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7 Best Video Hosting Sites for Businesses in 2021

video marketing tools for business

Want to know which are the 7 Best Video Hosting Sites for Businesses in 2021?

Read on!

Video is one of the top marketing tools, hands down. It has been so for some time, and its use in marketing will only grow as the years go by.

A marketing video is more interactive than, let’s say, a blog or even an infographic.

Nowadays, more and more companies and entrepreneurs create video content regularly to host interviews, give industry news, create live webinars, create product breakdowns, and much more. Video has become a more helpful medium for training and communication during work-from-home times due to the pandemic. This medium aids in training and education online, in place of the traditional systems.

Social distancing continues to separate team members, at times across whole countries and continents. Thus, it is essential to have a medium to translate visual information with ease, regardless of one’s geographical location.

Regardless of how you are using and creating video content, it is essential to find the best video hosting platform for your company in 2021.

In this article, there are some of the Best Video Hosting Sites for Businesses in 2021. Read on to find out their core pros and cons to find out the one ideal for your needs.

Here are Best Video Hosting Sites for Businesses:

  1. YouTube
  2. Swarmify
  3. Wistia
  4. SproutVideo
  5. Vimeo
  6. Dailymotion
  7. Brightcove

What exactly is video hosting?

When you create a video, it is not the end of the process. How will your customers or audience see it? You have to host it somewhere. Hosting means storing the video for playback and editing later on the internet.

There are many such video hosting services, each with its pros and cons. For instance, some have faster loading speeds, while others have better video editing tools. Some even offer in-built marketing tools to aid you in achieving your professional goals.

Here are the top 7 video hosting platforms.

YouTube

Sometimes the best things in life are free! 

That’s right! It is free, and that’s not all. YouTube is known to be the second-largest search engine on the planet, after Google itself. YouTube gives you free video hosting capabilities, opportunities to earn money from these videos, and a robust search engine through which people can find your videos. This means not just does your video content have to be very good, but your SEO skills and written content have to be top-notch as well.

Lots of people have used this platform to create their brands and even earn millions. With a regular presence on this platform, one can attain stardom.

Pros

  • It is the largest video hosting platform
  • People can search and find your content organically with its robust video search
  • It is easy to subscribe
  • One can advertise and earn through Adsense
  • It is easy to embed YouTube on your website
  • You have unlimited storage

Cons

  • The platform recommends other videos, which can be from your competitors. This can potentially drive your traffic away.

Swarmify

Swarmify is a paid service. You can get it for $49/month. This is a viral video hosting site from AppSumo. The benefits are many. Its users are amazed by the site’s fantastic video loading speeds and real-time cross-platform comparisons of video hosting sites.

Additionally, Swarmify won’t promote other people’s content after your videos, so you don’t need to worry about your customers running off to your competitors.

Pros

  • Admirable fast loading speeds
  • Unlimited bandwidth, storage, and encoding
  • Unbranded
  • Layout is distraction-free
  • Advanced analytics
  • Automated YouTube and Vimeo conversions

Cons

  • It can be expensive for small businesses without the AppSumo deal.

Wistia

Wistia is freemium. You are free to try it out. The free plan has limitations in 200 GB bandwidth each month, three videos, and just enough space to store your videos. After the free period, or when you want to create and keep more videos, you need paid plans. Paid plans begin at $99 per month. You can use Wistia to give your videos a brand and your company’s unique identity. It even gives you heat maps so that you can know what is engaging your audience more!

Wistia is known for its TV-like video quality and is both a platform developer and a video hosting site.

Lastly, Wistia ensures that Google indexes your videos by injecting Schema.org on your webpage. Wistia even lets you use videos for lead generation and in growing an email list.

Pros

  • You have more control over your content
  • It is easy to grow a following
  • You can put content behind digital gates to generate leads
  • White-label branding tools
  • The ability to autoplay your next video
  • In-depth reporting and analytics

Cons

  • Freemium is limited, and paid plans can be expensive.

SproutVideo

This is a paid video hosting platform that is built specifically for businesses. The price is $24.99. SproutVideo gives you many features to aid in marketing your services while staying secure at the same time.

SproutVideo has templates to make your video creation faster and easier. This also helps in making a video instead of static images greet quality video-first sites visitors. The platform offers strong security in the form of password protection, log-in protection, and single log-on.

Pros

  • Video analytics
  • Powerful security
  • Create custom video players and video playlists
  • Video marketing suite
  • Trusted by many Fortune 500 companies
  • You can make video sites with responsive and agile layouts

Cons

  • The learning curve can be steep

Vimeo

Vimeo is one of the more popular video hosting sites. What endears it to its users is that it is both a video hosting site and a video editor. With the Video Maker, you can edit videos and choose from the myriad templates. You can even add text, images, and effects to your videos to create a more professional product.

