You have a video for your company, and you’re ready to share it out with the world. But where do you go?

YouTube

Most people will jump straight to YouTube. It’s has a massive user base of over 1 billion people and is the 2nd most popular search engine behind Google. So why aren’t I telling you to go upload all your content to YouTube? Well there are some pros and cons to consider.

Lets start at the top. YouTube is massive, no doubting that, if you want to access a huge audience base then this is a top bet. As long as you add the right keywords to your video then people can just stumble upon it, as well as people clicking that link you posted on Twitter. So what are the cons? YouTube use adverts to promote other businesses, products and services and viewers could find then annoying, having to sit through them. Secondly, those 1 billion users can be a blessing and a curse. Sure there’s lots of people who could find your video, but its easy to get lost in the noise, and if people do find the video they’re immediately bombarded with more content and its difficult to not get pulled down the rabbit hole (We’ve all ended up watching cat videos at 3am on a Tuesday just because it was the next recommended video after that Vine compilation you’ve already seen).

Vimeo

An alternative is Vimeo. With no adverts to worry about people can get straight into watching the content. You can also update your video without losing its stats, whereas on YouTube you have to take down and upload the whole video again, and a password protection option makes it easy to share videos to a smaller group if necessary. The main con is that Vimeo has a smaller user base, so people are less likely to randomly come across your video. Also it does come with a price, literally. Where YouTube is free and unlimited, if you want to post more than a few videos on Vimeo you have to pay for the extra space.

Wistia

Most people think these are the only two choices but there are more services out there. One of the options rising in popularity is Wistia. Its main asset is analytics, it provides incredibly detailed stats about viewership so you can keep track of how well the video is performing, but also it has better security. Where it is easy to rip a video from YouTube or Vimeo, Wistia is incredibly secure. However much like Vimeo it is expensive if you want to upload multiple videos, and as it is fairly new to the video sharing market it has a much smaller user base.

When developing video content at Mediabox Productions we work closely with you to understand where your target audience is and what the best platform is for you, then optimise your video for its desired platform so you know it will perform well no matter where it is posted.