Wistia, a leader in the video and podcast hosting space, announced a video series, Show Business, that will give marketers and creative teams the advice and strategies needed to start producing video or podcast shows. Marketing strategies are shifting during the pandemic as companies look to build brand affinity and better connections with their audiences across platforms, rather than simply focusing on driving conversions. In fact, impactful and story-driven long-form videos have seen tremendous growth as brands seek to build more of a connection and loyal audience. Wistia’s 2021 State of Video Report found that the number of videos in the 30-60 minute category in 2020 grew 140% year-over-year and 446% since 2016, highlighting the increased investment in long-form content as more companies embrace video series.

Show Business is a free, 20-episode video series that empowers marketers to create compelling content and build brand affinity. The series instills marketers with the skills and confidence they need to level-up their business’ marketing strategy.

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The videos are short and easily digestible, and the series is broken into four parts: Development, Pre-Production, Production and Promotion. From identifying your audience and creating the show’s concept, to pre- and post-production, to finally building the hype and launching the show, the series features more than 15 professionals and influencers from TV, web-series, and podcast-production industries along with Wistia’s content creation, branding and marketing experts.

“There’s an audience for everything, but you have to create content that adds value for that audience; otherwise, they won’t care,” said Chris Lavigne, head of production at Wistia and one of the main creators of Show Business. “Creating a show around a product is just an infomercial. Show Business takes marketers through every step of the show creation journey, from finding your niche, to building a brand around the show, to its launch. It gives marketers the tactics needed to make a show that keeps audiences coming back for more. And, most importantly, they will actually care about who your company is, and what you do. That’s what we call brand affinity and it’s the most profound way to build a connection with your audience.”

Show Business also marks Wistia’s first customer education course and certification experience, which will empower marketers to experiment with and create content that tells their brand’s story. Throughout the series, participants will have access to free downloadable worksheets, presentations and checklists that reinforce the topics discussed. A quiz at the end will certify participants in “Brand Show Creation” and will include a sharable certification logo that can be used on LinkedIn and in other professional profiles. This certification will be the first step in helping marketers feel confident to create content that drives engagement and brand affinity for their business.

“You can make a great show with just a few dozen to a few hundred passionate subscribers who religiously follow everything you do. I love true fans over big followers,” explained Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-founder, SparkToro in Show Business episode two: Finding Your Niche. Fishkin appears in several episodes of Show Business to share advice and lessons learned from his own experience creating and launching shows by targeting niche audiences. While building his first company, Moz, Fishkin launched Whiteboard Fridays, a video series that broke down complicated search engine optimization (SEO) concepts. It eventually became Moz’s most successful series by honing in on a very specific niche audience that was looking for this type of instructional content.