It's Time to Invest in Virtual Reality

In the last six months, there’s been a lot of discussion around virtual and augmented reality. Facebook just announced an open-source 360 8k video camera. The Oculus Rift has begun shipping to pre-orders. The New York Times has been pushing VR. And 25 million people have downloaded Google’s Cardboard virtual reality app. But here’s the thing, only .4% of those 25 million people are monthly active users. When considered in isolation, this stat might seem disheartening, but in reality, this small percentage is made up of curious (potentially game-changing) pioneers. In reality, the audience using Google Cardboard and the people creating and enjoying 360 content are exploring the genesis of a new medium and constructing the building blocks for an immersive future. The current implementations may not have staying power or “killer app” status, but that doesn’t really matter. Google Cardboard isn’t about selling a janky-looking headset, it’s about exposing millions of people to this revolutionary technology. At Wistia, we’ve been learning everything we can and contributing to that tiny percentage of passionate active users, so we wanted to share what we’re most excited about. ### You can find the best use cases internally Virtual reality has risen so fast in the public consciousness that part of you may think you’re already too late, that you’ve missed your opportunity to invest. But no company has really figured it out yet. Make no mistake, VR is in its infancy—and this is the perfect time to get started. Many companies are beginning to experiment internally right now and figure out how 360 video and VR could add new dimensions to their businesses.

“Make no mistake, VR is in its infancy—and this is the perfect time to get started.”

Let’s say you work for a manufacturing company. There are dozens of possible applications for 360 video on the factory floor, but the one you start out with will probably depend on the pain points you want to address: - Inspections and QA: Instead of sending agents to all your different factories for visual inspections, provide them with a single 4K video stream that shows them exactly what they would be seeing in person. - Sales: While meeting with a customer, pull out your VR headset and offer them a 360 view of the product or your facility. That’ll leave an impression that’ll be hard for them to forget. - Internal communication: From product presentations to daily standups, so much of the way dispersed teams communicate is limited by how well our technology can transport us. Video chat is big now, but imagine virtual 1:1 meetings or virtual calls with investors. By trying out different use cases for yourself, you’ll find out what kind of role 360 video can play in your business right now and where you need to invest more time and attention in the future. ### You can start small and learn As the VR space matures and opportunities are better understood, there will be more competition and less room for pioneering. Right now, however, the field is small. You can—and should—be experimenting on small groups of employees or customers with your different VR use cases. That’s what the real estate arm of Sotheby’s is already doing with their personalized open-houses. Instead of physically meeting up with all of their clientele at houses in LA and the Hamptons, they can simply send out a few Samsung Gear VRs.

“You can—and should—be experimenting on small groups of employees or customers with your different VR use cases.”

It’s practically inevitable that this technology will make its way to sites like Trulia and Zillow. From VR renderings published on Zillow’s blog, that might well be right around the corner. Source: Zillow Right now, though, it’s being tested with a smaller audience. Like most things, it’s going to be perfected with a small group before it becomes a fixture in everyday life. ### You can make crucial connections now Getting involved in any technology early means you can connect with the top people in the field and shape how it’s used, and that’s true of VR. We just held a Boston VR meetup at our headquarters, and we were able to bring together some of the most amazing people working on VR today. They came from near and far to share their recent projects, books, sites, and games. VicoVR’s co-founder, Dmitry Morozov, traveled all the way from Russia and presented their whole-body, wireless, VR Sensor. It’s not that hard to gather all these minds in the same place now, but in a few years time it probably will be. This industry is taking off like a rocket ship, and that means that the tight-knit community we have now will eventually disperse and become a collection of more localized communities. There are advantages to that too. If you can though, check out what’s happening in the world of VR right now, because you will meet people at conferences and meetups that you may not have the opportunity to meet again. They may be people you one day want to collaborate or work with. They’re important connections to make, and now’s the best time to make them.

“You will meet people at conferences and meetups that you may not have the opportunity to meet again.”

### Act now, think long-term VR is about bringing people into an experience that they wouldn’t be able to get elsewhere. That doesn’t necessarily mean hang gliding into a volcano or driving around at 300 mph or taking part in epic space battles. It can mean diagnosing an error on the assembly line, meeting the rest of your remote team for the first time, or just hanging out at our office watching our office dog Lenny eat food off the floor. And that’s just what companies are doing with 360 video right now. It’s becoming increasingly clear that as we devise ever new ways of using this technology, virtual reality is going to reshape the way that we do business entirely. The question is not if, but when. When that time comes, those who invested early on will be the ones who reap the greatest rewards. We’ve been learning a ton from this eager, fast-paced community, and we’re excited to contribute in our own way to their exploration in the near future. Stay tuned.

BLOG » PRODUCTION

360 Video Production Tactics

Wistia’s video producer walks through everything from framing the shot to gathering audio for 360° videos.

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Back to the Future: Boston VR Meetup at Wistia HQ

Wistia vs. YouTube: What's the Difference?

