How Storyblocks enables MindEdge to deliver a premium e-learning experience and stand out in a competitive market

MindEdge is on a mission to improve the way the world learns. Founded in 1998, MindEdge focuses on helping adults learn the fundamentals and master the skills they need to succeed both personally and professionally. A learning house with four different doors, MindEdge offers higher education for credit, non-credited classes 
for continuing education, professional development, and corporate solutions.

Using Storyblocks, MindEdge’s Creative team produces both the educational content that is core to their product, and the marketing assets needed to promote them.

Course videos are made available on their website, on YouTube, and also distributed through a network of reseller partners. Marketing and thought leadership content fuels their resource center and social media, and also provides valuable collateral for resellers. That means the videos the Creative team produces are crucial to supporting every part of MindEdge’s growing business.

“Competition is fierce, so we try to find ways where we can stand out and try to deliver a really premium experience.”

Storyblocks makes it possible for MindEdge to save time and money while simultaneously enhancing the quality of their content. As a result, MindEdge has been able to better accommodate the needs and changing learning styles of their learners through videos and other types of content.

The challenge

In recent years, the online education industry has significantly shifted away from text-based learning in favor of more visually engaging content. Most learners no longer want to read long pages of text anymore, and instead prefer to learn through more visually engaging mediums such as video. Keenly aware of this major industry shift, MindEdge decided to invest heavily in visual learning content, including video. 

They use Storyblocks to underpin their creation of videos and other content, as well as refresh existing courses – all in service of meeting the changing needs of their learners and differentiating themselves in a competitive marketplace. In the words of MindEdge Creative Director Amanda Malgeri, who’s been with the company for more than a decade:

We wouldn’t be able to produce the number of videos in the time that we need to if we didn’t have help. So, Storyblocks is huge for us.

Amanda Malgeri

MindEdge Creative Director

How Storyblocks solved the challenge

An extensive footage library enables faster, high-quality delivery

Storyblocks’ content is instrumental 
in helping MindEdge deliver a premium educational experience, providing the assets and resources they need to produce high-quality content on tight deadlines. Maintaining that quality is never easy, especially when it comes 
to video. Instead of assembling their remote-only team every time a reshoot is needed, MindEdge depends on Storyblocks’ extensive b-roll footage library to fill in creative gaps – without sacrificing quality.

This frees Malgeri’s team from spending excessive time and effort to shoot, with her team previously spending hours to capture just 30 seconds of video. 

“Storyblocks 100% saves us time and money. I can have my team focus on editing and creating videos, and only filming what we really need.”

– Amanda Malgeri

Fresh and relevant stock media enables broader accessibility

Another recurring challenge MindEdge faces is updating content to remain in compliance with evolving accessibility requirements, which Malgeri and her team care deeply about. Malgeri estimates she and her team spend about half of their time updating or refreshing existing content. Thanks to Storyblocks’ fresh and relevant selection of high-quality stock footage, Malgeri and her team can keep up with the constant need to ensure 
their videos remain relevant.

“We have partners that won’t work with us unless we’re meeting the most stringent accessibility standards.”

– Amanda Malgeri

This is another area where Storyblocks 
is a key content partner. Storyblocks has everything her team needs to create a variety of dynamic, visually compliant content to address the diverse visual needs of MindEdge’s stakeholders. “We try to meet the needs of our learners, and make sure we have videos for people with different learning methods.”

Diverse and representative content empowers inclusive storytelling

Finally, MindEdge’s course content must be regularly updated to ensure it remains reflective of our diverse world. Storyblocks’ library provides the team with a wide selection of people-centric content with diverse representation to help them accomplish this. Malgeri says that in the past, the team had received comments about the lack of racial diversity in some of their older content, and they took that feedback to heart. 

Her team now heavily prioritizes diversity 
in every visual refresh they undertake. But this was unexpectedly challenging when she discovered that not all stock media companies were alike when it came to including diverse visuals in their libraries.

“I can’t tell you the number of stock photo sites that we went through that were the same. This is a big reason why the refresh and upgrades are so important.” 

– Amanda Malgeri

People want to see people like them. We can meet those expectations with the content we get from Storyblocks.

Amanda Malgeri

MindEdge Creative Director

Conclusion

With an ever-changing digital landscape, keeping content current – especially educational content – is a continual work in progress for MindEdge. Whether refreshing lessons to account for learners’ changing needs, updating videos to more accurately reflect the diversity of our world, or working to ensure different types of learners can engage with their content, MindEdge relies on Storyblocks for their most important work. By leveraging Storyblocks, MindEdge can both distinguish themselves in a highly competitive market and fulfill the needs of every learner who relies on them for ongoing professional and personal development in the modern age.