Last week on our facebook page we put out a story about that value video can add to you or your company. Video can be an amazing tool for many reasons then you may realize. Whether it’s you, or a product/service that you need to get out there, it can be done with video, either using you or not.
Why Video?
YouTube is the most popular video hosting site and is second most popular search engine; it’s also owned by Google. Vimeo is the second biggest video hosting site, but only has a fraction of the number of videos that YouTube has. We’ll chat more about Vimeo and YouTube in a moment.
Try to think of something that can’t be better explained or demonstrated with video. Go ahead, try and think, we’ll wait here….See, everything is better (or at least different) with video. Sometimes, when it’s all about the amount of content you have out there, different, i.e. more relevant search results are what counts.
A quick video about plumbing repair makes much more impact than a document telling someone how to do it. If it’s your business and you’re camera shy, hire somebody to do the videos, it’s more cost effective than you realize.
YouTube Vs. Vimeo
Vimeowhat? Isn’t there only one video platform online and that’s YouTube? There really isn’t a question of which one is bigger and that’s YouTube by a long shot. YouTube has 20 hours of videos updated every minute, while Vimeo has 13,000 videos updated daily. It’s that sheer amount of content, combined with the power of Google that make YouTube the 2nd most powerful search engine.
What Vimeo lacks in size it makes up for in control and audience. Vimeo positions it’s self as more of a ‘community’ and is much less likely to have sketchy content, pornography, hate groups or other racist/extreme videos. Many organizations that are family oriented will place their videos on Vimeo because of their lack of that content. For those organizations it makes sense because it’s in step with their mission and their supporters or customers, might take issue with some of the Promoted Videos that YouTube has.
When you’re on the landing page for YouTube you’ll see a handful of videos from a variety of subjects, some of which might alienate your audience. Even if you link to a certain video once you’re in YouTube you can query any phrase and come with hundreds of videos, some of which might put your people off.
The download is approximately the same speed and quality for both outlets. However, there are disproportionately more HD videos on Vimeo, 10% of their daily uploads are in HD.
Most of the time though, HD or not, you just want to watch kittens wrestle, movie previews, gardening videos or whatever strikes your fancy. If that’s the case then YouTube will beat any other video source online with its huge amount of content.
Bottom line: Figure out what you want to accomplish with your video online presence and do it. Just for giggles, go to either site, Vimeo and YouTube, type in what you do or a topic regarding your industry. See, you ought to be in pictures.
