Now that you have shot and edited your video content, you’re ready to distribute it. Distribution is all about having an impact on a targeted audience. Using online video hosting sites, your video content can quickly reach a global audience for little or no cost. But, with the plethora of distribution sites available today, it may be unclear which platform is the best fit for you, and why.
This guide compares online commercial and independent video distribution sites to help you choose the best service based on your strategic needs.
Plan Your Strategy
If possible, plan your video distribution strategy in advance. Take the time to understand your audience. Are your viewers domestic or international? Are they primarily watching videos on mobile devices? What video sites do they use? Answering these questions early on will help you choose the best video distribution platform for your content.
Get to know the existing users on the various platforms. Vimeo, for example, has a more curated, niche-focused audience than YouTube, and lends itself to relationship building based on shared interests. According to reviews, the Vimeo “community is very lively and strong, and there appears to be a genuine desire to assist and encourage each other.”
YouTube offers the largest potential impressions, with more than 1 billion visits to the site every month. However, your video can easily get lost in all this noise. If you use YouTube, plan a communications strategy around your video content or channel so the right viewers can find your content.
If maximum reach and impact is your goal, we recommend a multi-prong approach of posting the video in multiple places. Speed may also be a factor in distributing your content. Many sites offer the ability to upload content and share across social media sites. Consider live-streaming as an option for sharing an event as it’s unfolding as well as archiving the content for later viewing.
Alternatively, you may need more control over privacy and who can view your video. Bambuser, for example, allows you to share publicly, privately with another Bambuser user or Facebook user, or to keep it unlisted (hidden). You can also manage privacy-related settings such as geotagging.
Having your content freely available to the public under an open source license may also be part of your distribution strategy. Try EngageMedia or the Internet Archive, a non-profit library with free storage and access that lets you easily choose a Creative Commons license or dedicate to the public domain.
Of the features we reviewed, the one consistency across all video distribution services is that the site retains the power to remove your content and suspend your account. Details vary, but you’ll want to carefully review the terms of use, privacy policy, and community guidelines of any service you use.
Here is a table that compares the different video hosting sites: A Table Comparing Video Hosting Sites and Services