or funds that hadn’t been spoken for. Our dedicated #the-hackening Slack channel lit up for a month with people from different teams debating the value and feasibility of projects. We programmed as much as possible for two days: we slotted time for all-hands support, project deadlines and demos, and (most importantly) meals. And then we let everyone loose. That’s when the magic happened. ### What we learned On the Monday after the Hackathon, our CEO, Chris, sent a candid email to the team, reflecting on how we could carry our experience and learnings into our everyday work.

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Hi all, As The Hackening was happening, I heard multiple people saying things like, “I was SO excited to come to work this morning” or “I can’t get over how talented people are!” I left work on that Friday invigorated and excited about what we had accomplished together. As the weekend set in, I started to feel bummed. I was sad that the hackathon felt so different from regular work—that we don’t capture more of that lingering energy everyday. I decided to try to figure out what was different about these days, and what we could take from the hackathon and incorporate into our regular work lives. Over the course of the week that followed, I had lots of conversations with people all throughout the company about how they felt the Hackening went. Everyone was resoundingly positive and brimming with ideas about why we were able to accomplish so much in such a short time. I wanted to share my notes that highlight the biggest differences from day-to-day work. - Clear time lines and fewer distractions: Everyone had a common deadline. If you didn’t make the deadline, you didn’t present. Monday was back to usual, so projects needed to fit into the allotted time. - Clear priorities with less coordination: The #1 priority was completing hackathon projects, which allowed for more focus, and easier prioritization than usual. There was no need to balance or compromise across different projects. - Self-contained and self-motivated teams: Every team needed to be self-sufficient, and members of each team were extremely aligned. After all, teammates chose to be a part of the projects they were working on. - Lots of cross-functional teams: Brainstorming of ideas was cross-functional and in a casual, relaxed setting. People from disparate parts of the company rallied around common interests, and as a result, many hidden talents came out of the woodworks. - Higher tolerance for failure than usual: Instead of debating the quality or viability of ideas at the beginning, we acted fast and presented demos two days after starting out. Because failure had no downside in this environment, it made it easier for Wistians to dream big. The hackathon reminded me of how much we have to learn, not just about our market and customers, but about the way we work and the expectations we set. We’re going to try to bring some of these lessons into more of the day-to-day work that we do. It’s exciting to think about all of the options we have in front of us to help make work more fun, creative, and productive!

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Keep an eye out for some upcoming launches that came out of the hackathon! The Hackening lives on!

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