What’s the point of paying for a video hosting service like Wistia when YouTube is free?! YouTube is the world’s biggest video platform, it has 1 billion users per month, and it’s owned by Google, so it must be good for SEO, right? Why on earth would anyone use Wistia for their marketing videos? Allow me, portraying two personified video players, to explain. ### Wistia:

 

### YouTube:

Hover on the player to view all the features that Phil references throughout the video. ### Different platforms, different purposes As you can see, they’re two very different platforms, with very different purposes. YouTube is designed to serve content creators looking to monetize their videos, and organizations investing in big brand-building advertising campaigns. Wistia is designed exclusively to serve companies using video on their websites for marketing, support, and sales. Essentially, Wistia is ideal for “on-site” videos, and YouTube is a social video platform that requires a unique strategy. ### Where Wistia is better Wistia is preferable if you’re looking to drive traffic to your website, improve conversions, or increase engagement across the websites you control. Custom video players tend to get more clicks, video SEO helps you drive more traffic, and email collectors help you generate leads, which you can send into your CRM of choice. Wistia’s analytics also provide much more detail than the data offered on the YouTube platform. Rather than providing sampled and incomplete data, Wistia’s in-depth analytics show you how your audience consumes and interacts with your videos. You can get an aggregated view of a video’s performance with our engagement graphs, or you can drill down to see how individual viewers are watching your videos with our heatmaps. You can even attribute specific viewing activity to a viewer’s email address.

“Wistia’s in-depth analytics show you how your audience consumes and interacts with your videos.”

### Where YouTube is better YouTube is better if reach is more important to you than traffic acquisition. YouTube videos typically drive traffic to YouTube.com from search and social, which means you can’t track interactions with your content as effectively, and won’t be able to drive as many profitable actions directly from your content. If you work for an FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) brand, or your customers primarily interact with your brand offline, then prioritizing reach over on-site interactions and tracking may be a fine decision. Equally, if you’re undertaking a big branding campaign in order to increase word of mouth, and you don’t mind rescinding control of how people watch your video, then YouTube is a more appropriate option. ### Can I just use both? Yes (but with a caveat). Many companies choose to use Wistia for videos embedded on their websites in order to benefit from the advanced tools and analytics, but then also upload videos to YouTube in order to benefit from the social reach that a presence on YouTube provides. This is an entirely legitimate approach, but be aware that having the videos in two places can sometimes cause cannibalization in both search and social. YouTube can sometimes rank above your domain for competitive keywords, and if users choose to share a YouTube version of a video rather than the version of the video on your site, then you’ll miss out on the user-based tracking that Wistia provides. This can be an acceptable price to pay for the additional reach, but each business needs to assess this risk and opportunity in accordance with their own marketing priorities. YouTube also shouldn’t be treated like a cupboard. It’s important to remember that YouTube is as much a social network as it is a video hosting platform, and that when audiences watch videos on YouTube, they typically do so without any further context about your brand or the video in question. As such, not all of your videos will necessarily make sense to a broader audience browsing on YouTube.com. YouTube should be used strategically, as part of a wider video marketing strategy, and not just as a repository where all videos are held and hosted.

BLOG » STRATEGY

Developing a Better YouTube Strategy

“Adding every video you make to YouTube is a popular, but totally ineffective, strategy. ”

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The New Wistia Marketplace: Do More with Video

We believe every business has a lot to gain from using video—and not just for marketing. We’ve been inspired by companies using video across their organizations, for everything from training new employees to nurturing new leads. We get excited when our partners and customers use our APIs to build products and tools that enable new, powerful uses of video. That’s why, today, we’re especially excited to launch our official Wistia integrations page!

 

The goal of our new marketplace is to help you find technologies that integrate well with Wistia. Each integration featured on this page was built by our partners, using Wistia’s APIs. These partner companies empower you to go above and beyond the traditional Wistia features. ### Why Wistia supports integrations We’ve already received great feedback from people using these integrations. For example, InFlight Corporation has been using the Lead Liaison integration to collect leads from within their Wistia videos:

“Prior to this, we used YouTube and had no insight into who was watching our content. Now, we use Lead Liaison and Wistia together to identify the people and businesses that are watching our videos. We also qualify more visitors by scoring video engagement and use video analytics for retargeting campaigns within Lead Liaison. The integration helps us convert more website visitors into identified prospects, which get stored into Lead Liaison for subsequent lead nurturing.” - Karl Wierzbicki, Director of Marketing at InFlight Corporation

We’re especially excited about partners who build integrations because they have expertise in industries and spaces we don’t know as well. For example, Cleeng knows monetization far better than we do, so we’re thrilled to let them teach us how Wistia videos can and should interact with paywalls. These partners have their own unique wheelhouses; many of our partners can envision new uses for Wistia better than we can. ### How Wistia supports new integrations We want to do as much as possible to enable others to build on Wistia. We do this, in large part, by refining our APIs and API documentation. Furthermore, we try to give people as much help as possible when they’re building on top of the Wistia platform. Our Customer Happiness and Engineering teams field questions about our APIs and offer guidance to partners.

