Useful Wistia Features for Video Producers

I’m Chris. I make videos here at Wistia. The following are the Wistia features that make me a more effective video producer. Some of them may surprise you.

Sure, sure. I’m just another guy pitching you on the company that I work for. While this (technically) is not false, the following features really do improve my day-to-day workflow. ### File management I have a lot of videos in my account. At last count, 3705 videos, to be exact. I’m constantly producing and organizing videos, so I’ve come to appreciate the way that Wistia handles media management. Wistia accounts are made up of projects. Each project is essentially a folder that contains a collection of videos. In there, you can add another level of organization by using sections. I can move videos, make copies of videos, rename videos, and even search for my videos.

### Timecoded comments and 2x playback Viewers can leave comments on your video and choose to link their comment to specific times in the video. Our timecodes are frame accurate, which makes this an awesome tool for rough cuts and proofs of videos that I’m working on. When I’m revising a video proof, I can read a teammate’s comment, click on the timecode it’s associated with, and jump to that exact part of the video. Another tool I use when I’m proofing a video is the 2x playback option. This does exactly what you’d expect—it plays the video back at double speed. This is great if you need to cruise through raw interview footage to make notes for a collaborator. No chipmunk voice here! Surprisingly, you can still understand what most folks are saying at 2x. ### Fancy player customizations Sure, you can do the obvious things, like change the player controls and the thumbnail, but allow me to introduce you to my little friend: the high quality GIF. If you set your video to autoplay at the beginning and loop at the end, you can create custom GIFs with impressive image quality. Just remember that these puppies should almost always be silent.

As a video producer here at Wistia, I don’t have access to the code on our website. Luckily, I don’t have to bother our designers or engineers with my video-related requests, because I can always make changes to video customizations without worrying about re-embedding anything! I can change the thumbnail, add annotation links and CTAs, adjust the player color… you get the idea. The changes will all be updated live wherever the video is embedded. No code. No problem. ### Replace video Every now and then, we’ll release a video that needs to be replaced. In some scenarios, it’s a small thing, like a misspelled word or a weird audio blip. In other cases, we’ve had to add a scene or change the music. Either way, I find myself using the Replace Video feature a ton. If you’ve only made a slight editing tweak, you can overwrite the older version and keep all the stats you’ve accrued so far. If you’ve made more significant changes, like adding a new ending or a new music track, you can archive the analytics from the first cut and start with a fresh set of stats. Just like updating player customizations after the video is live and embedded, when you upload a replacement, you’ll never need to re-embed or worry about the video updating everywhere it’s been shared. ### Heatmaps and engagement graphs As a video team, we’re interested in viewcount, yes, but we’re more interested in overall engagement. Did our concept land? Did our message resonate? This is where Wistia video stats come in. At first, it may feel a bit creepy to know exactly how someone is watching your video. But once you get over the creep factor, you’ll find yourself refreshing the stats screen every few minutes to learn how viewers are interacting with your video. First is the heatmap. It’s a second-by-second look at how people have watched, re-watched, and skipped around in your video. After we publish our videos, we keep a close eye on our Engagement Graphs. Sometimes our graphs reassure us that our video was well-received, while other times, these graphs indicate when something’s not working. For a graph with a nasty drop off, I’ll occasionally make adjustments, like shortening up a section or adjusting the pace of the edit, then replace the video and see what happens in the updated stats. We wrote a post that reveals 5 engagement graphs from 5 of our Wistia videos, if you’re interested in learning more. ### Force HD In my account settings, I can adjust the video playback quality that gets served to my audience. Because I’m a video purist, and I don’t care about buffering times, I’ll peg the selector to force 1080p HD version for my own personal audience. In our home Wistia account, where we store all of our marketing and learning videos, we’re more focused on making sure that no one in our audience ever experiences buffering. For these videos, we let Auto-HD do it’s thing, and serve the right encode based on the internet speed of the viewer.

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Since my workflow and needs are likely different from your own, I encourage you to explore the Wistia product as you create more videos for your business’ website. You never know when you’re going to need a looping, autoplaying video of someone dancing in a top hat.

BLOG » STRATEGY

5 Wistia Videos. 5 Engagement Graphs.

Learn how the Wistia video team uses their Engagement Graphs to validate new concepts, uncover future content ideas, and learn from their mistakes.

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How to Boost Your Engagement with Custom GIFs

You can spot a GIF a mile away. These short, looping, soundless animations easily convey more information and emotion than a static image ever could. Whether you’re telling a story, showing off a product, or even just saying thanks, GIFs are the perfect medium to drive home the message. ### Numbers don’t lie Don’t just take our word for it. In 2015, users shared more than 100 million GIFs on Twitter alone. 100 million—that’s a lot of slow-clapping fangirls.

In a recent New York Times article, David McIntosh, chief executive of Riffsy, a GIF keyboard company, said, “People are sharing these branded GIFs like any other pieces of content.” We already know that tweets with photos earn 150 percent more retweets than those that don’t, so it’s natural to conclude that GIFs will also boost engagement. At Wistia, we’ve found this to be true. In the past, we’ve seen over 25 times the number of media views and 3-5 times the number of likes on tweets that include GIFs. So, if your audience is using GIFs to communicate on social media and beyond, then it makes sense for you to start incorporating them into your own marketing as well!

“We’ve seen over 25 times the number of media views and 3-5 times the number of likes on tweets that include GIFs.”

### It all starts with a video Many of the GIFs you see on the web have been pulled from pre-existing media of some sort, such as a popular television show or a movie. But here’s the kicker: they don’t all have to be. Imagine you just embedded a fresh, custom-made video into a blog post you’ve been working on for weeks. You’re super excited to finally get it out the door, and you almost send the link to your social media manager when it dawns on you—the power of the GIF. You rejoice at your desk at the prospect of boosting engagement. ### Let’s break it down You’re finally ready to learn how to make your own GIF from a video! But, before we start, it’s important to get set up with the right tools. At Wistia, many of us use GIF Brewery to create our own custom GIFs. It’s $5 dollars in the Apple Store, and well worth the price. Other folks here like to use LICEcap (yes, the name is weird) but it also gets the job done! Now that you’ve downloaded your software of choice, it’s time to start GIF-ing! We recently wrote about Niche Modern’s incredibly authentic videos on our blog, so let’s use one of those videos as an example. We’ll also be using GIF Brewery to create this GIF, but other software should be relatively similar, so follow along!

