Non Sequitur Fridays: Who Are You?

May 24 2013

This post is part of our Non Sequitur Fridays series, which will feature a different Wistia team member's take on a non-Wistia-related topic each week. It's like our "employee of the month" but less "of the month"-y. Jordan Munson is a customer champion at Wistia.

"Who are you?"

For me, that's not a really hard question to answer. It's probably not that tricky for you to answer, either. How about this one, though:

"Who do people think you are, based on what you post to social media?"

Jordan As Adele

In this picture on Facebook, my identity was Adele.

Much harder, right? It was for me, too. Not long after Facebook launched for colleges, I started my first year at university (Northeastern, to be specific—go Huskies!) and hopped aboard the Facebook train. At that point, I had no idea what I was doing and mostly treated it like MySpace, posting as much stuff as I thought would make me look cool and goofing off with my friends. I never thought for a second about what folks actually thought of who I was based on that stuff, but I was pretty sure I didn't need to worry since only my friends (folks who already knew me) could see it. In recent years, all of that has drastically changed.

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Posted in Product Updates | 2 Comments »

Add Mid-Roll Links to Your Wistia Videos

May 22 2013

You might be familiar with Wistia's post-roll calls-to-action (which link users to their next destination at the end of your video) and Turnstile (which allows you to collect emails at any point before, during, or after your video), but what if you want to add a call-to-action at an opportune moment as your content plays? The Mid-Roll Links Lab lets you add clickable buttons anywhere during your video and link them to anything.

Use Mid-Roll Links to link people directly to buy a product you're talking about, to a map when you mention a location, to further documentation for a feature you just described, to a talking head's blog or website, or to Rick Roll someone who thinks they're about to view a valuable resource (just kidding, please don't do that).

Read on to learn how Thermo Fisher Scientific and CLiCKPLAY Continuing Education University are already using Mid-Roll Links.

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Posted in Product Updates | 24 Comments »

Pre-Production Tips for a Killer Company Culture Video

May 20 2013
Lauren Hill is Video Production Specialist at Volusion, an ecommerce platform that helps empower online business. Her background includes film, social media and marketing. She also really likes assorted jellybeans and balloon hats shaped like animals. You can check out more of her work on The Ecommerce Authority or send her a tweet at @lmhill.

I'm of the opinion that, regardless of your size, every business can benefit from a culture video. It's the fastest and easiest way for people to gain a sense of who you are, what you do and how you work as an organization.

I recently went through the process of creating a new culture video for the Volusion team and, as a result, gathered a few nuggets of wisdom that I believe are helpful for any company looking to foray into this kind of video. While making a culture video is no easy feat, there are a couple of things you can do to help make the process as smooth (and fun!) as possible.

Pre-Production and Planning

From an organizational standpoint, there are a number of key ideas that you'll want to define. These can vary by company, but the following are absolutely essential throughout this process:

Define your audience

Is this a recruiting video or an advertisement for your company? It goes without saying (but I’m going to say it anyway) that a potential employee is very different from a potential customer. Defining your audience will help to better determine your needs throughout production. Hopefully, by this stage you’ve already identified why you want to make a video that’s representative of your company’s culture (in case you haven’t, here’s a little help), so defining your audience should be relatively easy.

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Posted in Making Video | 3 Comments »

Non Sequitur Fridays: Games With Friends

May 17 2013

This post is part of our Non Sequitur Fridays series, which will feature a different Wistia team member's take on a non-Wistia-related topic each week. It's like our "employee of the month" but less "of the month"-y. Liat Werber is a designer at Wistia.

I am a huge proponent of playing games with friends.

When it comes to socializing, there isn’t a lot of variation: crowded bars, snobby coffee shops, dank basements: from a distance, it all looks about the same. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy sitting and talking, but every so often, I like to take a more gameful approach to socializing.

Skeptics may tell you that playing a game will distract from enjoying the company of your friends. But here, I would like to argue that the perfect game requires enough mindfulness that it challenges you, but not so much that it prevents socializing mid-game.

Of course, the ideal talk-to-play ratio will depend on your mood and how social you are at base level; other things to take into account are the number of players, how competitive you’re feeling, and whether or not there will be drinking. With all that to consider, it can be difficult to decide what type of game to play, but luckily I have outlined the range of possibilities in a handy little graphic.

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Posted in Company News | 4 Comments »

6 Ways to Get Video Views That Matter

May 15 2013
Eric Hinson is the Founder and CEO of Explainify, which specializes in short, engaging, remarkable explainer videos for businesses. You can see a wide selection of videos they've produced in their portfolio. If you're interested in learning more about how Explainify helps companies tell their stories, sign up for the newsletter on their homepage.

This is guest post #4 in a series from Explainify:

  1. Five Benefits Of Telling Your Story With Explainer Videos
  2. How To Tell Your Company's Story in Under 90 Seconds
  3. The Best Story Always Wins: Prioritizing Storytelling To Generate Leads, Sales, And Lots Of Love

It's clearly important to get views on your videos, but with 72 hours of video being uploaded to YouTube every minute, your chances of striking internet gold are pretty tiny. In a study by Slate, 0.3% of videos uploaded will ever see over 10,000 views, 3% will pass 1,000 views and 65% fail to achieve a mere 50 views. You might have better luck playing the lottery than being the next YouTube star.

To top it off, if viewers share your video on YouTube rather than your home page or sales page (somewhere you have the potential to convert them), you are seriously missing out on the equity that link provides. A YouTube video could be great, but it might make no sense outside of the page it was created for.

If you're creating the next "Charlie bit my finger" with no business benefit in mind, then sure, get as many views as possible. But businesses don't necessarily benefit from that - so we won't be discussing "going viral."

Holistic video marketing

Businesses are looking for a more holistic approach focused on the entire marketing funnel, not just attracting new leads. In fact, over 80% of corporate market value is now represented by your brand, relationships and other intangible assets.

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Posted in Managing Video | 4 Comments »

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