For years I've surprised business people and bloggers by letting them know that YouTube is the second largest search engine on the Internet. Once you hear it, it's no surprise. And in case I need to spell it out: I love YouTube. It's awesome.
Now the logical conclusion is that if it's one of the sites with the most searches and traffic, then it must be a great place to place videos. Right? Businesses should upload video to YouTube. Bloggers too. Right?
But what if that conclusion isn't right?
What if YouTube has one agenda and you have another?
You and YouTube may have differing agendas
Let's think about this for a second. What is YouTube's agenda?
Well, it's a Google property, right? And how does Google generate income?
Ads.
So the longer you hang around YouTube, the more likely you'll see an ad, right?
And that means it cares about two things:
- Showing you ads
- Getting you to watch more entertaining videos
Now think about your own agenda.
We've been hearing that video is just another form of content – one that has to be leveraged in our overall content management strategies.
At least that's what Jason tells me all the time.
My agenda includes:
- Creating a more engaging moment between my audience and me
- Encouraging my audience to take actions
- Growing my list of people who I engage with
- Controlling every aspect of my brand
Notice that last one? Yeah – I like control. I want to make sure that YouTube, in its effort to engage you for its own purposes, doesn't show you a “related” video that distracts you from my agenda.
So I'm trying a different Video Hosting Platform
Pretty cool, huh?
Businesses & Bloggers
If you're a business that is trying to incorporate more video, you may want to check them out as well. And if you're a blogger that's getting decent traffic, and want control over (insert anything here), then Wistia may be the right choice for you too.
If you do check them out, come back and let me know – I want to watch some videos on your site!