We\’ve already talked about the video marketing and even video seo before, so now I want to look at the major video-sharing sites a bit closer and actually share with my experience submitting content to them.
What I love about all the major video sites is that the upload/submit button is well-seen from any page or section of the site even if you are a complete newbie. They have done everything possible to make this process fast and easy.
The second great thing about these sites is that the entire video submission process is quite simple and user-friendly. Some video-sharing sites are made in a bit more complicated way than the others but in most cases it\’s just a great experience to work with almost all of them when submitting video content. Most submissions are straightforward and painless.
I love the sites where they not only accept all possible video file types including the popular FLV format, but also simply allow the embed codes or even links to your video on any other popular video site to be added. Thus there is no waste of time with uploads, encodings, entering titles, descriptions, tags, etc. This should be a must but unfortunately not many video-sharing sites are providing with this option.
Let me outline some top and even worst video sites based on my experience and by different criteria.
The easiest to upload and to generally submit videos are:
http://www.helpfulvideo.com
http://www.funnyordie.com
http://www.kewego.com
http://www.livevideo.com
http://www.vidilife.com
http://www.vidiac.com
http://www.vimeo.com
http://www.vsocial.com
http://www.viddler.com
http://www.youtube.com
http://www.metacafe.com
http://www.motionbox.com
The most views of the corporate videos based on our own experience are brought by these sites:
http://www.5min.com
http://www.vator.tv
http://www.helpfulvideo.com
http://www.break.com
http://www.blip.tv
http://www.putfile.com
http://www.youtube.com
Top sites for video quality: (screen size, picture, and sound qualities)
http://www.dailymotion.com
http://www.metacafe.com
http://www.revver.com
http://www.livevideo.com
http://uncutvideo.aol.com
/videos/ – yes, our own video player brings one of the best video quality results.
Worst video-sharing sites:
One of the worst sites out of all is http://www.videosift.com – their community is very unfriendly and all they do is try to attack the video submitters. Waste of time for corporate and possibly other types of videos. Their interface and usability aren\’t very good also.
http://www.spike.com (powered by http://www.ifilm.com) is playing strict with corporate videos considering each video as a commercial (even though for some reason they have got this category when you submit to their site.) They will most likely refuse your video, so don\’t waste your time with them as well. Also the upload system isn\’t working properly.
http://www.clipshack.com is easy in uploading but terrible in finding your videos and actually getting them broadcasted. Once uploaded, they might disappear as easily as you had uploaded them.
http://www.jumpcut.com, http://www.5mins.com, http://video.msn.com, http://www.break.com, and http://uncutvideo.aol.com have some issues with uploading too but not as bad as the ones above.
Now let\’s get back to the good stuff:
Couple of hints to make sure you are accepted everywhere: don\’t abuse anything or anyone, and keep the entire video under 5 minutes.
Having your videos on major video-sharing sites is a great marketing tool by itself. Also, there are smaller video sites that are generated based on the video content from the majors, and there are video search engines that do the same, increasing distribution and exposure for your videos.
Why else video marketing is so great besides all the obvious reasons of traffic, brand awareness, leads, and conversions? Well, look here:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=mobilestorm&btnG=Search
If someone searches for our brand: mobileStorm – half of the results on the first page are our videos from popular video-sharing sites! And if go deeper in the results you\’ll find more and more video pages from the major video-sharing sites. Isn\’t it amazing? Are you convinced?
Shavkat Karimov
Director, Online Marketing
mobileStorm, Inc.
Every problem comes with a solution