So you’ve made an animation video for your business. The entire purpose behind creating a video for a product or service is to share it with your target market. Obviously, posting the video on your website is a possibility.
However, if you’re following a well thought out marketing plan, you are aware that brand awareness is an integral part of building a profitable business. What better way to build your brand than to share your video with countless viewers? That means posting your video on the top video hosting sites in the world. Youtube is the undisputed king of video hosting, but is it the best option for hosting your video?
Youtube receives over 1 billion unique visitors every single month. Those 1 billion visitors spend over 6 billion hours watching videos monthly. For those that are mathematically challenged, that is approximately 6 hours for every visitor. To put things in perspective, that is almost 1 hour of video watching for every person on earth.
Clearly, this is a spectacular option for hosting your video.
Since being bought out by Google in 2006, Youtube has become the 3rd most popular website in the entire world behind only Google and Facebook. That’s not bad company to keep.
If you’ve ever spent more than 5 minutes on Youtube in the last year, you’ve probably seen Mike Chang’s video’s in the suggestion bar. Chang has built his entire career around utilizing Youtube to promote his “Six Pack Shortcuts” fitness product. To date, Chang has over 2 million subscribers and an astounding 258 million views for his videos. It’s fair to assume that Chang is making a fortune from ads on his Youtube videos, yet alone the revenue being brought in from product sales. Needless to say, if leveraged properly, this site can bring your video a serious amount of traffic.
Although it may seem like the obvious choice for hosting your video, Youtube does have its downsides.
One notable con of Youtube is that at the end of 2012, they reported that they receive about 60 hours worth of videos uploaded every single minute. There are no legitimate figures on how many videos are currently hosted on the site, but you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize that it is A LOT!
That is all competition vying for views!
If your animation video is in a popular niche, it may be difficult to break into the list of videos that show up when searched. Does this amount of competition make it more beneficial to try hosting your video on another site?
With a quick Google search you get a slew of similar sites that could just as easily host your video. Perhaps the second and third most popular video sharing sites are Vimeo and Dailymotion. Dailymotion sits as the 31st most popular site in the world and receives 116 million visitors every month.
This may be a far cry from the numbers or viewers Youtube offers, but it has nowhere near the amount of competition for your video. Vimeo on the other hand also receives far less traffic than Youtube and only has just over 50 million videos currently uploaded (which is miniscule compared to Youtube).
What’s the Final Verdict?
Who says you can’t upload your animated video to all of them? Marketing is about building an audience to spread your message and brand awareness. Youtube receives an astronomical amount of views so you would be crazy NOT to upload your video on this site.
However, unless it is an incredibly unique niche video, it may be drowned out by the countless other videos. That is why you should be hosting your videos on Vimeo and Dailymotion as well. With the combination of these 3 major sites, the chances of your video going viral are far more likely!
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