YouTube vs Wistia: What’s The Best Video Hosting for Video Content Marketing

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So I get asked a lot. Where should I host my videos? Should I put them on YouTube? Should I put them on Wistia? Should I use Vidyard? Should I use Brightcove? There are always different places that I can put my video content on where should I put it and I tell people it really depends on what your goals are.

So by now you have to have your video content on YouTube, you are foolish if you don’t. And the reason why is because it is accessed to one of the largest audiences in the world. There are 4 billion views on YouTube every single day. That is crazy to me! 4 billion videos watched! So you need to have your video content there. That’s the first thing; you got to have some video content on YouTube.

And I’ll explain a little bit on how you should format that content for YouTube. Because it’s gonna be different then if you host that video on your website.

So first thing put video on YouTube, it has to be there. But then here’s the next thing what kind of goals are we trying to achieve? And really there’s kind of two that really impact where you gonna host your videos and this is gonna be our goal is to create brand awareness. We want people to know about us. And then the next is to increase conversions. So we want people to either convert as a lead or we want to convert them into a customer. So that’s our goal, conversion optimization is our goal.

And then the next one that kind of comes in there is we want to create video content that is going to help us on social media and on our blog and be able to attract an audience to be able to see our content. And so with each of this goals you kind of have some there’s a little bit overlap to each one of them however really at the end of the day the goals gonna drive where you put your video.

So let’s start with brand awareness like likes, shares and things like that. So when creating a brand awareness campaign you have to have that video content on YouTube. It has to be there. It is going to enable you in front of the massive audience that is looking for services or products or anything that you’re offering there looking forward on YouTube, there looking forward on Google. And Google right now they’re on YouTube and they favor YouTube videos within the search result a lot.

So brand awareness, bar none has to be on YouTube. If we are trying to get people to convert on our website, either to become a lead or become a customer then I would recommend that you host your videos with a company like Wistia, and they’re a business video hosting platform and they do more than just host your videos for you.

Their software platform actually provides massive amounts of analytics and data. So there are a lot of features that Wistia has with it. Basically be able to see how much of your video content is being watched you have a hit map of what video content has been watched and what it allows you to do is understand what part of your video is either making people convert or making people drop off and leave or not make that purchase.

And you can’t really get that type of analytical information from YouTube right now. That’s why I would host any type of conversion optimization type of video content on a video hosting platform like Wistia.

The next kind of goal that will have is the social media type of goal like likes and shares and also getting links and kind of traffic organically to your website. And for this you can use YouTube as a way to host your videos for that absolutely, however it has a lot of YouTube branding on it. It lets you embed the video properly. After those videos watched? There’s like 9 different options of suggested videos that Google offers. So then they watched that video and now they’re leaving your website there clicking through and watching another videos something totally different something nothing to do with your product or services or whatever it is you are trying to offer.

So that can be a real detractor of why you would not want to put your videos on YouTube for that or at least embedding your YouTube videos on your site for that. So in that case, I recommend using self-hosting or something like the business video hosting platform like Wistia or Vidyard either one of those are really good I’ve seen so far so I’ll try to play too many flavors but we use Wistia so you know that might have something to do with it.

In the end, if you’re going to try and have for instance a content marketing campaign that’s video centric; You’re producing video blogs or you’re producing interview style videos or something like that. Then I would say that you’re gonna be better off having the analytics and having better control of your video content by using a self hosted or a business video hosting platforms like Wistia, or Vidyard. Sometimes I hear about Vimeo and it’s a great platform to host video. It has a great quality. They do really great job of keeping the video quality itself of what you upload to be really good compared to other hosting platforms that really compress it a lot more. But let’s face it, Vimeo is great for creatives but it’s not that great for people who is trying to grow their business. Keep that in mind.

I hope that this had helped you better understand:

How we host our videos
How we go about that process of video content marketing
Which type of video hosting platform that we would recommend base on your video marketing goals.

So thanks for reading and as always I love to hear your feedback so in the comments below make sure that you ask any questions or if you have any kind of comments or anything like that. Ask away and maybe you’ll be featured on one of our next videos or blogs.

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