Step 1: Locate the video in Wistia that you’d like to use to make a GIF. Step 2: Download the video at 720p (1280 x 720) and drag it to your desktop. Step 3: Open up GIF Brewery, then locate and select your video. Step 4: In the top left hand corner, you’ll see the option to Resize. Click Resize and change the width to 500 px. This is to avoid making the file too large. Twitter only supports media files that are up to 2 MB. Step 5: Locate the point in video where you would like the GIF to start. Once you have found this point, drag the yellow triangle over to that point in the video. Step 6: Similarly, locate the point in the video where you would like the GIF to end. When you have that figured out, simply drag the red triangle over to that time. Step 7: Create your GIF! You will see a button in the top right corner of the window that says “Create GIF.” A preview of what your GIF will look like should appear. Here’s the final product! ### But wait, my GIF is ugly When you preview your GIF, you might be surprised by what you see. Some common complaints are, “Woah, it’s moving too fast!” or “Hey, wait, that looks way too slow.” There are a few tricks you can use to avoid running into these problems: - Be sure you’re capturing enough of the footage by making sure your yellow and red arrows aren’t pressed up right against each other. - Try to pick a part of the video where there are many visual cuts so that you’re highlighting more than just one shot. This can help with the “it’s too slow” feeling. - Under GIF properties you can change the Frame Count. The default is 24 frames per second and is generally a good baseline. Anything less tends to really speed up your GIF, while adding too many more frames makes the GIF feel more like a video. ### Go beyond social media Want to get the biggest bang for your buck? Try including that beautiful GIF you just made in your next email campaign! Pop that bad boy into your email and link it out to your blog post. It’s a great way to tease the video content on your site, and it gives the viewer just a little taste of what’s to come!

LIBRARY » STRATEGY

Crafting a Social Video Strategy

Tactics, best practices, and creative ideas for social media videos

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Growing from Within the Company: 5 Lessons We've Learned

In a rapidly growing company, sound leadership and structure are vital, but equating the traditional management trajectory with success can be crippling. Many companies have created cultures in which becoming a manager is considered the pinnacle of accomplishment. At Wistia, by focusing on making more growth paths than just the conventional management trajectories, we have been able to help people grow in different ways. We’ve found that this approach to growth has encouraged driven, talented employees to stick around, develop their flatsides, and continue to generate value for the company. The following are five lessons we’ve learned while carving out what it means to grow from within at Wistia. #### 1. Motivated individual contributors are worth reshuffling for Ezra was one of Wistia’s earliest employees and our first official marketing hire. With his strong quantitative background and passion for data, Ezra was also Wistia’s go-to person for business intelligence, a one-man analytics department, and a self-motivated individual contributor in the truest sense. When Wistia grew, the marketing team got bigger, and Ezra’s job changed from a mixture of marketing and analytical side projects to managing a team full time. Ezra wasn’t passionate about managing a team, and suddenly he didn’t have time for anything else. We had no playbook on what to do. For many companies, individual contributor tracks just don’t exist at all, and it’s “up or out.” Ezra was frustrated that he wasn’t creating things himself or solving problems directly. As we talked about what to do, we realized that if he moved across the organization into an individual contributor role, we could better align the way he wanted to work with a problem that the company really needed to solve.

“For many companies, individual contributor tracks just don’t exist at all, and it’s ‘up or out.’”

Ezra moved into a business intelligence role, helping everyone in the company better use data to make decisions. This left us without a leader on marketing, but with an extremely strong contributor with an enormous amount of business context in business intelligence. The result was instantaneous. Ezra has been able to empower everyone across the organization to use data more effectively. There was no downtime and no onboarding time that we needed to account for. It was amazing to see the power of aligning intrinsic motivations with the right role. This shift highlighted something we hadn’t realized was happening: while it sometimes felt like you needed to become a manager to grow at Wistia, in reality, alternative growth paths were resulting in impressive professional growth. In light of this realization, we began to solidify a philosophy we had already been living out: at Wistia, people can grow in salary, title, skills, and more, without becoming a manager. Individual contributors carry just as much prestige as managers. #### 2. Lateral moves foster fresh (but experienced) perspectives When Alyce first started working at Wistia, we were looking for someone who could chat with customers and help them with their toughest video encoding issues. Alyce jumped right in. She was helping customers that had the most complex encoding problems you could imagine. We were only 9-people at the time, and we all wore many hats. As we started to produce more content, Alyce offered her help with editing. As our social audiences started to grow, Alyce jumped in and helped us communicate better with customers. It seems totally natural in hindsight, but having a video encoding expert owning a lot of our communication with customers was the right move. As we produced more and more content, we realized a more permanent shift would enable her to develop professionally and grow into a new set of skills. Jeff, our former Director of Customer Happiness, was another one of Wistia’s early hires. Jeff spent years talking with thousands of customers and understanding their needs and demands, and that’s why his transition to the Product team made perfect sense. He carried with him the outside perspectives of many customers, and had experienced first-hand the product’s growth from the early days and its effect on our users. We knew the upside of putting a diehard customer advocate on Product would be huge. There’s always a ton of risk when you hire someone for any position. The amazing thing about internal hiring is that you already know that person is a strong cultural fit. They have context for how the business operates, and this experience increases the likelihood of mutual success. Lateral moves bring institutional knowledge from one part of the business directly into another part. The key to making it work is finding people who are excited about the challenge of taking on something new, are open to mentorship, and are great at self-directed learning.

“Lateral moves bring institutional knowledge from one part of the business directly into another part.”