“I’ve been super impressed with the things folks build with Wistia’s APIs and also our ability to help support those projects! The folks on our Customer Happiness team enjoy navigating any API trickiness that comes up.” - Gordie Smith, Wistia Customer Champion

We’re eager to continue refining the process for new integration partners, and eager to work more closely with companies who are interested in integrating with us. ### We want your input Given that this is new territory for us here at Wistia, we’re hungry for feedback! We want to know what you think of these integrations and what new ones you’d like to see. Please add comments to this post if you have ideas, and if there are new integrations that you want us to build, please let us know. We can’t wait to see what you come up with!

BLOG » ADD-ONS PAGE

Check out our integrations partners!

Explore our collection of third party add-ons, and learn what you can do with video.

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Producing Video for Social Media: An Interview with Ian Servin

This post was co-authored by Meryl Ayres and Alyce Currier. Ian Servin is a passionate freelance video producer and director. He’s worked with brands such as Ford and Nike on everything from small projects to complex campaigns. As he explains on his website, Ian combines his production expertise with marketing strategy to deliver standout content to his clients’ audiences. Ian has a lot of fun producing videos for different brands’ social media channels. It’s always smart to learn from the best, so we decided to ask him all about his experience thus far. Ian chatting it up at WistiaFest 2015. ###### WISTIA: How did you get involved in video? What drew you to the medium? ###### IAN SERVIN: I got my start during the DSLR revolution. I was a photojournalist at the time, and we had just gotten the fancy new 5D Mk. II, a full-frame camera that took HD video. I was really captivated by how I could shoot beautiful video so easily, and how different it looked from the news camcorders our TV station used. I loved that we could tell stories with video that matched the aesthetic of our still photography and eventually founded the multimedia department at the paper to leverage this power. By connecting reporters’ storytelling with our talented visuals team, we were able to tell more impactful stories that really connected with our readers and increased the value of our digital offerings on our website and social media. ###### WISTIA: What are some qualities of an effective social video? ###### IAN SERVIN: Everyone’s feed these days is inundated with visual media vying for attention, so the key is to stand out. Especially in a video’s opening, you have to really quickly establish why someone should stop scrolling and pay attention to your video. As a visual medium, the first step is making sure those visuals are top notch. Everyone has a camera that can make a good-looking image, so your content has to look great from the start. For me, this means that I spend a lot of time in production on B-roll, especially shots that establish where we are and what’s going on.  “Start your video with a cold open. That’s a really easy way to introduce the characters, the tone, and a little bit of content…” Autoplay is the norm on social, so we have to use that opening shot to introduce the viewer to our content and quickly give them a reason to engage. Because of autoplay, I avoid having logo bumps or slow moving introductions on social. While they might offer some branding consistency, social moves too quickly for that, and you have to start providing value to your audience immediately. They’re not going to wait for your fancy logo to finish animating. ###### WISTIA: What’s distinct about making videos for each of the major networks? ###### IAN SERVIN: Facebook is probably the most versatile of the networks. For strong communities, you can drop in a longer piece on a brand’s page and get engagement, while at the same time you can effectively share shorter content through promoted posts and the ads platform.  “Consider making a 15-second cut, so you can tease on Instagram and send them to the longer post on Facebook.” On Twitter, brevity is definitely important and polish less so, unlike Instagram where you need to have amazing visuals to fit in with people’s curated feeds. YouTube is a great place for longer form videos and to have an archive of your content. The opposite of that is Snapchat, where ephemeral short form content that feels very improvisational is king. ###### WISTIA: What’s your process like for telling your clients’ stories? ###### IAN SERVIN: As a video producer, I’m not just a black box where pitches come in and videos come out. I want to understand where the brand is coming from so that I can make the most effective video for them. Having this relationship with a client also gives me insight into internal stories that I would have never heard of otherwise and builds trust, which is essential during production when I’m really in the driver’s seat and the client is entrusting me with their brand. Collaboration between me and my clients always makes for better content.  “When I first sit down with a new client, that begins the process called discovery…” ###### WISTIA: What’s your favorite piece of video gear lately? ###### IAN SERVIN: I’ve been working a lot with the Arri Amira lately, and it’s quickly become my favorite camera. All of Arri’s colorimetry and sensor research has been put into a really ergonomic form factor that works well on run-and-gun productions, where the camera department might only consist of a couple people. I love the simple workflow of editing the ProRes .MOVs straight out of the camera, and it shoots up to 200fps at 2k and 60fps at 4k. Switching gears, I’m really interested in all the new 360° cameras coming out. We’re starting to see some really compelling options that are affordable, and in compact form factors. I’m skeptical that VR will be *the* future of video, but it’s definitely part of video’s future, and we’ll continue to see more and more examples of compelling storytelling in 360° degrees. ###### WISTIA: How do you track the success of your videos? ###### IAN SERVIN: One of the things I stress is the importance of setting goals upfront. I don’t just have high-level goals for the piece, I also work with the client to create clear milestones based on metrics. This varies on the type of video, but we’ll often focus on sales, conversions, engagement stats, or occasionally view counts. Each type of metric has its own value, and I always include a variety of statistics as well as analysis to provide a clear picture of how the video performed. Stats and numbers can be misleading, so being able to put metrics in context gives a client a better handle on how the video actually did. It’s easy to rely solely on data, but also very misleading. My experience and knowledge as a video marketer means that I know which stats to pay attention to, which numbers to be critical of, and how to interpret all the data points to provide actionable insight to my clients.