Vimeo is Freemium, which means you can try it out, but have to buy a paid plan of $7 a month sooner or later.

Vimeo connects you with freelance video creators in case you don’t want to do the work yourself.

Pros

  • Video editing
  • Live to stream
  • On-demand video creating talent base
  • Team collaboration
  • There is a free plan
  • Video marketing tool suite
  • Advances reporting and analytics

Cons

  • Most features for businesses are not there in the free plan.

Brightcove

Brightcove is unique as it helps you to create your streaming service. Brightcove offers you a lot of features, but the price is on the steep side. It costs $99 a month.

However, in return, the platform more than pays you back. It offers high definition and fast-loading videos. There are fantastic features like fast load speeds, live-streaming, and a video marketing tool suite. It also lets you monetize your creations through its advertising options.

Pros

  • Live to stream
  • OTT experiences
  • Run ads on your creations
  • Video analytics
  • Fast loading speed for videos
  • Video marketing integrations and tools

Cons  

  • Some users are unhappy about its search feature and reporting.

Dailymotion

Like YouTube, this too is a video entertainment and video search engine. The platform recommends videos to viewers just like YouTube. Unlike the other services listed above, the look and feel of Dailymotion are that of a news website. But instead of a news article, today’s most important or most seen/popular video stories. This includes news, sports, and most popular videos.

Dailymotion gives you on-demand video, live stream, and standard video hosting features.

Pros

  • Simple video uploading and hosting
  • Monetization of videos
  • Videos can be searched for organically and can be made to go viral or get featured
  • Connect to your social media channels
  • Basic video metrics

Cons

  • Slower than YouTube

Conclusion

Now that we have seen the 7 Best Video Hosting Sites for Businesses in 2021, it all comes down to picking one.

Choosing a video hosting platform is an important decision and should not be taken lightly. However, taking a well-informed decision makes making future decisions more straightforward.

Contact MIU for digital marketing which brings results

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How Long Should Your Video Content Be?

How Long Should Your Video Content Be?

Video length on different platforms

Videos are increasingly becoming the more popular choice when it comes to digital marketing. After all, videos perform better than images on almost every social media platform.

Consumers generally remember the content in videos better than in images. This is as videos are a lot more dynamic, and engage both our sight and hearing. Images, on the other hand, are static and only engage one sense: sight.

Many marketers believe in the myth that videos are expensive and time-consuming, and not at all worth the slight advantage they hold over images. Furthermore, plenty of consumers may leave a video halfway, which would reduce the effectiveness of using such a medium.

However, video marketing isn’t as disposable as you might think it is. 81% of businesses that use videos in their marketing strategy agree that it helps to engage your audience, deliver clear messages, and promote your brand, amongst other benefits. 95% of video marketers also noted that videos have helped increase understanding of their product or service.

First off, videos definitely provide a significant advantage over images. Imagine if you were to convey a large amount of information via images. Your audience will most likely lose interest upon seeing such a lengthy wall of text.

Meanwhile, videos are able to keep things concise while still answering the basic questions to help consumers make an informed choice. 64% of consumers tend to reach a purchasing decision only after watching a branded video.

Not only that, but videos are far more engaging as well. Videos attract three times more engagement on Instagram than sponsored ads. They help to create a space for you to build connections with your audience, making your brand more personalised for them.

So how long should your videos be?

Be it Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, every platform has its knicks and knacks. In order to make sure your video does the best it possibly can, you need to understand not only the features each platform offers but the type of audience they cater to.

Take for example the users on TikTok or Snapchat. They are often used to watching short clips on these platforms and would probably not appreciate it if they were suddenly forced to watch a long video. On the other hand, YouTube users are more accustomed to watching lengthier videos and therefore it is more acceptable to show them longer content. Different platforms are able to hold attention for different amounts of time, so keep that in mind.

  • Facebook

Facebook insights have discovered that videos “get shown organically to more people when they’re at least 3 minutes long.” Keep in mind that an organic Facebook video is one that is posted and gains exposure without any advertising spend.

At the same time, Facebook’s algorithm rewards engagement over duration, so it is not guaranteed that your video will get more exposure just because it is 3 minutes long. Therefore, make sure to focus not just on your video length, but your video message as well. By encouraging engagement such as likes, shares, and comments, your video is more likely to get a boost in their algorithm.

The same can not be said for Facebook Video Ads.

Marketers can also fork out a sum of money in order to get more views for their videos. For every person that watches your video for longer than 3 seconds, Facebook will charge you for a view.

