You’ve decided to use video content for your accountancy firm and gone through the creative process of producing what you’re absolutely sure is compelling content for your future clients.
Now that your video is ready, where do you publish it? Do you post it to Vimeo or YouTube?
Where you post your video content makes a difference in how well it will be seen by the people you want it to reach. As with most marketing questions, the answer is “it depends”, so there are key factors to consider and benefits to both platforms.
Your audience might be better reached via Vimeo or YouTube.
The audience on Vimeo is considerably smaller than YouTube, but it’s more specific. If you’re targeting creative industries, Vimeo could be the way to go. Groups on Vimeo allow you to share your video with users who are specifically in creative industries. If your target market is in the U.S., 30% of Vimeo users are in the US.
But don’t commit to Vimeo just yet because 73% of adults in the US use YouTube and a whopping 80% of adults in the UK use YouTube. Likely as not, your client is there, too, and YouTube does make your video easier to find.
Search features are important to consider.
YouTube is the second biggest search engine after Google; bigger than Bing, Yahoo!, Ask, and AOL combined. YouTube videos rank for Google keywords, and users search for videos directly on YouTube so there is a lot of opportunity there to get your videos found organically.
Our Head of Branding, Col Gray, started publishing videos on YouTube a few years ago. Col owns his own design business, but works exclusively with PF for any accountant clients. To build the business with the target audience of business owners, Col started recording videos with helpful design tips, and he was sure sharing these on YouTube would get him more reach. (His videos are extremely useful for accountants, too: you’re very welcome to become one of his subscribers!)
What’s interesting about Col’s fascinating graph is the extremely slow start. This is reflective not only of video content, but ANY content you share as an accountant (or indeed in any business!). In the first year or so, Col would not have been blamed if he just gave up. Clearly it wasn’t going anywhere, and he wasn’t getting enough subscribers. But the growth is exponential the longer you move forward.
When you stick with it, organic search on YouTube is a useful tool.
But don’t commit solely to YouTube just yet, because it matters what you’re doing with your video after you’ve recorded and published it.
Bonus features might change your mind.
When you’re embedding your video in your website, Vimeo is the way to go. We don’t recommend uploading videos to your website directly through WordPress because they won’t stream as quickly as if they are embedded. Your website will slow down, people won’t be able to access either the video or any of the other pages as quickly, and they’ll give up and leave.
When using Vimeo to embed videos, you can choose whether to show the video’s title or not, and it won’t show ads afterwards like you get with YouTube. You don’t want an ad for another company (or worse, an inappropriate video) to show up on an embedded video on your website. Or on social media for that matter.
(When you do share your video to social media, make sure you include captions. According to a survey by Verizon Media, 83% of people watch videos on social media with the sound off, and 80% are more likely to watch a video with captions.)
Your choice of YouTube or Vimeo depends on your goals.
The way you’re going to use your video will mean that one platform or the other will ahve features you need. YouTube allows you to have an interactive call to action on your video, allowing your potential clients to immediately fill out a diagnostic or schedule an appointment with you.
Vimeo allows you to update and replace a video without using stats. So, if you record a video regarding a service you provide and then later update it with new branding or featuring a different team member, you can easily update the existing video and keep the stats. If you’re selling an online course, Vimeo is better because your audience needs to subscribe to see videos.
And the winner is…???
Drum roll, please…
Actually, there is no clear winner. It’s not one or the other: it’s both!
It’s wise to put your video on both YouTube AND Vimeo! This way, you’re using one for searchability, one for embeddability.
You’ll still want to consider how you’ll be using video to support your marketing goals. If you’re considering making video a bigger part of your marketing this year, join our Accelerator course, where you’ll gain more confidence and clarity around your marketing plan and get feedback regarding how to improve videos you record. you’ll craft a complete marketing plan through 12 weekly sessions.