#### 3. Co-managing is a viable option When we found ourselves in need of a Director of Customer Happiness last year, our philosophy of growing from within suggested we should promote someone internally. At the time, there just wasn’t any one person that we felt fit the bill. Instead, we took two members of the team—Sarah-Mei and Olivier—and we asked them to lead our customer champions while we searched for a Director of Customer Happiness. This was somewhat of a risk, as neither Sarah-Mei nor Olivier had prior management experience, but with the support of mentorship from other leaders in the company, they’ve far exceeded our expectations. Co-managing can take a job that would be potentially lonely, challenging, and isolating, and allow two people to learn and ease into the role together. We had never done something like this before, but it worked out really well. By extending that opportunity instead of promoting a single person or hiring an external candidate, we’ve given them the chance to gauge their options and start carving out a future at Wistia. Even if neither of them decide they ultimately want to direct a team, they’ve seen what it’s like to lead one. #### 4. Use measurement to combat politics Honest measurement works against political biases that often come into play with internal hiring. Even with systems like 360 quarterly feedback, measurement is too often slanted due to relationships. Obviously, numbers are just one part of a comprehensive evaluation, but they are an objective tool worth leaning into. Once we started setting clear, measurable goals for each team, decisions around leadership and management became inherently less relationship-driven. Everyone knows what their team has to accomplish, agendas aren’t set by people with “clout,” and results are what matters. When we ask Jeff and the Product team to spend April, say, improving retention by 50%—the team has a clear goal against which we can measure performance. The ideas that lead to results are rewarded, regardless of who proposes them. While we value the tight-knit relationships we’ve fostered over the years, we’re excited about building out the foundations of a truly meritocratic culture. #### 5. Management isn’t for everyone Management is not inevitable. It’s one track, it’s not glamorous or particularly fun for most people, and it’s very misunderstood. Being an effective manager means removing obstacles and providing support for your team. When you open up more paths to growth within the company, something surprising happens—you find that most people don’t actually want to become managers. When it’s no longer an obligation to become a manager, your teammates can focus on achieving their professional goals instead of climbing the corporate ladder.

“When you open up more paths to growth within the company, something surprising happens—you find that most people don’t actually want to become managers.”

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While there’s a lot of uncertainty involved with internal growth, there’s one thing we do know: we have a long way to go. Helping people grow from within Wistia has been a journey full of hazards and mistakes, but one that’s ultimately made our company culture stronger. As we move forward with a greater understanding of what works and what doesn’t, we’ll keep reassessing and adjusting our process and trying our best to explicitly encourage diverse growth paths. It might sometimes slow down Wistia’s growth, and it may test our values, but it’s really important that we keep moving and improving. In the end, growth from within doesn’t just make our people happier or more likely to stick around, it strengthens our resolve to build this thing together, for each other.

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Beyond View Count: How the Wistia Team Uses Video Analytics

If you’re making video, embedding it on your site, and only tracking view count, you’re missing out on valuable opportunities. There isn’t one metric that determines every video’s effectiveness. Sure, view count can begin to give you a basic idea of your video’s reach, but it’s only the tip of the stats iceberg. With Wistia’s analytics tools, you can use more than just the view count to gauge how well your video is performing and glean some useful insight. To provide some real examples, I chatted with some Wistians on different teams. We talked about how they’re using different metrics to understand our audience better, improve our content, and make every interaction more delightful (and human). ### Sales We’ve shared how we use video in our lead nurturing efforts to encourage leads further down the funnel, but what about those one-on-one conversations? I chatted with Mat about how he uses video when working with individual people who are evaluating Wistia. For people who are looking at one of our marketing automation integrations, he’ll start by directing them to a site page with a marketing automation integration explainer video on it. Once they’ve watched, he’ll check their heatmap to understand how much of the video they’ve seen, and follow up with anyone who viewed 100% of the video right away. Mat described the heatmap as the “best and quickest way to check the pulse on the lead.” Once he’s seen that they’ve watched the full video, he can quickly follow up and offer to schedule a demo.

“Mat described the heatmap as the ‘best and quickest way to check the pulse on the lead.’”

The Customer Success team has also created videos to introduce themselves, share their enthusiasm, and say thank you. In each case, there are different goals, so the stats take on different meanings. These more personal videos will likely have high engagement rates and low play rates, but we do check the stats to see if they were watched and shared. For example, to help new users get better acquainted with their dedicated success coaches, the team created short videos introducing themselves. The following is Jonah’s “nice to meet you” video.

When you’re creating videos that support your sales team, you can also sync the data with your CRM to optimize their workflows. With engagement data at their fingertips, they can qualify leads quickly and have more meaningful conversations. ### Marketing On our marketing team, we use video for a lot of different purposes. We’ve used it for everything from product announcements to lead generation content. The important stats to measure will depend on the context. I spoke with Alyce, our content strategist, about which things she measured to gauge the effectiveness of a given video. Play rate and engagement are important to her because they indicate if the topic was a good fit for a video, and whether or not people found what they were looking for once they started watching. Google Analytics also provides some insight into whether or not the video is serving its purpose on a page. We measure bounce rate and time on page to make sure the content we’re creating is engaging and useful. By reviewing a video’s engagement graphs, we’re able to optimize it for audience retention and conversion. We can also supplement that information with the data from Google Analytics to understand if we should make changes on the page.

“By reviewing a video’s engagement graphs, we’re able to optimize it for audience retention and conversion.”

