Are you ready to jump into the video world? Before diving in headfirst, it's important to understand which video platforms are available and how you can use them to meet different business goals. Keep reading for my breakdown of the different video hosting sites and how to use them for different strategies.

But first, let's explore how you can use video for your customers and your team.

how to use video for business

Worldwide, businesses have realized the power of video for both internal and external uses. As Wistia perfectly states:

In short, they help people make meaningful, memorable connections with teammates, customers, and prospects. Don't have to take our word for it. Here's how your business can use the power of video in different ways:

• Onboarding: Bringing on a new employee is exciting, but it's also time-consuming. Your organization is a complex unit with its own unique values, quirks, and story to share, which can be hard to relay to new team members. Creating well-done onboarding videos easily communicates these intricacies with new hires.

• Training: Moving past the onboarding stage, videos are a great way to continue employee training and reinforce company values and standards. They provide visual and audio aid to walk employees through new tech and teach new skills.

• Team Building: The most successful businesses run like a well-oiled machine with all parts working in sync. From the start with onboarding to continual knowledge sharing between departments and management levels, videos are a stellar way to keep everyone connected and working together as one cohesive unit.

Are you creating a new onboarding or informational video? Let your staff get in on the action; these are fabulous opportunities for team building. Whether sharing a testimonial, providing personal insight, or a little acting, getting people together from your organization makes them feel valued. It offers a chance to connect with others they typically wouldn't have a chance to click with.

• Introductions: While there is nothing wrong with including images of team members on your site, videos are a more powerful tool; a photo doesn't convey the personality and energy of a person as strongly as a video does. Create individual intro videos to highlight their unique character traits, roles in the company, and special skills.

Don't forget to create an intro for your business, too! It's a chance for you to make a solid first impression with potential new customers or clients. A company intro video is a great place to share your brand's message and provide a glimpse into the tone of your organization.

• Advertising: As I mentioned above, videos convey personality and energy in a way that images can't; beyond that, you can share more information in a short video than you can with a picture. For these reasons and with the rate people consume them, it makes complete sense to use video in your digital advertising campaign.

• Content Marketing: From blog posts to social media, use videos to share knowledge, information, and insight to establish why you're an expert in your field. People love to feel connected with a business, and content marketing with videos can help with this, too! Create behind-the-scenes videos that allow your audience to peek into an often unseen side of the business.

how to choose a video platform

You decided to create an exciting video for your business! Fantastic! As you can see above, there are so many possibilities to incorporate this strategy into your organization. Looking beyond the video creation, however, do you know which platform you will upload your video to?

There are a few options out there, but the best one to choose depends on the goal of the video you're creating. Continue reading for the pros and cons of four video hosting platforms.

YOUTUBE

When people think of uploading videos to the web, chances are pretty high that they think of YouTube. Here are a few pros and cons of the video hosting giant.

Pros:

• Free: As a business, the cost is a factor in most if not all decisions. There is no cost to create an account and upload videos. YouTube is great for businesses that don't have a large budget or want to save a little money to invest elsewhere.

• Analytics: One thing YouTube does well is provide tools to track and monitor video stats and analytics.

• Audience: With more than a billion users, YouTube has the largest audience of web hosting sites.

• Compatibility: Sharing videos uploaded to YouTube on social media, email, and other digital applications are super simple with many places, including direct linking from the site.

Cons:

• Saturated platform: With the platform being free and having more than a billion users, the result is a saturated platform, making it harder to break through the noise to reach people organically.

• Ads: While ads are a great way for you to reach new viewers, ads playing before your video open the door to people leaving before viewing your masterpiece.

• Customer support: YouTube has an expansive library of help articles and forums that users can wade through to find the answer they need; however, getting in touch with an actual support person when you don't have time to dig is more complicated.

Bottom Line:

If you're on a tight budget and have a goal to reach as many people as possible, this is an ideal platform.

VIMEO

Although not as large as YouTube, Vimeo is a popular video hosting platform that comes with its own set of pros and cons.

