YouTube vs Vimeo | Where Should You Post Your Video?

This article is primarily for small businesses and solopreneurs.  Most of the mid-size companies I work with have a video hosting platform like Wistia or Vidyard, so the information on Vimeo isn’t relevant. But, if you aren’t sure how to use YouTube properly, then this article is still worth the read.

Unfortunately, unlike a photo, you can’t just put a video on your website. It needs to be hosted somewhere else (a video hosting platform) and then you embed the video link on your page.

That leaves us with an important question:

Where do I post my video?

And it’s right at this step when I see certain faux pas where people unwittingly break the “rules.”

Rules? What Rules?

Our digital behavior is governed by social codes the same way in-person behavior is. In content marketing especially, context is key. Each platform has it’s own culture and expectations. If you don’t adhere to the code, you stick out like a guy wearing a tuxedo to a pool party. And these missteps can negatively impact your brand.

Hopefully I can help you avoid that with a proper understanding of YouTube and Vimeo. I’m not going to review them or put them head-to-head because that’s just silly. They serve different, yet valuable, purposes and you’ll need to use them both.

Vimeo

What it is: A video portfolio site with marketing functionality

Best use case: Hosting videos on webpages

1. Overview

To understand Vimeo and it’s culture requires a bit of a history lesson. It was originally designed for video creators. 

Vimeo was where videographers and filmmakers shared their work. It was a community-based portfolio site with an active forum. The community was great in its heyday. But one day, they decided to shut down the forum. This single decision was nearly a death nail.  It drove the community off the platform and onto YouTube. But, people continued to maintain their professional portfolio on the site.

Over the past few years, however, they saved the product by adding valuable video marketing features. They’ve become the most valuable and affordable small business video hosting and marketing platform.

2. Code of Conduct

Keep in mind, Vimeo is still a portfolio site. Unlike YouTube, no one is ever going to Vimeo hoping to learn something or solve a problem. They go there to search for visual references, or watch a professionally produced video. It’s not a content marketing channel and there’s no sense trying to build an audience there.

Unlike Wistia, Hubspot, or Vidyard, your videos on Vimeo are public and searchable. This could be good or bad. Just know, it’s not an internal lock-box like those hosting platforms are.  BUT, you can adjust the visibility settings to “Hide from Vimeo” and still embed it on a webpage.

This is useful if you have gated pages in a funnel, and you’re not trying to broadcast a sales letter video to the world.

3. Cost

And though it does have a free option, to really get the most value out of it, you’ll need to upgrade to one of the paid plans. This is really why I LOVE Vimeo. Since it’s targeted at video creators, who are generally broke, it’s CHEAP and a complete steal when compared to Wistia. At the time of writing, I’m on the Plus plan which is only $84/year. And honestly, it’s all the functionality most people will ever need.

4. Noteworthy Features

• You can mark videos as unlisted or hidden from Vimeo and still embed them on your webpage.

• Customizable video player. Depending on your subscription level, you can choose which controls are visible, and a brand color, and even place a logo watermark. This makes your videos look really clean on your site.

• CTA button that can pop up at the end screen allowing you to direct a viewer into a funnel immediately after viewing.

YouTube looks tacky on a website. It doesn’t provide customization of their player, and will show your viewer random ads (even if you haven’t monetized your video). This is why I recommend Vimeo for small business web hosting.

Youtube

What is is: A content marketing platform

Best use case: Organic search traffic

1. Overview

YouTube is a mix between a blog and public access television. If you can really wrap your head around that analogy, the platform will make complete sense.

It’s common knowledge that second to Google, YouTube is the most popular search engine. This is why it’s very important to have your content on YouTube. Because people will likely research your company on it.

What if you don’t have anything for them to find?

If you’re lucky, they don’t find anything at all and go to Google. If you’re not so lucky, they’ll find someone else’s content about your business. Best-case scenario, it’s  a positive review.  But it’s too risky to leave that up to chance. You need to control your brand narrative and your key words.

You need content on YouTube.

2. Code of Conduct

As I mentioned, YouTube is like a blog. It’s optimized for search-based content. So your video titles, descriptions, tags, etc. are very important. If you wish to leverage YouTube, you need a good SEO strategy. You’ll also need regular content. 

This is the biggest misconception about YouTube. Unlike Vimeo, it’s not a portfolio site. That’s not to say you can’t have evergreen videos on the platform, but the expectation is that you publish consistent, regular content, just like a blog. If your goal is to grow your channel and get subscribers, you have to treat it like a channel on public access television.

People will only subscribe if they can see that you are posting content regularly.  Otherwise, why subscribe to a dead, stagnant channel?  There’s no value in it.

To that respect, a social faux pas on YouTube is when a company dumps a batch of videos all at once. This is a very “corporate” or “institutional” thing to do. It signals to everyone that your brand has no idea how to use the platform.

I find it hilarious that Google (which owns YouTube) does this all the time.

If you do have a batch of videos to publish on YouTube, I recommend staggering the releases over a few weeks. You can always have their visibility as “Unlisted” until their scheduled time to release, this will still allow you to share and embed the video as needed. 

One final thing: beware of trolls. The community is active on YouTube and full of anonymous keyboard warriors. You’ve been warned.

3. Cost

Free.

Not only that, but YouTube will even pay you to post content after you channel hits certain benchmarks to become monetized. It’s not gonna move the needle at all, but a nice carrot nonetheless.

4. Noteworthy Features

• It’s free and you can post as many videos as you like.

• The community is active and more likely to click on your links in your descriptions. They’re actually used to this.

• The channel branding is a nice bonus.

Take Advantage of Both

Simplest advice I can give you is post your brand films to both platforms. Anything on your website should be hosted on Vimeo anyway, but it’s smart to also have them on YouTube. They’ll likely attract organic views this way.

If you have a content channel, only post that content on YouTube. There’s no sense cross posting to Vimeo.

Lastly, when you do post your videos, please keep the following in mind.

• Use a “clickable” thumbnail that helps to advertise your video. Don’t just select a random frame from the video. Create a custom thumbnail.

• Do some basic SEO research and use a searchable title. Or any title, for that matter. Seriously, not typing a title is just lazy. You’d be surprised how many people just upload the file and leave the name as “Client_Delivery01.mp4”.

• Write a description of the video and include a CTA link to your website or a relevant next step. The description will help with organic search, and they might just follow the link.