Beyond keeping an eye on stats for the videos living on our site, the Marketing team tracks how video thumbnails affect email engagement. We measure to determine if they improve the click-through rate (they do!). For lead generation videos, we pay attention to conversion rates and interactions with annotation links. There is also a more human way to gauge success: the comments. Alyce mentioned keeping an eye out for the amount of comments to determine if people found the video useful, helpful, or fun. Incorporating a review of your marketing video stats into your workflow can help you identify opportunities to improve content that lives on your site. With more information, you can work toward better results and make more informed decisions on future videos. ### Support I spoke with Emily, who manages our Help Center documentation, about the role video plays in her day-to-day work, and what video stats she pays close attention to. In our Help Center, we use video to explain concepts that aren’t as easily grasped via text. They can also serve as an alternative to reading through the documentation. For example, here’s a video explaining bandwidth:

For Help Center videos, high engagement is a key indicator that a video is successful. Emily looks for ~50% engagement as a sign of success. She doesn’t spend a lot of time analyzing play rate, as help doc pages can contain a lot of information, and people can arrive at a page for varying reasons.

“Emily looks for ~50% engagement as a sign of success.”

She’s also constantly collecting feedback on help pages using Qualaroo. If she receives responses from visitors saying they are confused about a specific topic, she thinks about adding a video to the page. In our video onboarding series, two members of the Customer Happiness team walk new users through Wistia’s features while baking. This was a choice made to help new Wistians get into the tools without having to spend a lot of time reading through docs in the Help Center.

In this case, the Customer Happiness team kept an eye on the play rate and decided it was worth revisiting the videos to try to get more people to play them. The videos were shortened, and we’re now comparing the play and engagement rates between the videos to determine if the shorter content was an improvement. The data from this test will help Emily make decisions about the length of Help Center videos moving forward.

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If you’re curious how our video team uses Wistia’s analytics, you can check out our blog post that breaks down five videos and their engagement graphs. Video analytics really do influence the way we produce and edit the videos we create. We’re constantly aiming to create videos that better serve our audience. Considering the fact that video majorly influences a visitor’s experience with your brand, it’s important to review how it’s performing and iterate based on your results. Make sure your videos are helping you achieve your goals by checking out your stats today.

LIBRARY » STRATEGY

The Wistia Guide to Video Metrics

How to understand what your analytics are really telling you and measure the impact and effectiveness of your next video.

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How to Execute an Internal Product Update Series (and Why It's so Fun)

For many fast-paced tech companies, efficient and effective communication is a challenge. At times, it seems like different teams are speaking different languages, and it’s easy to lose touch with anything outside your lane. Unfortunately, adding more meetings is rarely a successful fix, and email novellas are seldom read. A few months ago, a co-worker on the product team approached me in the kitchen and asked how we could inform the whole company about changes in the Wistia product on a regular basis. It was a communication challenge that we had been facing for quite some time, and as the company grew, it became clear that a consistent product update would be beneficial. We talked through our options and decided to experiment with lo-fi video. ### Informative entertainment Maybe it’s the ex-middle-school teacher in me talking, but there’s no use in teaching someone something if you don’t have their attention. It’s a waste of your time. It’s a waste of their time. When it comes to telling an entire company about product changes, both big and small, engagement is imperative. In other words, there’s an opportunity to entertain and delight. And I take this opportunity very seriously.

“There’s no use in teaching someone something if you don’t have their attention.”

#### Fun begets fun Every week, Bobby, the anchor of Wistia News One, and I end up belly laughing at some point during production. There was the time I hit him square in the eye with a marshmallow. And the time he almost took down the background paper while jumping to catch a fruit snack in his mouth. There was the episode when he attempted to sing the news. The list goes on and on.

At the start of each week, we start thinking about new concepts for the Friday shoot. Some work out better than expected, and some fall flat, but we always end up learning a ton and laughing our way through the process. When we happen to capture moments of authentic enjoyment on camera, they’re usually the highlights of that episode. Laughter is contagious. #### Holding attention After an episode receives some views, I look at it’s engagement rate to assess our performance and learn from our mistakes. For Wistia News One, significant drop-offs typically indicate that we’ve gone too long without drawing our viewers’ attention. The following are four tactics we’ve tried out to keep our engagement rates steady. 1. Keep it short
I try my best to keep every episode under 90 seconds, and I’m always excited when we come in around 60. This strict limitation forces us to keep the script as concise as possible and cut down on the length and number of our gags. While I would love to show a 30-second, slow-motion clip of Bobby getting pelted in the face with marshmallows, our viewers are busy. 2. Incorporate new faces
Bobby, our anchor, gains poise and gusto with each episode, but we find that bringing new faces in for cameos always improves our engagement. It’s also a great way for folks to practice being on camera in a low-pressure environment. We’ve had teammates do cameos with no lines, comical interruptions, quick sign-offs, and poetry readings. It all depends on our timeline for that morning, and the guest’s comfort level.

3. Punctuate with the unexpected
When you place entertaining moments at unpredictable times throughout the video, you can create a highly-effective variable-interval schedule for your viewer. This makes watching a video satisfying in the same way that golf and gambling are satisfying. When reinforcement arrives at unexpected times, viewers, golfers, and gamblers are convinced to stick around and keep playing to see what happens. It’s science. 4. Hint at the prize
Every week, as soon as the video is exported, I upload it to our Wistia account and share the link on Slack. In the copy around the link, I sometimes hint at the “prizes” within the episode. “@here today’s product update features @i.ruedlinger, @mat, and levi the dog, so hold onto your pants.” Hours later, I send out a team email to ensure that I reach people who may have missed the Slack message. In these emails, I like to use an enticing clickable thumbnail. It turns out live animals boost click-through rates. This thumbnail isn’t clickable. I apologize for the tease. ### Limitations Since the product update represents a small slice of our day-to-day work at Wistia, Bobby and I aim for quick completion instead of perfection each week. It’s amazing what happens when you set strict limitations on a creative project. In many ways, it takes a lot of the pressure off.

“Bobby and I aim for quick completion instead of perfection each week.”

We only have so much time to devote to the project, and sometimes quick, creative solutions to issues end up sending us in interesting, unexpected directions. Each Friday morning, Bobby arrives with a rough script. We do a table read, make some tweaks, talk out the shots, and begin. It’s a rush of adrenaline to produce a video before 10:30 every Friday, and I find I’m cultivating a new sense of confidence around completing projects. Of course there are compromises. The sound isn’t always perfect. The edit could be more interesting. Bobby might stutter or mess up a line here and there. But at the end of the day, it’s an internal video meant to deliver information and delight our teammates. We accept our mistakes and move forward. No matter what. I think this attitude ultimately makes our videos more approachable (and unpredictable). Anything can happen when the people in charge are flying by the seats of their pants.

