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DQ News: Online Video Streaming Options: Easy or Control

Video Marketing for small companies is growing in importance in the media-rich, entertain me society we now live in. That much we know. To show your videos on your website, there are a number of details you need to consider for how to dish out your videos, because they tend to get large and load slowly, so utilizing a service in the cloud to host your videos that has mega-capacity and specializes in streaming video is a great idea. It inevitably comes down to ease of use versus control, with a tad of quality and user-experience mixed in.

Services for Your Videos

There are essentially dozens of competent video hosting sites available you can use, and this is not the venue to review them all. Some you’ve heard of, some you haven’t. I’ll detail and link to some of the big ones here for both cost-free and paid video sharing sites. You can click on the links and try them out and create your own opinions.

Free Sharing Services

• YouTube– Granddaddy of all. The premiere video sharing site. At first videos limited to 15 minutes (used to be 10) but if you put enough of them up, you can get allocated unrestricted length rights.
• Vimeo — Similar to YouTube, but less popular.
• Revver — Permits you to profit on your video with tactical ad positioning.
• Viddler — Free service offered, a bit more customizable than YouTube; paid B2B service as well.
• Google Videos– Part of the Google suite; lets you to sell your video downloads.
• Yahoo Videos– Yahoo’s variation, also integrates a search across hosting platforms.
• Metacafe — Highly rated free service for product service and formats used.
• Daily Motion– Categorized videos into social networking.

Paid Video Sharing Services

• Playstream– Larger volume storage video streamer.
• On Stream Media– Akin to Playstream.
• Amazon S3– Not a video sharing site in essence, but remarkably inexpensive large cloud storage that works in combination with EZ Player or other players for quick video streaming on your website.
• Viddler B2B — Made for business, secure white-label, unbranded options, but starts at $ 100/month.

Options for Small Businesses

If your business is not video production but something else, in most cases you can stream video to your website using any of the free video sharing options listed earlier, YouTube is the most common. A lot of my clients are consultants, engineers, attorneys– people in white collar services, and they use video interviews or some other format to feature their value for site audiences. There are details you should know about free and paid video streaming solutions and questions you should keep in mind.

Free Video Sharing: What You Need to Know

I’ll use YouTube for this discussion as it is where I am most of my video clients store their videos for streaming on their websites.

• Free video sharing sites are typically simple to set up an account and upload videos.
• YouTube takes most file formats and converts them to. mp4 or. flv (flash) for playback.
• In YouTube’s situation, it has a huge search engine and is adored by its parent, Google, so getting your public videos found is more certain from an SEO point of view (which also helps your site). You can regulate access to videos such as items only offered to members.
• Decent analytics and ability to style your channel.
• Easy to embed player for your site.
• Recognizable with the YouTube logo in the corner and can literally lead to more clicks.

These are all advantages, but like all FREE services, they get paid one way or another, and if you’re not cautious can pull visitors away from your video to other videos. You also relinquish a bit of control when using a free service like YouTube or Vimeo.

• YouTube restricts videos to 15 minutes. Often for high users they will upgrade you to unlimited video upload file size, but you don’t know when this will take place. I was fortunate and use longer videos for my Vlogs on the Smart Blog.
• As a standard feature YouTube displays other people’s videos at the end to yours next to a “replay video” option. The good news is that you can disable this in your embed code.
• If a viewer clicks through to your channel, the blog comments are beyond your control, so unhappy customers can post ill will and weaken your rep
• YouTube is in absolute control. Make sure all your videos are backed up on your device because people have been closed down, even large users, for no apparent cause. This is a rare occurrence but a possibility.

The good news is, for small businesses with just a handful of videos to promote products and services, these dangers are manageable. Most people will watch the video on your blog if you properly embed the player code (and not link away to the YouTube site) you prevent the distracting other videos that might lure users off.

What to Keep in Mind with Paid Video Hosting

In this case I’ll use as an example the progressively popular Amazon S3 hosting possibility, suggested to me by my buddy Phil Montero of The Anywhere Office. S3 stands for Simple Storage Service and is a nice control solution to free video hosting services.

• Any size video uploads right out of the gate.
• Video is protected so it is only available where you provide the player and stream it. S3 is a storing option, not a video sharing website of itself.
• Very economical for a dedicated storage solution, as in $ 0.14 / GB per month.
• Your video is your video, with no links to other people’s videos to contend with, ads, etc…

However, Amazon S3 has downsides as well…

• S3 isn’t so simple, and there is some tech stuff needed to get set up, upload files, and install what normally is a paid player on your site to get the videos. Not for the do-it-yourselfer unless you are a geek.
• It’s not a search engine nor catalogued so in and of itself S3 doesn’t aid your off-site SEO.

Tips for Small Business Video Hosting

For most marketing video, you want it seen by as many people as possible. Complimentary sites like YouTube make that simple, as well as providing a fairly high-speed streaming embed for hosting on your website. In social media profiles, you may have to link away. Your YouTube channel itself can be searched and rated by Google, and the video on your page supports its Search Engine Optimization also. Because of its ease of use and find-ability, I suggest using YouTube for your promotional videos.

However, if you are creating paid video content like course material, you may prefer to restrict access to your paid members and serve up the professional, won’t link away capability produced by a service like Amazon S3, where you are in control yet get the same speed of stream (some say it’s quicker) than your free hosting option.

A combined strategy offers you with the best of both worlds of control and public accessibility hinging on your small business usage.

About the Author: Karl Walinskas is the CEO of Smart Company Growth, a business development firm that helps small to mid-size professional service firms build competitive advantage in an online world of sameness.  He is author of numerous articles and the Smart Blog on leadership, business communication, sales & service, public speaking and virtual business, and Getting Connected Through Exceptional Leadership, available in theSmartShop.  Get your FREE LinkedIn Profile Optimization eBook & Video Course, Video Marketing video and course, or Mastermind Groups e-course & video now.

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Photo Credit: Sharif Sharifi

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