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Sharing Your Wistia Videos

You've created an awesome video for your customers -- now it's time to share it!

Caroline F avatar
Written by Caroline F
Updated over a month ago

With Wistia it’s super easy to share your amazing content with your audience. Here are all of the ways you can share that masterpiece.

Introduction to Sharing Videos

Now that you’ve crafted that perfect video or podcast — and customized it to your liking — it’s time to share it with the world (or maybe just a few close friends and coworkers). Whatever you want to do with your media, Wistia’s got you covered. We’ve got lots of ways to share your awesome content. Let’s do this.

It’s important to first note — Wistia accounts aren’t indexed by search engines, so your account (and the media within it) will never come up in a Google search. Videos and audio uploaded to Wistia remain private within your account; they are only available to the extent that you embed and share them.

This means that sharing out a direct link to your Wistia account is one of the easiest and most direct ways to share your content with others, without sharing it with the whole of the internet. Check out our section all about sharing out a direct link (including some nifty examples).

If you’re looking for a bit more security, we have the option to invite Viewers and/or Collaborators to your folders. Get the highlights of Private Sharing below, or check out the full guide over on our Private Sharing page.

You also have the option to share your videos in email with your favorite email marketing providers, and even track their success!

And last (but certainly not least) you can embed your media, which is super easy thanks to Wistia’s flexible embed codes.

Let’s get started with sharing a direct link.

Sharing a Direct Link

One of the fastest ways to share your video is with a direct link. Grab the Wistia URL from your browser (something like https://supportvideos.wistia.com/medias/h1z3uqsjal), and send it anywhere you’d like.

Email it to your team, share it on Facebook, tweet it to your adoring fans, text it to your dad, send it via carrier pigeon to your handler.

You can further customize the landing page by turning comments on or off, and uploading your logo to your account to make the space your own.

Tip

If you’re looking for even more customizations, we recommend embedding your media out in the wild. This way you’ll have total control over the viewing environment, and still get all of those sweet stats.

This is a great way to get some quick stats, proof your content before an official launch, or avoid any sort of code entirely. Any changes you make to the video or podcast episode will appear immediately on the Wistia media page. No new links necessary.

If you'd like to create a link for certain audiences that expires, you can learn about generating audience links here. These are links that you can set to publish and expire at set times.

Note

Speaking of stats, to avoid muddying your public video stats, we house your in-app views in Private User Sessions.

Private Sharing

If you’d like to choose how your viewers are accessing your account and your media, you can use Private Sharing to require a login to see your content. Private Sharing in Wistia allows you to invite Viewers and Collaborators to specific folders in your account.

Inviting a viewer (via an email address) to a Wistia folder gives the viewer access to your content, but your media remains gated behind a Wistia login. If your viewer chooses to share any direct links to videos they have access to, your content will remain secure. Check out this example of a locked folder we created. You might notice that even if you’re logged into Wistia, if you’re not invited to the account, you still won’t have access.

Private Sharing is great for keeping your media secure, selling content, and having more direct access to how viewers are interacting with your account. That data will live in Private User Sessions.

If you’d like to give viewers a bit more access to your media (customizing, stats, sharing further), you’ll want to invite them as Collaborators to the folder. Check out the full details on our Private Sharing page.

You can control who can access a folder by clicking the Share button to the right of the folder's title.

Add user to a locked folder

Embedding

The most common way to share your videos is to embed them out in the wild. There are two types of embed codes at Wistia: inline embeds, and popover embeds. Inline embeds are pretty much exactly what they sound like — they’ll play right on your webpage, “inline” with your other website content. Popover embeds will play in a lightbox over your webpage when a viewer clicks a thumbnail or text link.

We’ve designed embedding media to be super simple. We want you to get your content out there, and worrying about messy codes isn’t fun for anybody.

In most cases, adding your video to your website is as easy as grabbing an embed code from the Embed & Share modal (just click Embed & Share on your video’s page) and popping it into your site. Check out our page all about embedding.

