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Let’s assume that you’re a small to mid-size nonmedia company seeking to use video to acquire or retain customers, train your employees, and, perhaps, communicate with investors, and you’re considering inexpensive alternatives for distributing the video. You have three basic approaches.
First, you can encode the video files yourself, create the necessary player and all the links, and upload the files to your own website. As long as viewing numbers stay fairly modest, this approach should work from a technology standpoint, though it may not be the optimal approach for accomplishing the goals that you have for your videos.
The second alternative is to host your videos on a free, user-generated content (UGC) website such as Vimeo or YouTube or even on a social networking site such as Facebook. These UGC sites relieve you of the encoding and player-creation chores and assume the task of hosting and distributing the video for you. You can still embed the video on your own website, but by offering your video on a UGC site, you also expand the number of potential viewers, which can help from a marketing perspective. However, there are some negatives to consider, as well as some benefits that are only possible via the third alternative.
That alternative is to use a fee-based service to host and distribute your videos for you. Multiple software-as-a-service (SaaS) online video platform vendors offer hosting, encoding, customizable players, and detailed statistics to help you maximize the effectiveness of your video. They help distribute your video to other sites to acquire more viewers and provide interactivity that lets viewers click the video to advance to the next step in the sales cycle, as well as other features. Even a few short months ago, these types of features would have cost hundreds of dollars per month. Today, however, depending upon the amount of video you distribute, you can sign on for less than $20 a month, with one service offering unlimited video views for less than $50 a month.
This article will review the costs and the benefits of all three alternatives. While there is no one-size-fits-all solution, any business seeking to truly leverage the value of its video should at least be familiar with the benefits of the second and third alternatives. Many businesses will find that an amalgam of these two is the best option of all.
We’ve also created a list of the UGC and SaaS online video platforms on the market today. For purposes of definition and delineation: An online video platform is a free or fee-based self-service platform that offers hosting, encoding, customizable & embeddable players, and metrics for organizations that wish to upload and distribute their own video content. While the features and functionality vary from platform to platform, once an end user has signed up, he is able to control the uploading of video and then distribute it anywhere online, not just on the video platform’s own website or via a proprietary channel. Click here to download the Online Video Platforms PDF.
