Wistia CEO Shares Genius Video Strategies For Your Business

We all just want to hear stories. Like, we want stories from people that we trust. And I think it's really exciting that basically the creator revolution, it's going to become the business creator revolution. My favorite social channel for 2022 is LinkedIn. I think that there's just a huge amount of activity on LinkedIn right now, better responses from folks, and I think it's for a pretty clear reason, which is that whatever you say on LinkedIn is attached to your effective resume. So there's a lot less trolling that you then you would get on Twitter and other places. And I think general positive, positive responses. It's a good place to get a lot of engagement. I mean, there's a huge opportunity on, on TikTok, there's huge opportunity on Twitter, there's huge opportunity on YouTube as well. So, I mean, truthfully, you should use all of them. But if you're trying to figure out where to start, I would say LinkedIn is a pretty safe spot. It's more about how do you get yourself incorporated into people's days? Like, how do you. How do you get yourself incorporated to whatever their habits are? I listen to a bunch of podcasts and I listen to the same ones on the same days. When they come out doing my workout, that's how I've. They found their way of, like, getting in front of me. And so you want to think about that same thing for your audience. And so wherever the attention of your potential customer is, that's where you want to go. That may be on LinkedIn, maybe on TikTok, maybe on YouTube, and maybe on something else. And I think being really responsive to that is. And where the audiences are going is gonna be what's important. My top tip for promoting videos is really just like, you have to think about what is the connection that your potential audience has to your brand and work from there. And so, you know, if people don't know you, if they don't trust you, if they don't know your brand, you're gonna have to start with shorter versions of things. There's no other way to do it. And you can take short clips and you can put them on Twitter, you can put the bottom of emails that you're sending out, you can put them on to LinkedIn and there's all the different ad platforms are going to give you the ability to put money behind your videos. But I think you really have to shoot for like, I need 10 seconds. I need to prove to folks in 10 seconds that this stuff can be valuable. And there's actually something also to be learned from what Hollywood is doing. We're seeing this trend where a lot of movie trailers have a trailer. For the trailer, there's the new Jurassic park movie. I think it's a full final Jurassic park movie of the series that's coming out. And if you go on YouTube and you look for the trailer, what you'll see is the first three seconds is like. And it shows you like a bunch of stuff that's gonna happen in the trailer. If you make it through that, you see the whole thing and what they're doing, what they've realized. Most people are gonna stick with you for that incredibly short period of time, but if they can hook you, it's gonna increase the engagement of that particular video. So I think it's all about starting with small snippets and then working up to longer things as people have built a connection with your brand. You want to treat a video the same way a journalist treats an article. The first sentence, you should explain everything that's going to be in the content. And as you get deeper in you into the video, you can go into more depth and more detail. So you want to make sure that if someone's with you for five seconds, they still get the gist of what's going on. This is kind of the opposite of how a Hollywood movie works. There's often a big reveal at the end, there's the big twist, the big turn, the climax of the film. You need to put it right at the front. And, and I think if you think about it like an article, it's much easier to get your mind around, you know, how you should order things. And it's kind of okay if people leave really quickly as long as you make your point in a very short period of time. I usually like to think of it as the script itself. So if you have on camera talent that's explaining something, an overview of the brand new product you're launching. The first thing you should say is we are launching a brand new product that does this, this, this, this, this hit all the points that you're, you would normally hit in that two minute video. And yes, you've taken away the surprise. But what that means is that people can't miss that it does the four or five things you want them to know that it does. And then if that can intrigue someone and say, oh, one of those four things is actually useful to me, they'll stick with it. And the mistake we make is when we, we don't do that, we Save each thing for its own section and someone never gets the end and they never even know. Maybe about the most remarkable thing that your product does. If I'm trying to predict what types of content people will make in the future, the easiest prediction, which is guaranteed to be right, is that people will do more of everything. And I think like the macro level trends that are happening are that we select from across like Hollywood, I'll call it Hollywood content that some of it's on Apple TV and some of it's on Netflix and some of it's on Amazon. We Also look at YouTube and we look at individual creators there and we Also look at TikTok and Instagram and all these other folks. And what we're all doing is creating a sampling of media that matches up to things that inspire us, things that entertain us, things that help us waste time, things that help us in our work. It's actually about going deeper on the topics that your brand represents. And for some people, part of the content they're going to want to consume. You know, if you're in B2B, it's going to be about your job, it's going to be about your career, it's going to be about networking or, you know, using some analytics tool that no one's ever used, whatever it is. And you, for those folks, you actually have to go much deeper. You have to expect that there's, they're going to just like gobble up the content. So you have to be willing basically to like, own a niche and to get really, really deep into that niche. The other thing I would say is if you have to pick between two things, something that teaches you how to do and learn a new skill and then another thing that teaches you how to learn a new skill, and this one's fun. Fun wins, entertaining wins. It's. It's that simple. And so I think you need to think about that in your content as well. And I think entertainment is going to matter much more in the future as there's more, more content that you're competing with. The thing that gets me most excited about the future of video is that for so long video has felt intimidating to lots of people. What we see is people are afraid to get on camera in the same way that they're afraid to do public speaking. They're afraid the video will hurt their brand. They'll say something incorrect or they'll, they won't look professional enough. And I'm just really excited because I think like the cameras and the editing tools and the webinar tools. And all of these things are getting better and better and better. And ultimately, I think it gives people more confidence. And we all just want to hear stories like we want tutorials from people that we trust. And I think it's really exciting that basically the creator revolution, it's going to become the business creator revolution, right? Like, there's be more and more and more folks in businesses who are making content and feel confident doing that. And the truth is that some people want to watch and some people want to listen and some people want to read. But when you really look at your business, you look at all the different places you communicate with customers, there's so much opportunity to use video to connect better. And I think that as it gets easier and less intimidating, we'll see a lot more of that. It's very easy to focus on making videos for a large audience, but we often forget is that as it gets easier and easier to make content, making content for one person, for a partner, for a customer, can have just an enormous impact. If it is genuine, it's clear that you took the time to make it all the time. I see the impact of this where our customers are doing that. They tell me that they have totally changed the course of a partnership or a relationship or a deal just because they took five minutes to make some content for somebody. And so I just encourage folks like, if you're not doing that, that future is here and it's waiting for you. And it's just about changing basic habits. And as you start to ask yourself that question, like, would it be easier to explain this? Those on video would be easier if I showed my screen at the same time. Would it be faster than if we had to book a meeting in two weeks? All that kind of stuff? It almost always is faster to just do it in the moment and build that relationship. And so I encourage you to like, look, look for those moments in your business, look for those moments in your day and try to change those habits, because the tools exist and it could just have such an enormous impact.