BLOG » STRATEGY

Crafting a Social Video Strategy

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

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Why We Bid Farewell to a Part of Our Company Culture

Back in the day, Wistia was small. We had one bathroom. We didn’t have a set content schedule, let alone an entire marketing team to tackle the difficult task of feeding an active blog. So, our then content strategist, Alyce, created Non Sequitur Fridays, a weekly content series that had all of Wistia writing. These posts quickly became an important part of our culture, and given our smaller team, they helped us add four pieces of content to our monthly calendar and celebrate the individuals at Wistia. Fast forward to the fall of last year. We became more focused on the actual customer experience on the blog. Was this content actually useful for folks? Were people arriving at the Wistia blog and wondering “What do these people do?” After some lengthy discussions, we decided to move our beloved Non Sequitur Fridays series off the Wistia blog and onto its own site, with the goal of sharpening the blog’s focus. And now, nearly six months after the move, we’re here to change things up again. With a heavy heart, we are letting go of the Non Sequitur Fridays series. But before we do, let’s talk about what went well, what went wrong, and how we plan to move forward in the future. ### Are we still having fun? When I started at Wistia as the social media coordinator six months ago, I also became the “owner” of Non-Sequitur Fridays. I quickly recognized what I like to call, the Non Sequitur Paradox (more on that later). I loved these posts! They helped me learn more about my new coworkers, and as the editor, it was an opportunity for me to flex my writing muscles. However, as time went on I couldn’t help but notice an underlying sentiment from people who were next in line to write a post…"I’m screwed.“ What was once a flourishing part of our culture at Wistia, was now something everyone regularly dropped the ball on—it became a chore for all parties involved. ### When in doubt, take a poll In all honesty, when we moved the Non Sequitur Fridays posts off the official Wistia blog it was the kiss of death. People were already struggling to find the time to write, and knowing that their post wouldn’t make it to the Major Leagues didn’t help. Nonetheless, these posts were public facing, which meant they still needed editing, formatting, scheduling, etc. From a marketing perspective, I quickly realized that for the amount of work these posts required, they weren’t providing enough payoff. That being said, I was still really torn. Traffic and shares aside, there was no denying that Non Sequitur Fridays aligned with Wistia’s culture and more importantly, our core values. The fact is, I was worrying about a problem that wasn’t mine alone to solve… it was all of ours! So, I took to a survey to get some feedback. I wanted to know what people thought. Were they excited to write? Did they even read the blog? Would they be devastated if it went away, or would they be apathetic? The results were affirming, and also slightly comical. - 43% of people were overwhelmed when it was their time to write. - 76% of people said they read the blog… sometimes, or not at all. - 60% said they would be pretty bummed if it just "went away.” - 60% said they think we should keep doing Non Sequiturs, but not in this format. To summarize the data, I present to you the Non Sequitur Paradox:

“People don’t have time to write these posts, but they’d be upset if no one wrote them, even though they weren’t really reading them.”

### Plans for the future When I collected feedback from this survey, I also left an open-response question, where I asked folks what they thought should happen next. The general consensus was that no one really knew. One thing did become clear, however: Non Sequitur Fridays were a great way for people to get to know each other better within Wistia. An internal, company culture experience. We’re still figuring out how to incorporate Non Sequitur-esque information into our daily lives at Wistia, but we’re confident that we’ll land on something great. When I emailed the team about the survey, I got lots of great feedback from the team, including this heavy quote from our director of engineering, Robby Grossman: “It’s easy to get caught in the habit of tradition and then find it’s running your show rather than vice versa.” Too true, Robby, too true.

BLOG » NON SEQUITUR

Non Sequitur Fridays

Visit the Non Sequitur Fridays blog, and learn more about Wistians in the wild.

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Video and Duplicate Content: What You Need to Know for SEO

People ask me this question all the time: “Does a video embedded on multiple pages count as duplicate content for SEO?” The answer, in short, is no (with a caveat). ### How Google indexes video Google doesn’t treat videos in the same way it treats other types of content. Instead of thinking of videos as discrete pieces of content that are present on some pages, Google treats video as a page element.

“Google doesn’t treat videos in the same way it treats other types of content.”