Therefore, if you’re paying to promote a video ad, you need to get your main point across as quickly as possible. The viewers that Facebook push out your ad to might not necessarily be familiar with your brand or your content, so they might lose interest easily. If that’s the case, retention is the most important target — so cut to the chase and keep it short.

One additional tip that we recommend marketers to keep in mind is to optimise their videos to still be understandable even with the sound off. 85% of users on Facebook actually watch plenty of videos without the sound — perhaps they are in a public place — therefore, in order not to ostracise this crowd, the message of your video should be clear even while its muted.

  • Instagram

On Instagram, there are two types of videos you can post: IGTV as well as Stories and Reels.

The latter has restrictions on the length of your video which means that your videos generally cannot be longer than a minute. If you wish to post a video longer than 60 seconds, you would need to post it as an IGTV.

However, HubSpot has found that videos that receive the most comments on Instagram are on average 26 seconds long. It would be best to keep videos on Instagram shorter than a minute.

This is because people are often used to scrolling quickly through their feed on Instagram, and pausing to watch a long video actually goes against their muscle memory. As such, their attention span for videos on Instagram generally does not last as long.

Furthermore, it is not possible to rewind these short videos on Instagram, which means that people would most likely skip or move on if they miss a part of the video and are unable to understand the point of it.

  • Twitter

Twitter’s previous video duration limit was only a mere 30 seconds. Now, they have started allowing users to upload videos up to 2 minutes and 20 seconds long on their app, matching the character limit that they set for their tweets. However, this does not necessarily mean that you should post videos of that length.

In fact, Twitter users are also often scrolling through their feed quickly on that very same app, which means that they would be more accustomed to shorter content. Therefore, it is still recommended to keep video content under 30 seconds long.

If you want to get people to watch your long-form content on Twitter, you can create short teaser videos and link people out from there — be it to another social media platform such as Facebook or YouTube.

  • YouTube

The main difference between YouTube and other social media platforms is that on YouTube, users are actively seeking out videos to watch. Instead of having a curated feed for them to scroll through, users are browsing through video content with the mental preparation to watch them.

It is also significant to note that unlike Facebook’s algorithm, YouTube’s algorithm actually rewards videos that have more watch time by pushing them up in search results as well as users’ recommendations.

Therefore, longer videos do have the potential to do better on YouTube — as long as viewers are engaged and actually stick around to watch your lengthy video content. YouTubers are, in fact, recording longer videos, which has been observed to rank higher in search results.

Planning out a video marketing strategy may sound complicated, but break it down and you will see that it is easier than you think. Why not ask MIU if you have any further questions on video marketing? It is, after all, the marketing tool to look out for in 2021.

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Ad Review: Coronavirus Vaccine Confidence Campaign

Ad Review: Coronavirus Vaccine Confidence Campaign

“Because of This” campaign

With the Covid-19 vaccine finally perfected, the next important step for healthcare alliances is to encourage the public to get vaccinated. After all, this would help all individuals alike by reducing the number of Covid cases and improving herd immunity, hopefully eliminating it from existence. Watch as these healthcare alliances take to using touching stories to move us into getting a vaccine.

These public service announcements (PSA) come from Pfizer, BioNTech, as well as other alliances and are aimed to push the American public to get vaccinated. By using an interesting question-and-answer format, the video really highlights how Covid has really done a number on us.

Here’s the twist — the question-and-answer format is done in a reverse manner to drive home our longing for human connection. The question, which is revealed afterwards, then highlights how the vaccine can help make our desires possible.

Sharing clips from the lives of everyday humans adds on to the impact we really feel from these videos. We understand how wonderful it feels to be able to hug someone and see them face-to-face, something that has been restricted a lot since the beginning of the quarantine.

With plenty of groups weighing in on the decision to take the vaccine (particularly on social media), many Americans are on the fence on doing so. This makes the task for the healthcare alliances all the more difficult, but they aren’t giving up. By using four PSAs to emphasise on daily family interactions — ones that we wouldn’t have given a second thought about if it wasn’t for Covid — these alliances are aiming for our hearts in this leg of the campaign.

All PSAs end with the line “Science can make it possible. Only you can make it real.” before directing viewers to websites and links where they can get vaccinated. Here’s another video from part of the same campaign, titled “Hug”, in case you didn’t get how much we have missed living in a pre-Covid era where we took physical connection for granted.

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The Head to Toe of Video Marketing

The Head to Toe of Video Marketing

Although video marketing is fairly new, the increasing global internet penetration rate has propelled this form of marketing into the spotlight. With the evolution of social media and the rise of accessible online tools, many businesses have quickly adopted this strategy into their marketing plan.

Video marketing explained

It is a known fact that videos attain more reach than images or text, making it very helpful for driving leads and sales. In fact, 72% of consumers prefer learning about a product or service through a video.

