OK, so you have this slick new video. Whether your video is professional or not, it won’t do your business any good if the playback is slow, choppy, or if the visual and audio quality is annoying. If a picture tells a thousand words, a video tells exponentially more than that. Most people are willing to sit through a few minutes or more of interesting video if they believe there is a payoff.
Many large businesses stream their videos from their own servers. They have the computer, memory, and capital resources to do it right. Other businesses use hosting providers that specialize in video streaming. Unfortunately, a large chunk of businesses use their website hosting providers to broadcast their videos. A majority of these hosting providers out there oversell their server resources or just don’t have the bandwidth and processing power to stream video. Video uses huge amounts of disk space and bandwidth. Why sacrifice your website resources for a less than pleasant video experience? If your server isn’t suited for streaming video, your video will probably stall frequently. Most people don’t stick around if your masterpiece is buffering every 10 seconds.
That’s why you should use a hosting provider who owns servers specifically configured for streaming video. It’s a very expensive setup. There are plenty of free and commercial video streaming companies out there. Do your homework. Many of the free ones are not worth your time. The commercial solutions can be expensive especially if you’re uploading multiple videos.
So, to finally get to the meat of my blog…
I like YouTube for hosting video and this is why:
- It’s free
- Since 2006, it’s been a part of the Google family and in my opinion, that means robust, predictable, and easy to navigate.
- Youtube’s servers are exclusively designed for video streaming and virtually unlimited bandwidth.
- Youtube is one of the most indexed and searched websites in the world. That makes it a good database to publicly host your videos.
- Youtube allows posting/display of individual videos or playlists.
- You have complete control over uploading, promoting, annotating, and even editing videos yourself on Youtube.
I know there are exceptions. Yes, there’s a lot of BAD stuff on YouTube, but there’s a lot of bad stuff on the web too. Would your company not have a website for this same reason? Some people don’t like the fact that there are “related videos” and too many ways to leave a company’s video channel, but if you’re OK with these minor distractions, YouTube is the best and certainly the most cost-effective solution. Until I find another hosting environment that offers speed, unlimited uploading, a massive searchable database integrated with Google, at no cost to me, I’m sticking with YouTube…