Ask the Beard - The Top 3 Video Hosting Platforms
If you have ever asked yourself "where should I host or upload my small business video to?" then this is an article you'll want to read!
So let's jump into it shall we?!
We're often asked by small business owners about placing their video on their website and most of them at this point have an understanding that their video will actually be located and hosted on or by their website.
Whilst this is possible we often don't advise this method for two reasons - one most websites aren't set up to optimise video - meaning a bad experience for the viewer/potential client and secondly space; in that videos take both space to store (which is often limited on websites, especially if you have lots of videos to upload) and secondly for bandwidth; the amount of data that is transferred to visitors from your website - meaning that you will run out of data if you have lots of viewers watch your video.
So where should you upload your business's video?
So let's look at our top 3 places to upload your video. Noting, this isn't a gold to bronze situation - as you'll see each platform has its positives and negatives.
YouTube
YouTube is the biggest video hosting platform globally, in fact YouTube has over a billion users that's almost one-third of all people on the Internet and every day people watch hundreds of millions of hours on YouTube and generate billions of views.
It's also publicly searchable which is our biggest reason we advise businesses to use it. If you want your product or service to be "findable" in a another manner (i.e away from your website or Facebook etc) then YouTube is the place for you. Start a channel and start getting your products and services out there! The top tip here is to make your video "findable" - ie make sure it's titled appropriately.
Vimeo
But what if you don't want your product to be as public? What if your video product is 'your product' and thus you need it protected and stored securely so that only those who should have access, have access?
Vimeo could be the place for you. It's often used by companies who want to sell their videos as product, as well as for being more arty videos. It has lots of options for security, meaning you can keep your product tucked away for only those who pay for it.
Vimeo also recently introduced adaptive streaming; meaning that the quality of video changes depending on your internet connection (something that YouTube has had for many years). This change means that videos now stream much smoother; as massive plus for businesses as often we would choose our videos to work at a lower quality over starting and stopping all the time but being at the highest quality.
Wistia
But the problem with YouTube and Vimeo is that when you embed them into your website they look like YouTube or Vimeo players.
If that's an issue for your business, then it might be wise to check out Wistia. Wistia's aim is to provide video hosting specifically for businesses. You can change the look of the video player, you dont have a channel like YouTube and Vimeo and it provides some absolutely astonishing statistics behind each video you upload.
So if you're looking for an alternative to the mainstream platforms - Wistia would be our pick.
I hope that has helped provide some information, background and options for hosting your business's video. As ever if you're interested in talking more about this about using video within your small business further get in touch!