Therefore, Google never actually ranks videos in search results per se, but rather ranks pages, and sometimes appends a video snippet to these pages in order to indicate that a video is prominently present on the page. So, when you look through the results of Google.com/videos, every result takes you to an HTML web page, albeit one where an embedded video is featured. This is very different from the way images are indexed and ranked. Images, unlike videos, are considered individual pieces of media that are parsed and indexed independently from the pages they are embedded on. If you input a query in Google images, the results you’ll be returned with are individual images. For each image, you’re given the option to “visit page” (navigate to the page where the image is embedded) or “view image,” which takes you to the URL of the individual image asset. This second option is currently not possible with videos in Google search. It’s possible that Google may change the way they treat videos in the future. One might assume that at some point you’ll be able to play videos directly in a search results page, but as things stand, even for YouTube.com results, videos are just treated as rich media elements on an individual page. ### What is duplicate content, and when is it an issue? Duplicate content, through the eyes of the Google search algorithm, applies primarily at the page and domain level, e.g. Google judges websites based on whether they have a lot of duplication across the website, and whether or not a lot of the content site is material copied from other sources. This appraisal of duplication, and subsequent devaluing of sites based on certain behaviors, initially came to the fore with Google’s Panda algorithm in February 2011 (5 years ago). Back then, it was fairly easy for websites to rank well by scraping other sources, optimizing the on-page elements for SEO, and pointing some links from other websites at the target site. This meant that many trusted brands were being outranked by small-time affiliates and spam websites. Naturally, Google was keen to remedy this issue. Panda was designed to combat this problem and devalue low-quality websites, while ensuring sites which offered genuinely great content and user experiences consistently ranked well for informational and commercial queries. Assessment of duplication and “thin” pages, e.g. pages with only a small amount of content on them, was a major part of Panda. This gave rise to the fear of duplication for many in the web marketing world. As things stand today, the technology behind Panda is baked into the overall core ranking algorithm, and excessive duplication is part of a wide range of factors that affect the way your website will rank in Google search. There are three particular things to pay attention to: #### Page level duplication Page level duplication basically means that content (text, image, videos, etc.) exists on more than one page across a single website. At a small scale, this is natural and entirely appropriate (it’s common to have images and snippets of text used on multiple pages across a site), but if there are too many pages that are too similar, then this can cause issues. In this case, it may appear to the Google crawler that the site is predominantly low-quality. Duplicate pages can be caused by both editorial decisions (e.g. whitepapers that are split up and repurposed as blog posts) and technical structure (e.g. having lots of user profile pages that follow the same template). Looking at page level duplication through the lens of video, there are some risks. Video is just another page element, like text or images, but if multiple pages include the same video and not much else to differentiate them, then this could be viewed negatively by the Google algorithm. #### Domain level duplication Sites can also be devalued when they republish or repurpose a significant amount of content that was originally published elsewhere on the web. The threshold here is quite high, as the Panda algorithm was originally designed to devalue genuinely low-quality websites. Re-publishing the occasional blog post and giving a crediting link to its source won’t cause you any issues, but taking product descriptions from a third-party provider or copying and pasting directly from another site might mean your site ends up being devalued in search. Interestingly, this principle of domain level duplication generally doesn’t apply from a video standpoint. There is no negative consequence of embedding videos that are served from a third-party site (as happens with YouTube, Wistia, and the vast majority of other video platforms). Conversely, there is also no positive algorithmic benefit of using a CNAME based on your root domain (e.g. videos.wistia.com) to serve the video assets. #### YouTube duplication YouTube doesn’t allow you to upload duplicate videos (to prevent piracy), and as such, has a built-in mechanism to protect against duplication. You can get away with slightly tweaking the audio or visual elements of videos in order to bypass this YouTube filter, but I really wouldn’t recommend it. ### When duplicate videos become problematic Having the same videos on multiple pages isn’t inherently bad. For example, if you have a product explainer video, it may well be appropriate to include it within both a blog post and a features landing page. Similarly, you may want to include testimonial videos on pages throughout your site, and this poses no issue. As a rule of thumb, as long as the pages you’re embedding your video on are otherwise 70%+ unique, then there isn’t any problem with embedding the video on multiple pages.

“Having the same videos on multiple pages isn’t inherently bad.”

There is one common instance, however, where it can cause issues for SEO: a video library. Many publishing sites and big brands choose to create “video libraries,” which essentially function as branded microsites that offer a YouTube style experience. You can browse through all of the videos available without having to navigate through the rest of the site. Here are examples from The BBC, The Financial Times, and Calvin Klein. There are many good reasons for creating video libraries like this from a user standpoint, but there are SEO risks involved in doing so. Most of these video libraries end up generating a lot of thin pages (pages without much content on them), which just include videos that are embedded elsewhere across a site, thus creating duplication. At scale, this can result in ranking cannibalization for your videos in search—e.g. Google doesn’t know which page to rank for the query relating to the video in question. On the extreme end, this can result in the devaluing of an entire domain. If you want to have a video library and duplicate videos across multiple pages, then typically the best way to mitigate the search risk is to use the rel=“canonical” directive, which informs Google and other search engines that one page is a duplicate, or derivative of another. By doing this, you can ensure the more valuable page (probably the original source of the video) is the one that ranks in search.

“Typically the best way to mitigate the search risk is to use the rel="canonical” directive.“

### What if I embed videos on my site with Wistia and also upload them to YouTube? Google doesn’t (yet) have effective methods for matching up the videos between platforms, and so while you can’t upload duplicates to YouTube, you can upload the same video to multiple platforms without necessarily causing SEO problems. If you choose to syndicate content to social video platforms, like YouTube or Daily Motion, in addition to using Wistia to serve the videos on your website, then you can risk cannibalizing traffic to your website. In other words, you could potentially drive people to YouTube instead of your website if both pages rank for a specific query. If you’re a B2C brand that sells fast-moving consumer goods or services, and your website isn’t used as a lead generation tool, then sending users to YouTube instead isn’t necessarily a significant problem. If you have a B2B brand or an Ecommerce outfit, however, then losing this traffic could negatively impact your conversions. The best thing to do is to test uploading your content to YouTube too, and carefully monitor your traffic to see if it helps or hinders your overall marketing efforts.

