Video streaming is a great way to engage viewers and draw more Internet traffic to your site. Unless you have the storage and speed to host videos on your own site, you need to find a third-party solution. Most website owners use two main sites: YouTube or Vimeo. Each has its own pros and cons, but the one you choose depends on your target market and streaming requirements.
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YouTube and Its Massive Traffic
YouTube has some of the biggest traffic volume on the Internet. YouTube gets 800 million visitors every month, which means your videos have a good chance of being seen at some point. The more people who see your video, the better chance it has at drawing more traffic to your site. With YouTube’s traffic, even the worst video has a chance to go viral.
With this massive amount of traffic, you also have several other people who want a piece of the traffic pie. Competition is fierce, so you need some kind of outside marketing for your videos. If your videos are meant for marketing, it basically means you’ll need marketing for your marketing videos. Most businesses use social media to draw traffic to streaming videos when they rely on YouTube traffic.
YouTube has a following mostly because it’s free. It costs you nothing to host a video on YouTube, and you can even make a little money by hosting ads using Adsense. You must be approved by the Adsense team and only high volume videos make a decent amount of money, but the moneymaking advantage gives YouTube a stronger following for hobbyists. As a business, you can use YouTube and get access to Analytics and performance metrics. Analytics metrics let you know how your video performs compared to other marketing efforts.
Sponsored Videos and AdWords
In addition to Adsense, Google also lets you advertise your videos using Adwords. Adwords lets you create keyword-targeted ads with a link directly to your video. Just like any other type of online advertising, cost-per-click (CPC) ads are an expensive way to market, but it’s effective and integrates directly with your YouTube account. Facebook and Bing also let you advertise videos.
YouTube has a massive following for both video makers and viewers, but when you want to find the right platform, you should know the downside to YouTube distribution. YouTube estimates that about 72 hours of video are uploaded every minute. It means your videos are uploaded along with a sea of other random content. This content varies from funny to serious and yours will have a difficult time standing out among the others.
YouTube generates a lot of income for both publishers and Google, but the ads are a turn off for some viewers. The YouTube video pages are cluttered, so it draws focus away from your video content. You can embed YouTube videos in your web pages, but random visitors who find your content might get distracted by the ads, comments and suggested videos on the right panel.
Overall, if you want to publish free videos and embed them in your pages, YouTube is a good free solution. It’s also a good option if you don’t care about competition and you already have a following.
Vimeo for Professionals
Vimeo is a newer platform that’s taking a lot of YouTube’s following. Most professionals prefer Vimeo over YouTube because it caters to niche topics. For every serious video uploaded to YouTube, ten cute cat videos are uploaded too. Vimeo filters out much of this type of content, so you can focus on a more professional viewership.
Vimeo advertises itself as a professional filmmaker platform. If you want videos for your business’ support or content pages, Vimeo is probably the better choice. It’s also a supportive community with many helpful film enthusiasts including professionals and hobbyists. One added extra from Vimeo is that you can also brand your videos with a custom thumbnail.
You don’t need a Vimeo account to send friends and family a private link to your videos. With YouTube, you can flip a video to private, but you specify the Google accounts that can see your content. The issue is that anyone without a Google account won’t be able to see your videos. With Vimeo, you set a password for the video and only people who have this password can stream your content. Your viewers won’t need to sign up for an account, which makes it more convenient for friends and family to give you feedback on your video.
Aesthetically, Vimeo is less cluttered than YouTube. Vimeo has videos on its pages with some comments and that’s it. Compare Vimeo’s layout to YouTube’s and the former focuses on the video while the latter has too many distractions.
Although Vimeo is a popular platform, it still doesn’t have the massive traffic compared to YouTube. Vimeo gets about 60 million viewers each month, which is nowhere near the 800 million on YouTube. Still, it’s considered a high volume traffic site and you have plenty of opportunity to get your videos seen.
Vimeo has a tiered account platform, which means you pay for better service. Vimeo Plus is $9.95 each month and a Pro account is $199 every year. You only get one HD (high definition) video upload each week with a free account, so businesses probably need to pay for at least one of the tiered account types. You also get more bandwidth when you upgrade your account to Plus or Pro, so you can upload videos faster. Free accounts must compete with each other for limited bandwidth, which can be annoying during busy times of the day.
Whether you use YouTube or Vimeo depends on your requirements. If you just want to get a feel for video streaming and media creation, YouTube is a great practice platform. However, if you want to stick to more streamlined niche content with professional viewership, Vimeo is a good low-cost solution even for a small business just starting out.
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