Vimeo or YouTube: Which is better for your business?

Video is one of the fastest-growing content mediums available. More and more people are choosing rather than accessing information in other ways.

Creating videos is a great way to promote your company. So, you’ve planned, filmed and edited your video perfectly. Now what?

If you don’t take the distribution seriously, it can undermine all the time and effort you put into creating the video in the first places.

One of the first distribution questions you will have to answer is which hosting and sharing platform – YouTube or Vimeo.

Answering this question isn’t straightforward and ultimately depends on your company objectives and what you want to achieve with a video.

Do you want to target the largest possible audience, or reach a niche community with specific interests? Is it more important to have the video display in Google search results or on your own website?

To help you decide which one to use to meet your business objective, we have summarised the key arguments in favour and against each.

YouTube for business benefits

Almost unlimited viewers

Founded in 2005, YouTube has more than 1.3bn users, with 30 million visitors accessing almost five billion videos every single day.

If you want to expose your company to the mass market – particularly younger audiences – then YouTube is certainly an option worth considering.

Get found by searchers

Like its parent company Google, YouTube facilitates billions of searches each day. If your content is informative, then there is fair chance that people searching for videos in your industry will stumble across your company.

In 2015, Google reported that YouTube searches containing the phrase “how to” increased 70% in just one year. This gives marketers a fantastic opportunity to get found by people that are interested in the industry (for more information, see Google’s ‘How to Fix a Toilet’ visual essay).

There is also evidence that Google favours YouTube videos in its search engine results, meaning your videos should get more traffic from people searching on Google as well as people searching on YouTube.

Free to use for businesses

Get unlimited storage capacity plus access to powerful analytics tools and a range of other features, all for free.

Add interactive call to action

As well as getting in front of potential customers, YouTube also helps you drive conversions with ‘clickable hotspots’ that can be used as interactive call to actions.

You can encourage them to watch other videos, insert a link to a product on your website or ask them to subscribe to your channel.

YouTube for business drawbacks

Huge competition

YouTube’s biggest asset – its huge audience and creator base – is also one of its biggest drawbacks.

It means that there is huge competition between videos about different topics. And there are no guarantees that your video will outrank competitors, even if it is better quality.

Ads

But the biggest drawback to hosting your videos on YouTube is that they may slap an advert on the front of your video.

At best, this will divert your audience’s attention. At worst it will push your potential customers towards one of your competitors.

Vimeo for business benefits

No pre-roll ads

Don’t worry about your viewer’s attention being drawn to something shiny and prevent competitors pinching your audience by advertising on your videos.

Customizable player and embed features

With professional versions of Vimeo, you can add your own logo to the video player, create a custom outro and use other features that make your company look a bit more professional.

This is one of the key advantages for businesses, especially if your key objective of your video is to publish it on your website as a way of converting customers.

Place content amongst other quality content

The standard of the videos on Vimeo is generally of a higher quality than on YouTube.

Vimeo describes itself as the high-quality home of video hosting and watching, and simply publishing your content on Vimeo could make it look more professional in the eyes of your customers.

If you are looking to create fantastic quality polished videos, and have it displayed alongside other high-quality content, then you should consider Vimeo. Here’s the most viewed video on Vimeo:

The Mountain from TSO Photography on Vimeo.

The most viewed videos on YouTube are all music videos.

Groups and search feature

One of the best things about Vimeo is that site editors curate the videos into playlists. People can search through groups and channels that they are interested in, driving good engagement with other viewers.

Unlike YouTube, where algorithms are murky, Vimeo editors do a good job of selecting the best content that they believe people will want to watch.

No trolls

The YouTube comment section is a hot bed of criticism, anger and general nastiness. These kinds of comments can undermine what your company is trying to do when it uploads comments.

Vimeo comments are usually nicer and more constructive. Vimeo’s community guidelines say: “We request, nay—we insist!—that while you are on Vimeo you respect the people you encounter, as well as their videos. You are free to disagree and/or provide critical feedback, but please keep it respectful.”

Vimeo for business drawbacks

Smaller audience

The biggest downside to video is that it doesn’t have YouTube’s audience. At 170 million, the user base of Vimeo pales in comparison to YouTube’s viewing figures.

If your aim is to reach as many people as possible with a video, then YouTube is preferable. You may be able to achieve comparable viewing results with Vimeo, but you will have to do a lot more of your own promotion.

WELL GROOMED from Rebecca Stern on Vimeo.

Vimeo videos often appeal to niche interests, but can be very powerful.

Not as good in Google searches

It is worth repeating, Google favours YouTube results in its search engine rankings. Again, this means that your videos are likely to be seen by more people on YouTube compared with Vimeo.

Vimeo does allow you to optimise videos for SEO purposes, but it would be unlikely to rank above comparable YouTube videos.

Cost

A free version of Vimeo is available, but if you intend to use it for business purposes and want to guarantee you have enough storage space then you may want to invest in Vimeo’s Pro or Business packages.

Vimeo Pro is available from £14/month and gives you up to 20GB of hosting per month. YouTube, on the other hand, is free and there are no storage limits.

What to choose

Whether you choose Vimeo or YouTube will ultimately come down to what you want to achieve with the video.

If you want the video to be seen by as many people as possible and want people searching for key terms to be able to find your company’s content, then YouTube will almost definitely be the best option.

If you want to make a more considered and attractive piece, that is curated alongside videos on a similar topic then Vimeo may better fulfil your organisational aims.

Vimeo may also be a better hosting option if your primary aim is to host videos to embed on your website because Vimeo gives you more options to customise video playback.

You can choose to use both – uploading to Vimeo for the superior embed features and to YouTube to generate more traffic, but there is a chance that the videos could cannibalise each other’s traffic, blunting the impact of your videos.

Hyperfine Media help all clients distribute videos in the most effective way possible. Get in touch for more information. Call: 0161 820 2369.