### Working toward proficiency So, here’s the thing. The Wistia studio has all the video gear you could possibly want at your disposal. It makes it easy for newbies like me to come in and make decent-looking videos. One switch turns on all the lights you need for a typical shoot, and the external mic is almost always in position, ready to record. While all of those factors make my job much easier, I often choose the lens, adjust the camera settings, set the gain on the audio recorder, direct, shoot, and edit. Every week, my muscle memory becomes more ingrained. I now know the native ISOs for the Canon EOS 5D Mark III, and how to tell if the audio is peaking. I notice shadows and framing mistakes. I direct with more confidence and skill and know what to listen for when Bobby’s reading his lines. This weekly production gives me a chance to work toward proficiency in a new skill, while keeping the company abreast of news in the product. I’ve always believed in the power of small wins, but this regular challenge has convinced me that projects with clear goals and strict limitations are hugely beneficial—both for your own growth, and for the effect your development has on your team. If you’ve already got a video setup at your company and your team could benefit from internal video updates, find someone who’s interested in video, and let them loose. ### The future of product updates As we continue to produce more episodes, we hope to do a better job providing context for the information we deliver. This might mean including more screenshots of the product and sprinkling in some annotation links that lead to helpful examples and resources. We also hope to get our newer employees into these updates as soon as possible, because we’ve found it’s a great way to bring people into the video fold at Wistia. Last month, the product team decided to produce monthly (polished) product updates for external use. When customers arrive at the login page, there is a link to watch a product update. Sometimes all it takes is a proof of concept to get the ball rolling on a larger, external project, and I’d like to think that Bobby and I served as trailblazers for this concept. For now, we’ll continue to produce our zany internal updates, as they work toward a related, but different set of goals. Plus, “fun work” is a company value, and we’re definitely embodying that principle every Friday. I realize that you’re probably wondering why we didn’t include an entire episode in this post. Our legal team (pictured left) told us that these videos were too risky. In all seriousness, we take certain liberties in our news episodes that we wouldn’t take with externally-facing content, so we decided not to include them in this post. I hope that the clips provide you with enough flavor to imagine the rest.

BLOG » STRATEGY

Communicating Better with Internal Video

Scale communication, improve onboarding processes, and document company culture and history.

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6 Ways to Promote Your Videos on a Budget

Have you ever cleaned the house, made a home-cooked meal, dressed up, set the table, and forgotten to invite guests? Probably not. So why does a similar scenario happen more often than not in video marketing?

You’ve spent weeks planning, filming, and editing pretty fantastic video content, but no one is viewing your videos. Perhaps your production skills aren’t as sharp as you thought? I doubt that! It’s much more likely that you haven’t taken proper measures to promote your video content. I know what you’re thinking. How much does this cost? It turns out there are several ways to increase the views on your videos without breaking the bank. Use these 6 budget-friendly tips to gain several active sets of eyes on your spiffy new videos that deserve attention. #### 1. Insert a video thumbnail into your email newsletter Possibly the easiest and smartest way to gain exposure for your videos is to send them out to people who are already engaging with your brand. You have their email for a reason, whether they filled out a form or subscribed to your newsletter, so you should be sending them your best stuff (e.g. your videos!). Unfortunately, you’re likely to run into many technical issues if you try to embed videos directly in your emails, but there are tools (like Wistia) that will allow you to use video and email effectively. With Wistia, you can paste the email merge tag of your video in your email provider to display your video’s thumbnail, and direct viewers to your video’s landing page. Since you’re (hopefully) not buying email lists, and likely already doing some form of email marketing, this promotional strategy will help you gain exposure while also keeping your wallet happy. Research also shows that using the word “video” in email subject lines boosts open rates by 19%, click-through-rates by 65%, and reduces unsubscribes by 26%! #### 2. Run a video campaign on Facebook or Twitter to a targeted audience Let’s start with the bad news: your chances of getting high visibility to your organic video posts on social are slim to none. On the bright side, you can frugally advertise on both platforms with controlled budgets and targeted audiences. You can achieve a huge surge in video views with a very small budget if you set up your campaigns properly. In both platforms, you can set up campaigns with the goal of driving video views. By specifying a total and daily budget and specific time-frames to run the campaign, and targeting insanely specific audiences, you can effectively reach receptive viewers. For instance, you could target women farmers, between the ages of 23 and 31, who frequently purchase imported beers. Keep in mind that over-targeting could eliminate the potential of anyone seeing your ads, so find the sweet spot of identifying your potential leads based on what you already know about your audience. You can also upload a list of current customers or create a lookalike audience to find people similar to your current customer base. #### 3. Link to video landing pages in email signatures It feels silly writing out this tip because it’s so simple and seems obvious, but it’s also one that marketers tend to overlook. Clearly linking to a page in an email signature won’t cost you a dime, and the effect it will have on increasing views could be significant, depending on how many people you have interacting with leads and customers. Most modern companies have sales and support teams who chat with a huge scope of people via email on a daily basis. Yes, I know I’m stating the obvious, but this just proves that you should be taking advantage of promoting your video content during these interactions. We do this at Wistia all the time. For example, our entire support team is using links in our signatures to drive people to one of our demo landing pages with one of our new videos (co-starring yours truly). My signature looks like this: Margot Da Cunha
Wistia Customer Happiness
support@wistia.com
New to Wistia? Sign up for a demo with a Wistia success coach! This tip is a triple threat—it’s easy to implement, free, and effective. #### 4. Add share buttons at the bottom of your video Another easy and free way to gain higher viewership is making it as easy as possible for viewers to share your video. If it’s as good as you think it is, then others are likely to think so as well, and they’ll hopefully be compelled to share it. Since most humans are inherently lazy, putting the share buttons right in front of them will up these odds. #### 5. Put your videos above the fold on high-traffic pages The higher your video is on your page, the higher the play rate will be. This isn’t terribly shocking, but we got confirmation of this after testing 95,000 landing pages last fall. Check out the snazzy graph below, which demonstrates that videos higher up on the page generate higher play rates. For more context on the “zones,” check out our blog post on increasing play rates. Promoting your video content doesn’t have to be restricted to outside your website. You likely have high-traffic pages, like your homepage and “About Us” page, where you’re not showing off your videos. Don’t be afraid to embed videos on these pages. Often times, you’re actually doing your visitors a favor by helping them consume information in a more efficient and entertaining manner. #### 6. Pin your video to the top of your Twitter feed Pinning a tweet ensures that it stays front and center of your account and gets the highest level of exposure. For my personal use, I typically pin articles that I’m proud of or fascinating stories, and without a doubt, that pinned tweet beats the engagement of my other tweets by a landslide. I’m not the only one who’s made this discovery. Buffer found that pinned tweets lead to a 10X increase in conversions. This is a free and easy way to drive more video views, so pin it, and watch the plays flood in.

