Video hosting and analytics startup Wistia has announced a neat new Twitter integration that lets you add ‘clickable’ follow buttons directly to online video.
The last time we caught up with Wistia was last month, when it launched a new Learning Center geared towards those wanting to learn how to script, film and edit video. Wistia’s new Twitter Follow Lab, however, is well worth a look too.
While websites and blogs have been able to embed Twitter Follow buttons for some time already, being able to add a Follow button directly to a video takes things a step further.
“Videos are perfect for building emotional connections, and the Twitter Follow Lab introduces a simple and subtle way to nudge your viewers to engage more deeply,” explains Alyce Currier, Content Strategist at Wistia.
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Indeed, Twitter Follow Lab lets you overlay buttons on top of your video, and it even lets you play around with an example to see how it works, then clear it out and drop your own video in. You can add multiple Follow buttons throughout any flick.
When someone clicks on the button, their ‘follow’ is automatically added to the profile’s count, and the video continues to play as if nothing happened.
Check out this sample video for yourself, where co-founder and CEO Chris Savage, as well as other Wistia folks, invite you to follow them on Twitter:
As a video-hosting company, Wistia is looking to lure more firms and individuals on board with neat add-on features such as this. And if it can do this with Follow buttons, why can’t this be extended to other call-to-actions, such as a Facebook ‘Like’? It seems the potential for this is quite far-reaching.
In related news, Wistia’s videos are also now compatible with Twitter Cards, which means videos hosted on a Wistia account can be displayed inline, directly within a tweet. So there you go.
Feature Image Credit – Thinkstock
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