By now we have all heard of and know about the video-sharing platform, YouTube and most likely, view it’s content regularly. But not so much it’s understated cousin, Vimeo. At first glance, one may assume that the two video platforms serve the same function, but upon digging deeper, we found that the only thing these two platforms have in common is that they allow the community to upload video content to their sites.
It is said that video content makes up the bulk of all web traffic nowadays. So if you haven’t yet started thinking about how video might fit into your digital marketing strategy, now’s the time to start taking it seriously.
We looked at the well-known video content sharing platform, YouTube and compared it with the more niche video platform, Vimeo to provide you with some comparisons to assist you in finding the most appropriate for your business’s needs.
Here are some major differences between Youtube and Vimeo.
YouTube is the second largest search engine on the web, with Google being the first. So there is no competition there. If your business’s goal is to create a video that is searchable, for example, how to learn and trade in the stock market, your best bet is to put your video up on YouTube. It will show up in search results on YouTube itself and Google seems to prefer videos from YouTube compared to those posted on other platforms.
YouTube’s community is significantly larger than Vimeo’s and they are not afraid to speak their mind in the comments. YouTube’s community also produces a large amount of content when compared with Vimeo. But if you are looking for some constructive feedback on your video content, Vimeo is the recommended platform to post on. The Vimeo community is generally supportive and tends to offer helpful insights.
Aside from there being a huge amount of videos to choose from on YouTube, viewing and making content on YouTube is generally free and comes with unlimited storage for hosting. YouTube focuses on advertising to generate it’s income while Vimeo offers payment plans to make
Vimeo has a nifty and unique feature that allows you to update and make changes to videos that you have already uploaded without losing views, likes and comments. This is quite beneficial, especially if you realise later that you forgot to include something important or you made a mistake somewhere in the video. Unfortunately YouTube doesn’t offer this same feature, so if you need to change or update your video, it requires you to delete your file and re-upload it to the video sharing platform while in the process, losing all your views, likes and comments.
Copyrighted images and music are not allowed to be used in content that is uploaded to YouTube without direct permission from the artist or creator. YouTube will detect it and disable the video automatically, they take copyrighting infringement very seriously. On the other hand, Vimeo won’t take down your content and are not as severe in comparison. They rely on the user to possess good judgement and the community to enforce and report moralistic issues.
Choosing which platform is best for your business depends largely on what you want to accomplish while producing video content. If a creative community is what your business needs in order to connect with other video content creators and obtain helpful exposure in a specific niche then Vimeo is a great platform to post your videos to. But if your business marketing strategy needs a video platform that relies heavily on search optimization and ads then YouTube would be the most appropriate.