BLOG » STRATEGY

Developing a Better YouTube Strategy

"Adding every video you make to YouTube is a popular, but totally ineffective, strategy. ”

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360° Video Production Tactics: What We've Learned So Far

Here at Wistia, we’ve been having a lot of fun producing 360° video content. While we wouldn’t call ourselves experts, we’ve already learned a handful of new production tactics for this immersive, unforgiving medium. Spoiler alert! With 360° video, everything is in the shot. It’s the very thing that makes the medium so powerful, but it’s also the reason I’ve had to rethink everything I know about how to make a video. In this post, I’ll walk through what we’ve learned so far. ### Framing the shot 360° video essentially limits you to a wide angle shot. This has some implications for camera placement that I’ve learned the hard way. Mainly, you’ll want to keep the camera closer to key action than you’d think.

In this video, Lenny ended up being way too far away from the camera. Since shooting this “Lenny Eating Peanuts” video, I’ve learned to keep key subjects roughly 3 to 5 feet away from the camera. This distance feels like the sweet spot for an optimal viewing experience.

“I’ve learned to keep key subjects roughly 3 to 5 feet away from the camera.”

You know how you like to frame people on screen with the lens pointing at their eyeline? Well, throw that out the window if you’re shooting 360° video. This framing will yield a shot with way too much headroom. If you’re shooting folks on-screen for a 360° video, place the camera at chest level. Just like different lenses can tell different stories and show different perspectives, 360° camera placement will drastically affect the viewer’s experience. Put the camera low, and you’ll make viewers feel like they’re two feet shorter. Heck, you could even showcase what it’s like to view the world as a mouse. Put the camera up high, and you can make people feel like they are 10 feet tall.

If viewers are watching with a VR headset, this effect is accentuated tenfold. Playing with perspective is a simple trick to communicate a new worldview or feeling in your 360° video. ### Everything is wide angle Gone are the days of wide-medium-close shot sequences. Whatever camera you use to shoot 360° video, it’s essentially going to be wide angle. This means that it’s more important than ever to get creative and be intentional with camera placement. If you’re using a dual 180° lens system like the Theta S, you can move the action closer to the lens. But if you’re shooting with 360° GoPro rigs that require stitching a bunch of cameras together, you have to be careful of how close you get to the rig.

As you can see here, if the subject moves too close to the GoPro rig, they’ll disappear into the dark side of the lens—the parts that are out of the camera cluster’s field of view. Shooting with a GoPro rig is the same as shooting with any fixed lens, in that you have to physically move the camera or the action to change focal lengths. And even after you do that, you’re still left with what’s essentially a 15mm fisheye lens. The viewer can pinch to zoom in and get a better look at something in the frame, but as of right now, the lower-than-optimal resolution limits of 360° video make zooming in from the player a bit disappointing. ### Lighting The general rules of traditional video lighting no longer apply when you can’t place lighting gear just out of the shot. For 360° video, it’s all about practical lighting and embracing ambient light. One thing I’ve learned from shooting with the 7 camera GoPro rig is that flat lighting is your very best friend. In an ideal situation, each camera will expose for each part of the scene equally. This will have the highest likelihood to produce the a seamless stitch.

“Flat lighting is your very best friend.”

As an experiment, I wanted to see what would happen if I used studio lights for the shoot, then rotoscoped them out in After Effects. This was the result:

The extra lighting helped brighten me up! It’s a simple process to pull off, as long as the subject doesn’t move too much and the ambient light stays the same. All in all, I’m just not sure how practical this technique is. Takeaways for lighting a 360° video: - It is possible to rotoscope out studio lights, but arguably impractical. - Try to find a location with pleasant, practical lighting. - Avoid positioning your talent directly under any overhead lights. - Use high CRI bulbs in existing lighting fixtures in your shot. ### Audio For the record, I’m a shotgun microphone fan through and through. So this one makes my heart hurt. For capturing your talent’s audio with 360° video, it makes the most sense to use a lavalier mic. Use a combination of a lavalier mic on the talent and 1 or 2 stereo microphones near the camera rig for realistic, natural sound. In the future, we’ll have 360° sound capture, so that when the viewer turns their head, the audio will shift accordingly. This could be a really fun way to elicit a reaction down the road. Think how scary it’d be to hear a zombie coming from the left before looking over and seeing it! ### Directing Everything is in the shot, which means everyone is in the shot. In other words, the crew and director have to get lost! For the few scripted 360° videos we’ve made so far, kicking the crew out of the room has proven to be pretty challenging.

