Your Company Video: The Pro’s and Con’s of YouTube Hosting

This is part 2 in an onging series  called "YouTube Video 101". See this post and others to learn how hosting videos through YouTube may apply to your business.

Social media is all the rage these days. From building company Facebook profiles to placing videos on YouTube, a lot of businesses are jumping on board. YouTube is a great medium for putting the right kind of video on (I’ll get in to what may be the right kind of video in another post). With an audience of nearly 330 million user’s world wide, the format cannot be ignored. You can use YouTube hosting to present your video content to this audience as well as embed video feeds from YouTube in your company website. While YouTube presents some incredible new possibilities, there can be some drawbacks that companies may not be fully aware of. This post explores both the pros and cons of using YouTube’s service in business applications.

YouTube Hosting: The Pro’s

It’s Free

No Service Charges

Setting up a YouTube account is free. Just sign up, upload your video and it’s online (even in HD). You can send links to your video to customers or use YouTube’s embed code to easily add the video to your website. 

No Encoding or Hosting Fees
Private hosting services usually charge for encoding of video material as well as a monthly charge for bandwidth usage. There are some benefits to private hosting, but with YouTube, there is no encoding or hosting fee applied. 

Statistics

YouTube provides all kinds of useful statistics to learn about where your viewing traffic comes from as well as the effectiveness your videos may be having on that audience.

Geographical Data

By reading viewers ip addresses, geographical information can be collected about YouTube viewing populations. If you’re a company with a global presence, you may be interested in seeing that viewers throughout the world, or targeted regions, are accessing your videos. If you’re a local business, geographical stats are useful in determining if viewers from your area accessing your videos. If they aren’t, you may need to change your production strategy.

Demographics and User Interest

Beyond geographic data your account has tools to help gage the viewer’s attention span, the average demographic viewing the video, where viewers are being directed from such as email linking or just other related YouTube videos.

The stats listed above are just a few of many, but they all have one common interest for businesses: They are an indicator of the audience type and effectiveness of your videos. 

Viral Potential and User Feedback

Perhaps the greatest result any business can hope for is a massive viral response. By viral, I mean that the video is very popular and receives not only huge YouTube audience interest, but the video is also shared through linking in other social media sites and via personal emails.

Searchability

YouTube is a fully searchable video community. Videos can be applied with meta tags and keyword combinations that make them more searchable. Just as Search Engine Optimization helps bring viewers to your site, YouTube has a system for directing viewers to your videos. Highly searchable videos have an edge toward gaining popularity. 

Popularity and Featured Videos

If a video becomes extremely popular it may be listed as a “featured video” on the YouTube homepage. Front page with an audience of 300 millions plus is great exposure.

YouTube Hosting: The Con's

Ironically, the Nature of YouTube’s Video Community: “Related Videos”

I once had a client that wanted Sitepro.com to encode and host an existing video on their site. I explained that there was a small encoding and hosting fee associated with it and we could certainly set them up. At the time, the client was a little upset. After all, they pointed out, “I can just put my video on YouTube and add it to the site for free!”. I said they were correct, but warned of a possible drawback: “related videos”. Unfortunately the the advice went unheard. The video was put on YouTube, added to their site and about one day passed. The following afternoon I got a call: “All these videos are showing up with competitor’s products in them! ……Can we look at your option again?”.

YouTube is first and foremost a video community, not a business machine with the direct intention of advertising your video content. YouTube users are primarily concerned with creating their own content, viewing others content and building a community that supports the YouTube ideal of free collaborative entertainment. Part of that system is a feature that displays videos with similar content after yours is done playing. This makes perfect sense when one assumes that the viewer is interested in your topic. Of course, if you’re selling your product and the competition’s getting exposure on your website via the embedded YouTube video you placed there, this system starts to lose its luster.

Limited Playback and Interactivity Options

YouTube is limited to playing videos back and some basic features such as the recent addition of annotations. While great for playback, what if you want to provide interactivity or a variety of different linking options to direct viewers to areas of your website through your video?

YouTube does not support any buttons or flash interactivity that can be developed for a more robust interactive video experiences. Take this sample we produced for Stanley Case Works at www.trunksusa.com. This video experience relies on user interactivity that could not be hosted through YouTube.

Branding Implications and Professional Appeal

When embedding YouTube videos in your website the first issue of “related videos” usually makes sense to most businesses. The second issue we encounter is that the YouTube player doesn’t necessarily coordinate with company branding and can even look a little less professional than many businesses desire. A big advantage to private hosting is that you can have custom player skins developed to coordinate with your website and general branding design. For some, YouTube’s player design and logo isn’t a big deal on their site, for others it may clash with their marketing direction.  

In Conclusion

Thanks for taking the time to read through a few of the benefits and drawbacks to YouTube video hosting. Overall the service is a great tool if used correctly, but it’s worth considering the factors listed above before jumping in. To learn more about the basics of making a video for YouTube, as well as what kind of videos may succeed on YouTube, check back for my upcoming posts.