BLOG » STRATEGY

Increase Your Next Video’s Play Rate

Optimize your video’s position and size to get more views.

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This Startup CEO is a One-Person Video Team

Swami Kumaresan is the CEO at Databox, a software company that enables marketers to consolidate metrics from all of their important tools (including Wistia!) and keep “the KPIs that really matter” front and center—on smartphones, desktops, and overhead displays. Today, Databox has a collection of marketing videos produced by Swami himself. But it wasn’t always that way. Six months ago, Swami had no experience creating video without the help of an agency. It took him less than two weeks to go from nothing to a completed first video (with live action footage). Naturally, we were eager to hear more about his impressive video journey.   “I do everything myself because there’s only 20 of us, and I’m the only one who knows how right now.” ### Constraints of a startup Coming from a much larger company, Swami’s previous experience with video marketing involved working with large ad agencies to produce expensive advertisements for both web and TV. “At my old company, we paid $650k for a TV commercial, so paying $15k for a small video wasn’t a huge deal, but now it’s not a possibility,” he explained. “At Databox, we have to be very careful about how we spend a tight marketing budget.” This past fall, Swami began to realize a real need for scalable video at Databox. “We wanted to convey how different our product really is, and demonstrate what it actually does for people. I also knew that if we could engage people through different dimensions and senses, we’d be better off,” he explained.   “We have the same need for video that companies of any size have.” ### The inspiration After seeing a presentation by Wistia’s video team at the Business of Software conference, Swami’s wheels started turning. “I had a realization that I could probably do it,” he explained. “I went back to my team and convinced them of the idea.” “It’s daunting,” said Swami. “I think most people wonder how and where to start.” After reading some guides in the Wistia Library and watching a one-hour Premiere tutorial on Lynda.com, he was ready to begin his video journey. ### Video Gear Swami estimates that he spent less than $3,500 on video-related gear. Here’s the rundown of what he purchased: - Canon EOS Rebel T5i DSLR Camera - Canon EOS Rebel SL1 Camera - Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM Fixed Lens - Canon 50mm f/1.8 STM Lens - Zoom H5 Handy Recorder - Down and dirty lighting kit - Cheaper Ice light alternative - Background paper - Manfrotto tripod - Fluid video tripod head - Adobe Premiere - ScreenFlow ### Learning curve From teaching himself video editing to becoming more comfortable on camera, Swami has done it all and successfully made it through the business video gauntlet. #### Video editing For most beginners, video editing seems like a daunting technical hurdle. Luckily, there are so many useful resources that you can lean on to get up and running. “It’s remarkable how easy it is to use Premiere, given the power that’s in it. I probably use 5-10% of the features right now,” he explained. In order to shave some time off of the editing process, Swami has invested in learning some useful keyboard shortcuts. “I make a lot of mistakes, so I use C (the razor tool) to cut stuff up a lot.” #### Getting comfortable on camera “I actually really hate being on camera, but I have to get over it,” Swami joked. “My director of marketing doesn’t mind it, so she’s been jumping in as the subject. We intersplice that footage with some ScreenFlow clips, and make our videos.” Swami told us that he usually turns the volume way down when he’s editing footage of himself talking. He recognizes that everyone is their own worst critic, but it’s always awkward to see and hear yourself in a video. No matter what. #### Incremental growth Every time Swami shoots and edits a new video, he learns something new. “On my last shoot, I experimented with two cameras,” he told us. “Cutting between the two cameras seemed like a great idea until I realized that the people looked green in the footage from one camera and a completely different color in the other. I went into Premiere, turned some dials, and it worked well enough to pass.” “If you’re really serious about video production and a real craftsman, it’s probably worth sweating the details, but for us right now, when it’s just quick and dirty, we send it out, see if people respond, and go from there,” Swami explained. “The quality of my video is not up to Databox’s standard. If you look at our product, you’ll see we have world-class visual designers. I’m not one of them! But I’m the only one who can do the videos right now, and who’s really interested, so I figure out how to fit it in.” ### Justifying video As the CEO, leading a team of talented developers, designers, and marketers, Swami sees video as an opportunity to dig in and get something done. “At this stage in the company’s life cycle, the CEO title is kind of glorified, but the reality is that we need to get the business to a point where we can actually scale,” he explained. The following is a video Swami produced to kick off Databox’s Early Access Program for growth marketers.