Let’s face it — stories sell. Videos provide more engaging content than images or text ever could. Many consumers are often too busy or lazy to read product descriptions or research on a service and would prefer to see your business in action. Videos do just that — they captivate even the laziest due to how easy it is to consume information in a video.

To meet this growing demand, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn have all become ‘video first’ and created new video-friendly placements like ‘live’ broadcasting, and ‘stories’. At the same time, the popularity of video-based platforms like YouTube, Snapchat, and Tik Tok have exploded and become staples of online video consumption. – Biteable

video marketing image blog 1.jpg
Video marketing goes beyond just creating and placing advertisements online. There are many types of videos you could do for your business. Some of the more notable ones include:

  • Product demos
  • Testimonials and reviews
  • Vlogs
  • Explainer videos
  • Tutorials
  • Behind-the-scenes
  • Live streams

Videos are great SEO material — YouTube is the most used website after Google, and that includes its search engines! They are an effective way to reach a massive audience due to their wide exposure and ease of sharing.

In fact, it is important to remember that 76% of consumers would share a branded video with their friends if it was entertaining. So create fun entertaining videos to encourage social shares. These can increase traffic to your site and generate revenue for your company. Don’t believe us? Check out Biteable’s summary of video statistics here.

Tips for creating a successful video marketing strategy

In order to plan a good video marketing strategy, there are a few factors you have to keep in mind. A good video marketing plan includes the steps we have listed down below but is not limited to them. Read through and see if you agree.

1. Establish your goals

The first step of any campaign should always be to determine what your goals are. Is your main concern to bring awareness to your brand and grow your audience? Videos are a good way to introduce yourself to the public and can be the start of a long-term relationship with your consumers.

If your goal is to increase brand awareness, your KPIs should focus more on total video views, shares, and view duration, rather than sales.

2. Define your audience

Before you can jump into crafting a video for your marketing campaign, you need to understand your audience. Who do you want to make the video for? Who are you trying to attract? More importantly, what are their interests and preferences? Without such information, your campaign can easily turn aimless.

3. Decide the content

Okay, so you have your goals and your target audience. What’s next?

Now, you can confidently decide what kind of content you want to put out and the type of video best suited for it. What is the message you want to get across? What sort of video would help you achieve that? Product demos, for example, would help in driving sales, so consider that if sales are your main target.

Always strive to keep your video entertaining yet educational, no matter the type. You need to keep your viewers engaged for your video marketing to be effective. Do remember to keep in mind the budget you need for this as well — which may depend on the type and reach of the campaign you want to run.

4. Consider which platform to use

Are you planning to upload your video onto YouTube? Or Instagram? Depending on your platform of choice, you might have to consider certain factors. For instance, video dimensions. Clearly, a vertical video would fit more appropriately if you were planning to post it to Instagram, particularly as a story or IGTV.

You would also need to keep in mind the video length. No one wants to watch a 10 minute-long explanation of your business on Twitter. Of course, even if you were to post it on YouTube or Facebook, data has highlighted to us that 2 minutes is the best length for optimal engagement.

Another important factor to consider is that 90% of consumers watch videos on their mobile, and that more than 50% of all videos are watched on devices. According to Google, smartphone users are twice as likely than TV viewers and 1.4 times more likely as desktop viewers to feel a sense of personal connection to brands whose video ads appear on their devices. Now isn’t that powerful?

5. Have a clear CTA

CTAs are an essential component of any marketing plot. Needless to say, there should always be a call-to-action at the end of your video. This tells consumers the next step you want them to take and nudges them to take action.

6. Have a good title and thumbnail

Unfortunately, first impressions will always play a part in any sort of information consumption. If neither your title nor your thumbnail stands out, consumers will most likely scroll past without registering it. Captivate attention with an interesting title and thumbnail!

You can even conduct A/B testing on your homepage with Google Analytics to determine which thumbnail or which title would work best. Alternatively, you can also conduct A/B testing on Facebook with their Facebook Ads Manager tool — if that is the platform you intend to use.

7. Track data and analytics

The last step, though not the least, is to measure how well your video is performing. This is where the fruit of your video marketing efforts lies. Observe metrics such as number of views, click-through rates, social shares and more.

Here’s an additional tip: since video marketing overlaps with content marketing, you can definitely make use of whatever videos you have on hand to generate more content! Include them in your articles, blog posts, and even email marketing campaigns. After all, statistics have shown that emails with videos can increase click rates by 300%.

Just like the statistics above shows, we know how big of a difference a video marketing campaign can make. At MIU, we take each of our marketing campaigns seriously and as our own. Whether we are dealing with video campaigns, email campaigns, or content marketing, you can find all of our services right here. Have any marketing needs? Let us know.