Distributing & Promoting your ‘Video’ or ‘Commercial’ online

Server Bandwidth: Video files can be large (this matters for uploading and viewing).  Smaller website hosting companies need to be allocated their available bandwidth resources between uploads to, and downloads from the server. If there are a lot of demands on the server’s bandwidth at the same time, this can result in limited ‘upload’ bandwidth of a single server, which can result in very slow upload speeds, or technical issues for large files being uploaded (such as video content).

File Size Limits / Storage Space Limits: Most web hosting companies have a limit to the size of files that can be uploaded to each website (that they provide a hosting service for). This limitation could mean that you can only upload very short videos (ie. smaller video file sizes) - as file sizes for video content can often run to several Gigabytes (even after compressing the file with compression software – such as HandBrake).

Even if you get your first video uploaded successfully, uploading subsequent videos could easily result in you exceeding the overall limit to the maximum storage space allocated for your website. Understandably these smaller Web Hosting companies need to impose some limit to allocated space for each website in order to manage their available resources (& allocate time for backups etc).

There are also potential considerations of available downloading bandwidth (for downloading from your website’s hosting company).  This is likely as the video file will be hosted on a shared server (with other company’s websites also competing for a finite amount of available bandwidth).  This could become even more important as your video starts to achieve high levels of views.

Viewing issues such as slow loading of video and ‘freezing/pausing’ of video content when the video is being viewed is likely to result - as the device they are viewing on waits for the content to download completely.

At ImageLink Film & Media, we recommend implementing the option of hosting your video online (on a professional Video Hosting Platform) and linking to this video on your website.  For example, you can upload your video to YouTube or Vimeo and then use the ‘Embed’ Code to embed the YouTube video directly onto your website.  YouTube now include this ‘Embed’ option as part of the ‘Share’ option that appears under all YouTube videos.  This means that it has never been easier to embed a video from YouTube onto your company website. This is the easiest solution and may be the most effective for your requirements.

The embedded Video Player software provided by the Video Hosting Platform (with the URL code for your video) will be able to automatically detect relevant technical data relating to the viewer - such as what type of device the viewer is using (eg. iPad, laptop, mobile phone) as well as the type of browser and the internet connection speed. It will then serve the appropriate version of the video for the optimum viewing experience (considering the variables just mentioned). The video player software provided (with the URL code) by the third-party Video Hosting service will not require any additional software plugins or configuration by your website designer or IT personnel.

YouTube is one of the most important video sharing options to consider for uploading your video. As well as being the biggest video sharing website worldwide, it is also the world’s second largest search engine. There are over 300 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every single minute and over 5 billion videos viewed on YouTube every 24 hours. YouTube has a huge audience and by uploading your video to YouTube it will have the potential to show up on any searches on the video hosting platform.

As an option for uploading your video YouTube offers a number of advantages.  It is totally free.  To upload your video to YouTube is fairly straight forward.  As well as using YouTube as a Content Marketing platform you have the option of running shorter Commercial Style videos as adverts to run with videos featured content (for a fee!). Depending on your objectives this option might be worth exploring.

It has a built in ‘likes’ option as well as providing the option for the viewers to ‘Share’ your video on a number of social media platforms.  The Social Media platforms presented when the Share option on YouTube is selected include Facebook, Twitter, Google +, Reddit, Blogger, Tumbler, Linked-In, Wykop, Pinterest, StumbleUpon and LiveJournal.

YouTube also facilitates the adding of clickable link buttons in your uploaded video. These can be used to encourage viewers to log on to your websites, or view your next video or subscribe to your YouTube Channel. These are examples of a CTA (Call to Action) and have been shown to be a most effective marketing tool when they appear near the end of the video.

YouTube Analytics

YouTube also provides very useful analytics tools to help you monitor the quantity and quality of views of the video. You can use these tools to help you monitor the number of views, likes, shares etc for each video, as well as seeing the geographic locations of your viewers. It also provides vital statistics relating directly to your video content including how long they spent watching the video. These statistics can be used when analysing how your video is performing and deciding if there is anything that needs improvement for future videos.

YouTube Comments section

The YouTube ‘Comments’ section enables you to receive feedback and to interact with your viewers. This can be a great opportunity to engage with the video’s viewers, which may include existing customers as well as potential new customers.

Note: There is always the possibility of ‘Trolls’ deciding to put some of their unwanted negative input in the comments section. However, because you can have your own YouTube Channel you have the option of removing any comments that are not being helpful to the discussion. If you are not happy with the comments overall regarding the content for a particular video, YouTube gives you the option as the YouTube Channel owner disabling comments completely for any video on your channel. This is very unlikely for promotional business videos but is useful to know about all the same. 

Setting up your own ‘YouTube Channel’

Videos uploaded to YouTube need to be uploaded to a specific ‘channel. At ImageLink Film & Media, we can assist you with setting up your own channel if you do not yet have one set up. Once your YouTube Channel has been set up you can use the channel to host all of your videos.

By having your own company (or individual) YouTube Channel, viewers can ‘Subscribe’ to your channel.  Once subscribed, then they will receive an email alerting them every time you upload a new video. Because they have already shown their interest in the content of your videos, they are likely to view follow up videos. As subscribers to your channel, they will also have the option of browsing the video content on the channel (which will result in increased numbers of views for each video). Increased ‘Views’, ‘Likes’, ‘Shares’ all helps your video rank higher on YouTube searches.

Note: You can provide an individual title and description for each video that you upload to your channel. It is always important to be mindful to use keyword phrases in the title and description so as to increase the chances of your video being displayed for relevant searches. You are also given the option to include ‘Tags’ for your video.  These are not available to the viewing public but are used by search engines to learn more about the content of the video, and so increase the chances of your video displaying in the search results.