“As much as you might love leading and managing teams—which I do love—I think most of us relish being able to roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty creating something from time to time. I started my career as a software developer, but I can’t write code anymore—our engineers are a thousand times better than I could have ever been. I can’t do visual design—I really think we have some of the best design talent in the world. Video is one area where I can really make an individual contribution that’s good enough to be valuable right now.” #### Scheduling production time “My investors would probably freak out if they knew how much time I had spent on that first video,” Swami joked. Instead of managing his time based on hours in the day, Swami manages his time according to his energy. “I ask myself, ‘What do I have the energy for right now?’ The reality of running a startup is that you have highs and lows,” he said. “Some days when I don’t have the energy to contribute in other ways, I can go hide in Premiere, and produce something that we need right now. ”   “It lets me contribute as an individual in ways that are sometimes hard to do when you’re running a company.” ### The future of video at Databox While Swami is eager to keep learning and improving, he’s also excited by the prospect of hiring a real producer. “Video will be a long-term part of our marketing strategy,” he explained. “Eventually, I’d like to hire someone who’s really good at this. It’d be fun to be involved, but I’d love to let a craftsman come in and be a craftsman.”

LIBRARY » STRATEGY

Hiring an In-House Video Producer

When and how to form a video team within your company

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Video for Lead Generation: Webinar Follow Up

On Thursday, February 25th, Wistia teamed up with Infusionsoft to present a webinar about lead generation. We were excited to work with the Infusionsoft team, since they have a ton of expertise in helping small businesses grow. Plus, they are Wistia customers, and we love their videos! We got a lot of great questions during the webinar and didn’t have time to field them all, so we’re taking a moment to answer them here. #### 1. How effective is sending a personalized video to a prospect after a conversation?

 

There’s a massive opportunity for companies to be doing more personalized video content. For example, Bluleadz started sending short, personalized videos to their sales prospects, and they increased their close rate by 28% with this approach. I know that *I* respond better on those rare occasions when people send me a personalized video (on a partner idea pitch, for example). #### 2. What does the Wistia-Infusionsoft integration do? There are two main parts of the integration: 1. You can easily use video as an enticing call to action in any email. Start by embedding a clickable video thumbnail in an email within Infusionsoft. When your recipients click, they’ll be redirected to your site (or the landing page where the video lives). The email address of each recipient will be attached to their viewing events. 2. You can collect email addresses from your videos using our Turnstile email collector, and then pump those leads directly into Infusionsoft. #### 3. How does Wistia compare to YouTube? Wistia is the ideal platform for all the videos you’re hosting on your site, and YouTube can be a useful supplementary social platform. Where YouTube is designed primarily to serve content creators and companies doing big brand advertising campaigns, Wistia is built to serve companies using video on their websites for marketing, support, and sales. YouTube is more like a social network than a video hosting platform per se, and should be used as *part* of a video marketing strategy, not as a repository where all videos are hosted.

“Wistia is the ideal platform for all the videos you’re hosting on your site, and YouTube can be a useful supplementary social platform.”

In terms of practical differences, Wistia allows you to control how and where your audience watches your video. You can customize our video player to match your brand, control where your videos can be viewed, and rest easy knowing our automated video SEO will ensure that pages on your website are indexed in Google search. And here’s the real kicker—Wistia will not play ads before your videos. Wistia also provides more powerful marketing tools and more detailed analytics than YouTube. Both Wistia and YouTube can work with Infusionsoft, but Wistia allows you to pass leads through to the platform and use video playback data in your marketing automation. For your “on-site” videos, Wistia is your best bet. #### 4. Any recommendations for using captions? I see a lot more videos with captions now, and I prefer them on social, so I don’t have to turn on speakers or disturb others with sound. We love seeing people use captions on every video! They’re great for occasions when your viewers don’t have headphones. They also ensure that your content is accessible to everyone. #### 5. Can Wistia’s Turnstile be hosted on my website? Or will the landing page be Wistia? Our Turnstile email collector lives within the video player itself, and the video can live on any landing page or site you’ve built! In other words, if you use a Wistia embed on your site, then Turnstile will come along for the ride. It’s all within your control on your website.

Miss the webinar? Watch the recording!

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The Story Behind Slack's Interface-Focused Walkthrough Video

It’s rare that a product overview video for a software company holds your attention and makes you smile. Especially one that’s over two minutes long.

 

So, what’s so special about Slack’s walkthrough video? With hundreds of thousands of plays so far and a solid engagement rate, something’s clearly working. I’d argue that a number of small details contribute to the video’s success, but we wanted to hear more about the planning and production straight from the source. Yann Lhomme is the CEO of Thinkmojo, a video agency that’s created over 500 videos for business of all sizes, including Slack, Twitter, and eBay. He manages the entire video-making process, and is said to “make the Mojo happen.” Mari Ju is a data-driven product marketer at Slack. She and her team worked closely with Thinkmojo to arrive at a successful final cut. ### Solving a problem with video “The Slack video was different from the videos we typically create,” said Yann. “We’ve pretty much mastered explainer videos, but Slack’s project wasn’t quite that. In their case, we were trying to solve a problem.” “Our goal was to explain what Slack is, and how to use it with your team to get things done, together,” explained Mari. “Creating a video allowed us to show what it looks like when your whole team is in Slack working together (and having fun, too).” “Potential customers didn’t know exactly what to expect from the product,” added Yann. “They found that many people were interested in their product, and had heard great things, but they weren’t clear on all its features.”

“Potential customers didn’t know exactly what to expect from the product.”

“We needed to answer a basic question: How is Slack going to help me? We tried to tackle all these problems, and make the product’s value very clear,” he said. “The launch video, created by Sandwich Video, was excellent for driving awareness, but the next step was creating something more concrete to answer common questions and showcase the product.” Slack’s launch video by Sandwich Video ### Collaborating with an agency Slack’s product marketing team worked closely with Thinkmojo throughout the entire process. “We even added some of their team as Single Channel Guests in our own Slack instance, so we could quickly collaborate and make decisions to keep each video moving forward,” said Mari. The general workflow between Slack and Thinkmojo goes something like this: - Slack’s product marketing team comes up with an overall goal for the video and an initial draft of the script. - Thinkmojo edits the script and produces the video, gathering feedback and iterating along the way until all parties are happy with the end result. Playing to their strengths, the product marketing team comes up with ideas for specific use cases to show on screen, and Thinkmojo crafts the overall tone and viewing experience. “Thinkmojo helped us to make the script sound more natural,” explained Mari, “as if a friend was actually giving you tips for how they use Slack.” #### Voiceover In a screencast video that doesn’t feature any human faces, the voiceover is central to establishing the right tone and personality. “You’re deciding the voice of the brand for those two minutes,” he said. “That’s a big factor. You want the voice to be well aligned with the brand identity of the company.”