If you’d prefer that your embedded videos remain completely unindexed by search engines, we recommend using a no_index tag in the head of your page, or blocking site crawlers in your robot.txt file. You can also choose to uncheck the SEO Metadata option on the Embed and Share modal, which will tell Wistia not to inject the video’s metadata into the <head> of your webpage. Learn more on our video SEO page. for a more in-depth walk-through.

For even more added security you can also Lock your Wistia folders as well. Wistia account URLs aren’t part of your embed code, but if you’ve shared around the initial link to your video, you can lock people out of your folders once the video’s live in the wild. To lock a folder to only invited users select "Only invited users" from the general access drop down, then select "No access" for anyone else with the link:

A locked folder

Tip

If you’d like to embed a podcast episode individually, outside of a Channel, you can learn about audio embedding here!

Sharing in Email

Sharing out your content with a direct link is easy and quick, but doesn’t often provide the detailed analytics of an email provider. That’s where Wistia’s Email Campaign Link feature shines.

We provide email merge tags for a ton of your favorite email marketing systems. These merge tags can track your viewers' Wistia sessions with an associated email address. So you can keep up with your leads' activity, and track the success of your emailed videos.

Note

Email campaign links are not compatible with Podcast episodes.

Social Sharing

Just like a direct link, sharing media socially is a great way to get some easy plays, and get your brand out there. For many social sharing sites you’ll just need to drop your Wistia URL (something like https://support.wistia.com/medias/h1z3uqsjal) into the post you want to share.

Most sites will pull in all the necessary information about your video, and you won’t need to do a thing. For sharing a podcast episode, you’ll want to grab the URL for the episode in your Channel!

Allow Viewers to Download

You can further share your content by giving your viewers the ability to download your videos. You can do this in two ways.

You can allow all visitors to download from your Wistia media page (like we did for this video here). Click the Share button next to the folder's title. Then select "Can download" from the dropdown menu for Anyone else with the link.

Anyone with the link to the folder can download content

Alternatively, you can allow your viewers to download the video with the Share buttons. From within the Customize panel, navigate to the ▸ Share menu. Add the Download button, and you’re good to go!

Resumable Video and Audio

Have you ever left a page and wished that you could pick up a Wistia video or podcast right from where you left off? Good news, our resumable video and audio feature does just that! When returning to a media page, embedded media will have the option to resume from where you left off, or start the video over. Channels will have the option to pick up from the specific time and video or podcast you were viewing!

Resumable video and audio will not work if:

  • you are logged into Wistia

  • your video or podcast is less than 5 minutes long

  • your video or podcast is set to autoplay

  • there are less than 5 seconds remaining in the video or podcast

  • the playbar is disabled

Resumable video and audio is enabled for all Wistia embeds by default. You can disable this feature using Embed Options for individual videos or a Channel.

Link to a Specific Time

Want your media to start at a specific time? We’re here to help!

To share your video at a specific time, navigate to the media page and click "Share." This will open up the "Share Link" tab, and under the URL, you'll see an option to Link to a specific time. Checking this box will allow you to set a specific timestamp of where playback for your video should start.

You can do this to any Wistia link by adding the wtime= string.

Here’s a link that will send you right to the part where Mike drops the mic on Bobby’s head:

And here’s the very end of a video about kickball we made:

Sharing FAQ

Can I make a link expire?

It’s not possible to make your Wistia links expire. If you’re looking for total control, we recommend embedding your media behind a paywall. This will allow you to remove the content at a certain date, removing the access for viewers. Alternatively, you can use Private Sharing to invite the user to your folder, and then delete their access when you need to.

Can I password protect my videos without requiring a login?

Yes, you can! We have an in-app require password feature, which allows you to add a password at the beginning of your videos. No login needed!

Give the feature a try over in the Customize panel. Check out the Password page for details and instructions.

If the Password feature isn’t up your alley, we recommend embedding your video behind a login with a third-party website provider.

Note

You cannot password protect an audio episode.

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