The video is the most powerful marketing tool nowadays, which can considerably increase your traffic. Today we will share our tips on the correct placement of your video content.
Let's look at the main sites where you can post your video most successfully.
1. Video platforms: Vimeo, YouTube, and others
Each platform has its pros and cons. Various opportunities, advantages, and disadvantages. Therefore, before deciding where to post, carefully analyze your content. What audience is it for? What are your goals when uploading your content to a particular hosting?
Let’s compare two major competitors – YouTube and Vimeo – by the most important features.
Audience
Each platform has its own audience and purpose. As for the number of users, there is no chance to compete with YouTube – its monthly active audience is more than 1.5 billion viewers.
Vimeo’s audience is incomparably smaller – around 240 million viewers per month. So if you need maximum reach, you’d better use YouTube.
What about the quality of the audience? YouTube is literally for everyone. Almost 95% of Internet users of all ages from all over the world watch and upload videos; leave likes (dislikes) and comments. Mind this and don’t be surprised if your content gets under fire. That said, on YouTube, you can interact with subscribers closer.
For newcomers, businesses, video bloggers shooting daily vlogs, YouTube is the perfect platform.
Vimeo was designed by filmmakers for a mature creative audience. Professional videographers, motion designers, and video editors share videos there. If you either create video content of high quality or artistic value or have something to share with creative professionals, then Vimeo is more suitable for you.
Analytics
YouTube offers a wide range of analytics and monitoring of your target audience. What’s important – all stats are free.
Vimeo also provides access to the information about who and how watches your videos, but this option is available on the paid membership plans.
Advertising
The ad is everywhere on YouTube. Your video highly likely will start with a pre-roll ad, which may make a part of potential viewers stop watching further. As for running your own ad campaigns, YouTube can offer many ways of reaching your target audience, thus being a great place for marketers.
Finally, thanks to advertising, you can monetize your channel. If this is your goal and motive, YouTube is your platform.
Vimeo is positioned as the ad-free video platform, so there is no advertising at all, you can’t even buy ad space there.
SEO
Since YouTube was purchased by Google back in 2006, it has become the 2nd biggest search engine in the world. So with right titles and tags chances are that your video will reach the specific audience. Also, Google ranks YouTube videos higher in search results than those from other video platforms.
However, YouTube is not as popular as social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. To promote your channel you need to actively mention it in social networks and regularly post links to your video.
Vimeo has nothing to show about this. Thus, when uploading your content to Vimeo, make sure to promote it with the help of more popular social networks. Otherwise, no one will see your video.
Quality of the content
The quality standards for all video platforms basically include the format in which your video is encoded. The frame rate at which you shoot or mount is also important. Resolution and bitrate, quality and colors matter, too. Finally, a progressive scan type. And of course the quality of the recorded sound. We won’t dwell on this issue, as this could be the object of a separate article.
What is most important, keep in mind that it’s desirable to upload content on Vimeo if you focus on the quality of the image and sound. On the YouTube channel, it’s better to spread more content, designed to give information, rather than the quality of the video, which isn’t always great there.
2. Social media
Social networks are perhaps the most profitable platform for posting content, as they are the most popular. Here all your target audience is gathered in one place.
Social media is designed for everyone. So placement in social networks brings the greatest effect. This is especially beneficial for novice bloggers and companies that are interested in launching a PR company, branding, and increasing sales.
Facebook is the first platform you should consider for posting a video. No other formats of the content on Facebook get such reach as video posts do and this trend doesn’t seem to change. Though the duration of the video is not limited, short videos perform better.
Instagram, the Facebook-owned platform, also allows placing video content up to 60 sec long. This summer Instagram has launched a vertical video app IGTV, where videos can be up to 60 minutes long. Note that Instagram’s audience is mostly young people.
To reach the specific quality professional audience you need to be active on LinkedIn. Post engaging videos and build your community.
Want to get more out of your video content? Add it to Pinterest – a visual-oriented platform for sharing ideas. Videos about style, home, hobby, culinary and DIY-projects are more suitable for this social network.
If it’s not enough, put your video on Twitter and Google+. The last is very easy as YouTube accounts are usually connected with the Google Plus profile.
Summary
In general, it’s a good strategy to use all possible ways of placement and promotion video, using all the platforms that are available. Place your video content on all hosting and actively promote it in social networks.
If you're starting from scratch, use social media as a great start. Here you will quickly find your audience and effectively promote your channel and services. You can easily find your fans and customers. With social media, you can also effectively advertise your channel by setting up targeted ads. This will attract new subscribers.
But don’t take advantage of so many options to share poor quality content. First of all, create something interesting, which will have value for your potential audience. Then share it anywhere it’s possible, and watch which platform performs better results.
