Business SuccessBLOG

Adding Video Content – Post or Host?

By Erin Meyer

YouTube_ButtoBy now we all have heard that videos are a great way to add valuable, Google rank-worthy content to a website.  These videos can include customer testimonials, product demonstrations, tutorials, or anything else that will get potential customers interested in your business, products, and services. Once you decide on a few ideas and make some videos, the next decision you need to make is where to put them.

Option 1: Post

There is no doubt that posting your video on a site like YouTube, which has over a billion users, will put it in a place that gets far more traffic than your website. But just because your video is on YouTube doesn’t mean viewers will watch it or even find it amongst the hundreds of hours of videos residing on the site. While making your video entertaining might increase the odds of it being shared, optimizing your video with meta data is more likely to increase the chances of it being found when viewers search for its keyword subject matter.

Option 2: Host

It is true that hosting the video on your own website will not provide the comprehensive reach that YouTube does, however, self hosting does offer some advantages. Having your site visitors watch your videos on YouTube makes it more likely that they will leave your site. By hosting your own video content, you can actually develop a playlist that invites your visitors to stay on your site longer. Hosting your own video also allows you to optimize a landing page for that video, which can include a specific call-to-action. If your video content is extremely useful, you also have the option of requiring viewers to sign-up for access, to build your subscriber base.

Though it is possible to host your videos and post them on YouTube, it is not usually the way to go, since you would actually be competing against your own website and possibly loosing leads.

Wistia provides professional video hosting with amazing viewer analytics, HD video delivery, and marketing tools to help understand your visitors. Wistia offers a custom suite of Google Analytics-like tracking for your videos.  More data than Youtube or Vimeo provides, so you can gauge just how well you are reaching your viewers, etc.

The Upright team has extensive experience in the successful use of video to enhance online marketing efforts. We can help you to develop effective video content and promote it in a way that provides results and does not break your budget. Contact us to discuss your goals and ideas for video content.