“Everything is in the shot, which means everyone is in the shot. In other words, the crew and director have to get lost! ”

On-camera line readings have also been a bit tricky. Obviously, we can’t make our teammates memorize whole scripts for our videos, and we can’t use our normal laptop teleprompter, since it will be included in the shot. For the time being, we created a gimmicky workaround to this—cue card holders. Luckily, our brand lends itself to showing behind-the-scenes video production, but obviously that’s not always the case. If you want to get sneaky for those on-camera line readings, you could just hide a laptop with a script in the shot somewhere. You could also take it one step further by hiding an iPhone along with the script, so you could direct the talent over FaceTime or Skype! I’ve learned that using voice-overs can be super helpful when it comes to scripted 360° videos. Although it kind of feels like a cop-out, narrating the video with a voice-over solves all of the on-screen line reading problems. ### Pacing and editing In the past, we’ve worried about how the pacing of a video will affect engagement. With 360° video, we have to make sure there’s enough time for people to explore the scene. These concepts are essentially at odds with each other. To be totally blunt, editing and pacing for 360° video is something I just don’t know much about. Am I leaving enough time for the viewer to digest information and take in the scene? Maybe I should be using cross dissolves on camera cuts? We just don’t know yet. Hopefully, a combination of experimentation and video analytics will be our guiding light here.

“Am I leaving enough time for the viewer to digest information and take in the scene?”

I recently learned how to change the starting point of a 360° video. With the stitching software I use for the GoPro rig, this is a super simple process. When shooting with the Theta S, however, I can’t control the zero point after the shoot.

To get around this, I’ll bring the footage into After Effects, take my equirectangular stitch and duplicate it twice, then put a copy to the immediate left and right of the shot. Then I’ll parent both duplicates to the center shot. From there, I can move the center shot to adjust the zero point of my equirectangular stitch. Whatever is centered in the frame will be the starting vantage point in your 360° video player. In my 360° adventures, I’ve also been messing with basic effects and editing. This green screen experiment worked out better than I expected. It turns out it’s pretty easy to chromakey 360° footage! I used Keylight for the key and a simple mask to remove the area of the shot beyond the green paper. One important note: you have to use 360° equirectangular footage as the ‘plate’ footage to put behind the key.

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We can’t wait to keep experimenting with 360° video, but in the meantime, teach us about your own production tactics for this new medium. We’d love to hear about anything you’ve learned in the comments below!

BLOG » PRODUCTION

How to Stitch GoPro Footage into 360° Video

Our technique for producing immersive video with a 7-camera 360° rig from 360 Heroes.

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3 Ingredients for Successful Interviews and Superb Karaoke

The Wistia team recently boarded a bus and made the trek from Cambridge, MA to Killington, VT on our aptly dubbed annual ski outing, Wiskia. We spent time bonding, skiing, feasting, and building bonfires. When the sun set, the music came on, and the mics came out for a round of karaoke. While you can typically find us empowering one another to hone our flatsides, do our best work, and contribute to a burgeoning company, we also relish opportunities to celebrate one another’s creative displays of talent. And celebrate we did while people took hold of the mic and rapped, sung, and crooned to an assortment of golden oldies, top 40’s hits, rap classics, rock ballads, you name it. ### Karaoke and interviewing Looking back on this experience, it’s abundantly clear that the art of karaoke is not too dissimilar from the art of interviewing. The following are three essential ingredients that make both endeavors successful: #### 1. Song choice The “song” in an interview setting is the stories we share about our experiences as members of the Wistia family. We don’t get caught up in telling the “right” story that we think candidates will want to hear about our company and the job we’re hiring for. Rather, we focus on being genuine and authentic by sharing our successes, our challenges, our failures, and our individual experiences. This transparency provides candidates with a window into what they can expect if they decide to join Wistia. With this realistic perspective, candidates are empowered to make an informed decision about whether or not the job and the working environment is consistent with the conditions that inspire them to do their best work.

“This transparency provides candidates with a window into what they can expect if they decide to join Wistia.”

#### 2. Harmony The harmony is how we structure interviews with candidates so that everyone on the interviewing team has ownership over a specific theme. The themes that our interviewers are assigned, like “problem solving,” “learning on the fly,” and “personal mastery,” are skill sets and attributes that we value at Wistia. Each theme has a specific subset of questions with a scoring rubric that equips the interviewer with a framework for their conversation and a way to gauge the quality of a candidate’s responses. This approach enables us to nurture a delightful candidate experience by minimizing discordant moments for candidates—like facing the same questions over and over again or being asked to come back for an unplanned interview due to gaps in insight gleaned during the first round. #### 3. Singing partners Singing partners are our interviewing teams comprised of people from a variety of departments within the business. With this approach, we are able to lean on one another’s different interviewing strengths. For example, some of us are really good at uncovering an individual’s technical abilities, while others are better at uncovering soft skills.

“With this approach, we are able to lean on one another’s different interviewing strengths.”

When we sit down to make a decision about a candidate, the different interviewers’ perspectives allow us to gain a 360 degree view of an individual’s abilities and make an informed hiring decision. Because our candidates interact with an assortment of team members, they develop a clear vision of how our business operates as a whole, how teams interact with one another, and how their role impacts the organization. Without the essential ingredients, interviewing looks like this:

With the essential ingredients, interviewing looks like this:

Karaoke experiences that embody these ingredients strike a chord, leave people in gleeful awe, and result in audience participation. We’re actively aspiring to similarly master the art of interviewing.