“You’re deciding the voice of the brand for those two minutes.”

After deciding on a tone together, Slack and Thinkmojo’s teams hosted auditions and ultimately chose which voice was the best fit. Yann explained, “If their tone matches the vibe in the video and it flows well, it can really make a script come alive.” ### Challenges of an interface-focused video Producing a video centered on a user interface has its unique challenges. Making an engaging screencast can be difficult when there aren’t human characters or changes in scene. Showcasing all of the small-but-important details can also be tricky. “Creating a captivating screencast requires attention to detail and technical skill.” explained Yann. “We went through multiple revisions to get it right.” #### Balancing information and entertainment Mari noted that creating the right tone was difficult. “We wanted to make sure we were respecting viewers’ time by making the most out of every second of the video without making it too long,” she said. “It took some time to find the right balance of providing valuable tips while also keeping the tone lighthearted and playful.” #### Evolving with the product As Slack’s interface changes over time, the language and the visuals in the video will need to evolve accordingly. “We view this video as an ongoing collaborative project,” said Yann. “We ended up re-creating the Slack conversations and the interface in an animation software, so that we could truly control everything and easily make tweaks in the future,” Yann explained. ### Metrics and tweaks As the video tallies up more and more views, tracking its engagement, play rate, and other metrics will guide future edits and projects. “Based on the video’s metrics, we can tweak the messaging in order to give the users the right content,” said Yann. “With an iterative process like this, it feels good to make informed decisions based on actual data. It helps us let Slack know what’s working and what we need to change.”

“With an iterative process like this, it feels good to make informed decisions based on actual data.”

#### Measuring success Mari reported that her team is using both quantitative and qualitative feedback to measure the video’s success. “We’ve received really positive feedback from users on Twitter, as well as from our Accounts team that works directly with customers,” she said. “It’s been exciting to see the view count grow while audience retention remains high throughout the video. We’re also testing the effectiveness of featuring the walkthrough video on our homepage as part of an upcoming A/B test.” Yann also added that based on early qualitative feedback, they decided to steer away from factual instruction-based content and focus more on strategic narratives, e.g. how to get the most out of a given feature. ### Focused feature videos As we like to say, “Why make one product video when you can make six?”. Since creating the product walkthrough video, Slack’s team and Thinkmojo have worked on six additional onboarding videos that explain specific features of Slack. “We’ve also been busy with a set of video ads that we’re really excited about,” said Mari. “Stay tuned for more videos!”

LIBRARY » PRODUCTION

Shooting Your Laptop

Our technique for making your screencasts more exciting by putting them in context

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How Niche Modern's Videos Communicate Authenticity

“Made, not manufactured.” With a mantra like that, it’s no surprise that Niche Modern, a lighting company based in New York, is passionate about showing the process behind their products. Niche uses video to convey authenticity and show the creativity that shapes each of their hand-blown glass lighting pendants. The company’s videos enrich their viewers’ understanding of the time and effort that goes into each pendant, and offer memorable impressions of their team. We spoke with Niche’s founder, Jeremy Pyles, about how they are using video to build human connections at scale. ### Tell your product’s story Every piece of Niche lighting is made by hand in the US, and their videos showcase the craftsmanship involved with each piece. It would be easy to describe their manufacturing process in writing, but there is no better way than video to help viewers understand the work that goes into each product.

 

In this video, Niche walks the viewer through the entire journey of a product, from inception to shipment from their warehouse. With a physical process like glassblowing, there’s plenty for Niche to show. The video above not only highlights the beauty and difficulty of the process—it goes on to showcase a sophisticated installation of the pendant. ### Educate your audience There are various recurring themes that run throughout Niche’s videos. First, they educate individuals about the product itself and the fact that their purchase will be a one-off, handmade item, crafted by talented artisans. Second, Jeremy Pyles, Niche’s founder, teaches his viewers about architecture and lighting. In the product video for their Cool Haus pendant, Jeremy shares the inspiration for the design—1920s–1930s Art Deco style.

 

After watching Niche’s videos, you feel confident that in an economy full of mass-produced items, Niche gives you the power to buy something with real passion and thought behind it. ### Set yourself apart from your competitors Niche has invested in an in-house production team that produces polished, on-brand videos for their website, but it’s not the production value that sets Niche apart from its competitors. It’s the message they communicate with each video: “Made with Hands. Made with Love. Made in the USA.” This concept is what differentiates them from other lighting companies. Niche’s mission extends beyond each pendant. It’s rooted in the way they treat their employees and in the foundation of how they have built their company. Even if you don’t have access to fancy video equipment or a creative team, ask yourself how you can use video at any level to show the things that set your company apart. ### Build super fans! It’s tough to build a community of super fans without showing who you really are. Niche firmly believes that individuals can sense when a conversation, speech, or presentation isn’t genuine, so they strive to present themselves as authentically as possible. How do they achieve this? Jeremy prefers not to script his dialogues too tightly before being on camera. This works particularly well for him, as he exudes passion and is a naturally good speaker who’s comfortable riffing off of a prompt. While you and your team might not be complete naturals, there are a few tricks you can use to show your best self on screen. We recommend doing a table read for your scripted videos to make sure the lines feel genuine. “The people that love Niche really fall in love with the brand and come back to us over and over,” Jeremy told us. Because of Niche’s human approach to online business, they’ve developed a loyal customer base that stands by their mission. If you’re passionate about what you do, share your enthusiasm and the right audience will come to you.

BLOG» STRATEGY

Be (Super) Human

Five companies showing the human sides of their businesses with video.

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