Most of our clients promote their webcast recordings for continued engagement after the live event has ended, and this is something we strongly encourage. Some companies have an internal hosting service that they use to post the videos to stream, which is great if you have that resource. However, with today’s ever changing landscape of video and social media there are several great free video streaming platforms that you can use to promote your content and that can even integrate into your current social media vehicles. Below we have highlighted the pros and cons of the top hosting platforms our customers are leveraging for continued customer outreach.
YouTube: Industry Leader
YouTube is definitely the heavy hitter in the video sharing industry. Nearly everyone and their Mom (literally) have used YouTube, either by watching or posting videos. With roughly 800 million unique visitors per month, and roughly 72 hours of content being uploaded each minute, it’s by far the most used video-sharing platform on the web (And it’s owned by Google, and is now integrated directly with your Google account). The sheer amount of traffic in addition to the fact that it is free is a big selling point. With more than 1 billion unique user visits each month, your videos are more likely to appear in searches.
Some Companies may be a bit unsure about using YouTube to promote webcast content because of the in-video ads and links that appear after the video has finished playing. It’s true that you do have limited ability to control the look of the video player when compared to some other solutions out there, but you can disable ads and turn off external links in your embedded videos.
To customize the look of your embedded video, click on the “Share”, then “Embed” options under the video in your video library. This is where you can customize the size, as well as disable showing videos after the video finishes playing, turning on and off player controls, as well as showing the video title and player actions. Disabling these features may provide the more streamlined appearance you want to achieve.
YouTube has also recently added a really nice feature of video editing tools that allow you to customize different elements of the video from color brightness, adding audio clips, annotations, chapters, and closed captioning. YouTube also does have some video analytics that can give you an overall snapshot of video views, demographics, and traffic sources.
YouTube is a heavy hitter for a reason – it’s free, easy to use, integrates with your Google account, and has a huge network of built in users.
Click Here to Check out YouTube if you haven’t already!
Vimeo: Clean and Professional
Vimeo is a smaller community of film enthusiasts. In comparison to YouTube’s massive audience — it gets roughly 70 million unique visitors each month — but its smaller size creates an intimate and fully engaged community. It’s a network of people who are genuinely interested in film quality, so it is a great place if you have high definition video. Also within this tighter knit community, you’ll find less “fluff.” Not that there isn’t great content on YouTube as well, but you are less likely to find as many videos of cats playing the piano, for instance.
Additionally, Vimeo provides an overall cleaner player. Videos tend to be larger in size, which means better quality. The frame is also less cluttered, and there are no advertisements, which is a huge bonus, so the focus is just on your video.
Lastly, Vimeo allows you to password-protect your videos, even with the free account, so you can share videos with people before making it public. On YouTube you can keep your video private, however that requires anyone who needs to view the video to have access to your account.
Check out Vimeo Here. It’s free to sign up for a basic membership; Vimeo Plus is $9.95 per month; and Vimeo PRO is $199 per year.
Vine and Instagram: Creative, Fun, and Social
Instagram is a great video and photo platform, especially if you are already using it for your business, as their user base is larger than vine. However, if you are looking for something that allows for more customization and for a bit more creativity, Vine might be right up your alley.
Vine is owned by Twitter, and has become a new way to share video within the social media landscape. Six-second, looping Vine videos are a fun way to connect with current and potential customers. Many businesses, big and small alike such as General Electric, and Samsung are making use of vine in their marketing repertoire. Vine has a rapidly growing audience with roughly 100 million users and over 1 billion loops played each day.
Vine recently released the latest version of its app that allows you to create videos within the app itself as well as upload videos from your phone. This means you can now use outside video software to edit and create your video, so your vine videos are no longer stuck within the app. The Vine app also includes several basic editing tools that allow you to frame your video, adjust lighting, and mute the microphone.
Instagram video, although newer than Vine, allows you to create ,post, and upload videos between 3 to 15 seconds, with access to Instagram’s infamous filters. With an average of 500 million monthly active users, Instagram is a great platform to utilize video as well, especially if your company already utilizes Instagram and has active followers.
Jessica Craig
V2 | Virtual Event Manager