BLOG» COMPANY NEWS

Growing Out Your Flatsides

How flatside thinking can empower employees and improve your company.

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Web Psychology and Video: An Interview with Nathalie Nahai

Nathalie Nahai is a web psychologist, author, and host of the Guardian’s Tech Weekly podcast. She has helped teams within many large corporations (Google, eBay, Harvard Business Review) better understand the science behind their website design and overall marketing. A well-regarded speaker, Nathalie also teaches global audiences about the link between behavioral sciences and the digital space. We are thrilled that she will be gracing the stage at WistiaFest, and we couldn’t wait to hear her answers to our questions about business video! ###### WISTIA: I learned from one of your presentations that appealing to a human need is one way to cut through the noise and hold your audience’s attention. Do you think video is an effective tool for this? ###### NATHALIE NAHAI: Yes, when it comes to communication video is one of the richest media we have, as it allows us to express ourselves through all manner of cues, verbal and non-verbal.  “This means that we can communicate in a much more nuanced and perhaps direct way than we can elsewhere.” Since we are instinctively attracted to stimuli such as motion, sound, and human faces, using video can be the most rapid way to communicate information, evoke emotion, and establish rapport with our audiences. In the absence of holograms, video is the closest approximation we have to real life, and it’s set to get a whole lot more real with the launch of various VR platforms due out this year. ###### WISTIA: Can you think of a recent example of a marketing video that have held your attention? Why was it successful? ###### NATHALIE NAHAI: While I was searching for recent ads, I stumbled across this one, and it moved me to tears.

It’s a beautiful video that is both intimate, expansive and mysterious, that builds a slow, steady tension and anticipation, and provokes our curiosity to watch until the very end. It’s a moving and wonderful video, and one which seeks to make the world a kinder, more understanding and empowering place. ###### WISTIA: Let’s say someone is going to be the talent in a front page explainer video, and the shoot is tomorrow. What advice would you give them? ###### NATHALIE NAHAI: Research shows that we rate messages from homophilous sources as more trustworthy, so if you can comfortably mirror your audience’s linguistic traits, clothes, and gestures, they’ll be more likely to believe you. This may sound like a simple hack, but if you’re going against your natural instincts just to fake it, chances are it will show. Getting this right is less about acting, and more about understanding the social and cultural context of your viewer so that you can choose the right person for the job. If your target audience is smart, ambitious, twenty-something females, then choose a talent who is also a smart, ambitious, twenty-something female. The more homophilous the person is with their audience, the more congruent (and believable) their message will be. In terms of other general tips, maintaining good eye contact with the viewer (in this case, looking down the lens) will help, as well as open hand gestures (palms up, torso facing towards the viewer) and using your eye-gaze to direct the viewer’s attention where you need it (towards the product). ###### WISTIA: We read in one of your presentations that you advise companies not to hire actors for conversion videos. Can you tell us a bit more about that? ###### NATHALIE NAHAI: Yes, sure. If your company is responsible for the service or product you’re selling, then it will also have the greatest insight into what it can do, and why it’s exciting. In the last couple of years, the word ‘authentic’ has become so overused that it’s easy to forget what it actually means: true, genuine, real. Yet it is precisely this quality that people respond to when deciding whom to trust, and which businesses to buy from. So if you have warm, smart, and enthusiastic people within your organization, train them up in video-friendly communication skills and get them in front of a camera. Their knowledge and passion will shine through, and that kind of authenticity is more persuasive than the best that money can buy. “So if you have warm, smart, and enthusiastic people within your organization, train them up in video-friendly communication skills and get them in front of a camera.” ###### WISTIA: What are some of the biggest mistakes that businesses make with video? ###### NATHALIE NAHAI: I think one of the easiest and biggest mistakes you can make with video is to follow a traditional ad agency approach to the design process, in which creativity is considered sacred, beyond the scope of testing, data, and analysis. Creativity is an extraordinarily valuable skill, but the difference between a brilliantly creative video and one that drives engagement and click through rates, is consumer research. The most crucial ingredient of a successful video is understanding what will grab, hold, and convert your customers’ attention, which means studying their needs, context, and motivations. This research stage is often the most useful and yet the most overlooked, so I would say that whatever your budget, if you can do some guerilla research and split-test some ideas early on, you’ll be much more likely to design something people will actually want to watch and act on. “The most crucial ingredient of a successful video is understanding what will grab, hold, and convert your customers’ attention.” ###### WISTIA: If you had to guess, what do you think will be some of the largest trends in the future of video marketing? ###### NATHALIE NAHAI: At SXSW this year there was a lot of talk around VR, AR, and encryption, so if I were to put my money on future trends I’d say that the biggest trends will be around videos becoming more personalized, user-led, interactive, and immersive.

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Want to learn more from Nathalie Nahai and other business video experts? Join us at WistiaFest!

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