Creating a Seamless Series Experience with Wistia Channels

People of Story is a video marketing agency based out of Portland, Oregon. They focus on creating epic content for brands that connects them with their audiences. To show potential clients that they’re experts in storytelling and content creation, they launched their very own original docuseries called Making Legacy. How did they make sure their series looked flawless and matched their brand to a tee? They hosted it on their website using Wistia Channels!

We sat down with Ryan Donaldson, former Co-Founder and Lead Content Strategist, and Colin Cabalka, Co-Founder and Director, to learn more about Making Legacy and the benefits and success they’ve seen using Channels in their marketing strategy.

About “Making Legacy”

Making Legacy follows four entrepreneurs as they pursue perfection in their craft and tackle hurdles from every direction. With the series, Ryan and Colin wanted to encourage others to turn their great ideas into a reality and make their own legacy.

Why Wistia Channels?

Colin and Ryan wanted an elegant, Netflix-like experience for people to consume their content without the investment of having to build a custom page.

“We wanted a self-contained Netflix-style experience, a really binge-able platform,” said Colin. “Then Wistia came along, and we said, ‘We have to make something, this is so beautiful.’ And, it’s really hard to build something like Wistia Channels on your own if you don’t have the budget to build something custom. It was embeddable, easy to sign up, and ready to go, which made it pretty easy for us to say yes.”

“It’s really hard to build something like Wistia Channels on your own if you don’t have the budget to build something custom. It was embeddable, easy to sign up, and ready to go, which made it pretty easy for us to say yes.”

At the end of the day, Colin and Ryan felt the ease-of-use and customization sealed the deal.

“It’s a high quality, beautiful platform for us to be able to showcase our work,” Ryan commented. “I think the biggest selling point was that it doesn’t take people away from our site — it’s designed to start a conversation. It didn’t make sense to spend all this time crafting high-quality content just to take people away from where they can engage with us as a brand.”

Simple, seamless setup

People of Story doesn’t have an in-house web development team, but getting the Channel set up was a seamless process nonetheless. Not having to rely on external resources empowered their team to move faster while still launching an elegant end product.

“We were in early post-production the first time we saw a rendering of the Channel,” Colin noted. “We didn’t quite have a finished video, but we had drafts of a few trailers. Still, in my mind, it was so beautiful. I felt like I was watching an amazing streaming service. And the way that the video loaded on the Channel right away was really elegant. It was impressive.”

“I felt like I was watching an amazing streaming service. And the way that the video loaded on the Channel right away was really elegant. It was impressive.”

Ryan and Colin also saw the advantage of using Channels for client projects. Presenting customers with a single embed for a polished final product was a game-changer.

“We imagined how awesome it would be to share this kind of Channel with a client and have them embed it directly on their site. We normally send a finished video file thinking, ‘We hope it looks good on your website.’ But to just build a Channel for them and give them the embed code … it’s pretty incredible,” Colin said.

Ryan also chimed in, “The biggest power we see being on the agency side is that not only can we work with a client to craft the storytelling content, we can also have a hand in how it’s presented and how the customer sees it so we can help extend their brand through the Channel.”

How the Channel impacted marketing performance

People of Story launched their brand at the end of March, and Making Legacy went live a few months after. They released the show as an aspirational project to inspire their clients to invest in binge-worthy content.

“We wanted to imagine the future of content as episodic for brands,” Colin explained. “We said if a brand hired us, this is what we’d want them to make. So, we wanted to make something that felt really applicable to a brand’s potential marketing project. ”

Since launch, the Making Legacy Channel has seen impressive engagement, with the average visitor sticking around for ten minutes. This indicates that content is resonating with their audience, and they are sticking around to find more content.

"The Making Legacy Channel content keeps visitors engaged," Ryan gushed. “The average time on page for Making Legacy right now is about 10 minutes. Not only are we seeing people spend time with an individual video, but then they navigate and check out other videos, and then they’ll maybe go to our Work page and see our work. They stick around and check us out.”

“The Channel content keeps visitors engaged. The average time on page for Making Legacy right now is about 10 minutes.”

Aside from impressive engagement with the Channel, the show also resonates well with audiences from a promotional perspective. The team has been using exclusive content cuts and episode trailers on social media to build buzz and drive traffic to the Channel. Recent campaigns have seen a click-through rate 3–4 times the industry standard for social media, a huge win for the small agency.

“A big measure of success for us is how people feel and how they react to the content,” explains Colin. "You can always feel that in a room with people watching something. And the feedback we’ve gotten online via emails and comments has been a clear indicator of success that’s solidified the investment in Making Legacy and Wistia Channels."