Everyone today loves video. Just look at the number of views that videos on sites such as YouTube get on a regular basis. Businesses of all types are getting in on this action as well, and it can prove to be quite a game changer. However, you do need to make sure that you are doing it correctly, and it’s not as easy as simply loading a video directly onto your site. In fact, this is the worst thing that you could do. Let’s look at some of the tips and secrets to ensuring that you are hosting your videos correctly in the cloud so you can get the best possible results.
Never Host Videos Directly on Your Site
One of the big mistakes that some companies and even individuals are making today is putting their videos up directly on their site. While it is relatively easy to do, it can have some rather painful consequences. If the video becomes popular, people will come to your site to view the video. This may seem like a good thing – after all, you are getting people to the site.
However, the trouble comes from the fact that there could be thousands of people downloading and viewing the video, and this can cause a number of performance issues. The video could be choppy, it might not load properly for some people, and it will cause many to simply leave the site. After all, they have plenty of other things that they could be doing online. Additionally, there is the problem of using up your bandwidth in some cases. Also, think about the size of the video. Storage space could quickly become a problem if you have multiple videos.
Fortunately, there is a better way. You can find some great options when it comes to hosting through the cloud.
Always Choose a Cloud Host
If you are using a traditional web host, you will have caps to your storage space and your bandwidth, which means that only a certain number of visitors will be able to download the video before you go over that amount and have to pay extra. The last thing you need is to have a large number of excess charges at the end of each month. The more videos you put up, the greater this cost will be.
When you use cloud storage, you will not have to worry about the bandwidth issues because the cloud is scalable. Cloud services are able to meet a high demand without any interruptions. This means your videos will play back smoothly for your visitors and viewers each time.
Consider Hosting on YouTube
Another trick to making sure that your videos are always available is simply to use YouTube as your host. You can put the videos up on YouTube and make them available through their site, and then embed those videos onto your site. The visitors can still watch the video right on your site, but instead of you hosting the video, YouTube is taking care of it for you. This is one of the easiest and best ways to get your videos up and available quickly. All you need to do is set up a YouTube account for your company.
Another great thing about using YouTube as the host is the fact that potential viewers have different ways of coming across your video. Some will come directly to your site to watch it after finding your site. Others will stumble across the video directly on YouTube. Make sure that you have links and mentions of your actual site in the video, the annotations, or the notes so that those interested viewers will then be able to visit your site.
Alternatives to Using YouTube for Video Hosting
While YouTube might be the big name in the game, there are plenty of other video hosting sites out there that make use of the cloud and that are perfect for your business videos. The following are some of the best options currently available. Even though they might not have the recognition of YouTube, don’t overlook them.
Wistia is a great platform that allows you to embed videos right on your site, and you have full control over your branding, which is important for any business. You can add a clickable call to action, integrate with marketing tools so you can collect emails, and add buttons to make social sharing easy for the viewers.
Sprout Video works well too, and it is specifically for businesses. Again, you will be able to add a call to action and a form for collecting emails. You can track how viewers are using the content and what actions they take after viewing. This can be helpful when you are trying to reconfigure your marketing campaign to get someone from simply viewing to becoming an actual customer.
Vzaar allows users to upload from their desktop as well as mobile platforms. You can choose the video quality, and even have control over the domains allowed to play your video. For example, if you want to keep the video playable only on your site, then you can configure it that way. However, you may want to allow anyone to embed the video, as this means that other blogs or sites in your niche may use it to show their readers, and this can result in more customers for you in the end.
These are just three of the most popular alternatives to YouTube that use cloud hosted video. Plenty of others are available, but in most cases, you will want to stick to those that have a good name and reputation in the field.
In addition, you can consider some full cloud hosting companies, such as Amazon Cloud, that can host all of your files for you. It’s a good option for both HTML5 video, as well as streaming video, such as Flash. Keep in mind that this is not a video sharing site, as the others in this list are. Instead, it is a massive cloud storage system that can work with video players to provide easy access to videos for your viewers. It also happens to be affordable.
Use Your Analytics
A very important tip that so many individuals and businesses forget about is to use their analytics. Most of the video sites, including YouTube, have robust analytics tools. These will let you learn more about what’s happening with your video. You will know who is watching it, where they are watching it from, how much of the video they watch and much more. This is helpful information that can give you insight into how you should be creating new videos in the future. For example, if your product instruction videos are very popular, you will want to make more of them.
Video is extremely popular, and that will not be changing anytime soon. It’s time to get on board, and to start using cloud hosting options to ensure your videos are available in the best quality possible and that putting those videos up does not cause you to go over your marketing budget.