Pros:

• Customizable player: Unlike YouTube, Vimeo provides users with customizable features, including colors and end screens, which can help with your branding efforts.

• Analytics: Vimeo offers users basic analytics to monitor their video performance and efforts with options to purchase additional metrics.

• Community: If your video is for public-facing, the community is an important consideration. Because this is a smaller platform with a mix of subscriber levels, the community of viewers is more active and engaged with the content.

Cons:

• Limited 'free' edition: You can sign up for a free account with Vimeo, which offers basic features, but getting more customizations and higher-end applications through the platform will cost you.

• No advertising opportunities: There is no advertising on the platform, which is great for viewers but means that building a community can be more challenging if you're using it for customer-facing applications.

• Storage: Unlike YouTube, Vimeo does not offer unlimited storage space. It provides different storage levels you can purchase based on your need and budget.

Bottom Line:

When engagement is a priority for your business, Vimeo provides the opportunity to build a tighter community through video.

WISTIA

You may not have heard of Wistia, and that's okay. Wistia is slightly different from YouTube and Vimeo, but it offers some excellent value for business users.

Pros:

• Business focused: As Wistia's Phill Nottingham states in his article, Wistia vs. YouTube: What's The Difference?, "[The platform] is designed exclusively to serve companies using video on their websites for marketing. Essentially, Wistia is ideal for 'on-site' videos, and YouTube is a social video platform that requires a unique strategy."

• Website friendly: Wistia, as a platform for businesses, makes embedding video easier and features better adaptability and loading speeds when compared to other video hosting sites

• Analytics: Like the other video sites discussed above, Wistia also includes analytics to monitor performance. As Phill points out, "Wistia's in-depth analytics show you how your audience consumes and interacts with your videos."

Cons:

• Not a social site: One thing to know about Wistia is that it's not a social site like YouTube. If your goal is to reach as many people as possible, this will be a challenge on the platform.

• Cost: Although there is a free account option, it is limited in the number of videos you can host, including the Wistia branding mark. The next step above the free option is a little steep for a smaller budget but worth the investment if you plan to use videos on multiple projects.

Bottom Line:

Use Wistia when your objective is to create a stunning video for your website as a tool to drive leads and conversions.

PANOPTO:

This video platform offers unique features, not in the above websites discussed thus far. Here are a few benefits and slight drawbacks to Panopto that will help you decide if it is right for your organization.

Pros:

• Employee training: If you're looking for a site where you can host your employee training, whether live or recorded, Panopto provides users with the ability to create, host, and share training videos.

• Employee onboarding: Like training videos, this website also features the option to create, host, and share videos to help your newest employees hit the ground running.

• Internal video sharing: Have videos you want to share with your team? Panopto allows you to store and search videos on your company's secure account.

• Application integration: Panopto integrates into some leading enterprise tools and applications, such as Share Point and Blackboard.

Cons:

• Cost: This platform does not offer a free account option. It does offer you the chance to request a free trial period to get a feel for the features and usability before committing to signing up.

• Not a social site: This is not a platform meant to share videos with customers; it is strictly for use within the organization. With that said, it's only a con if your goal is to create a video that you can share both inside and outside your organization.

Bottom line:

If you have the budget and will use video for internal use, this is a solid option!

FINAL TAKEAWAY

You're not limited to one type of video or hosting site. Determine which options are within your budget and will get the results you're after, and then go for it! 

If you need help deciding or would like to hire a video production company, we'd love to help you create your next business masterpiece. 

Tabrizi Productions is a boutique video production company with a mission to make video accessible for all. We offer authentic, affordable video storytelling for companies large and small. First, Tabrizi Production will work with you to identify which platform best suits your business. Then, we'll put together interview-style questions and start our docu-style video production process. 

We are locally serving Oakland, Palo Alto, Santa Clara, San Francisco, San Jose, San Mateo, and the surroundings of the Silicon Valley area. Sound like a fit? Fill out this form to schedule a free consultation.