Whether you’re sharing a video on your website, Facebook, Twitter, your blog, or anywhere – the only place you should upload and serve the video from is YouTube. Why? Here are some reasons:
- YouTube videos work on pretty much every browser and operating system. While Facebook announced some newly uploaded videos will now work on iPhones and iPads (they don’t now because Facebook mainly uses Adobe Flash for videos, and Flash doesn’t work on any Apple mobile software), not every Facebook video will work. You might not have an iPhone, but 50% of mobile web browsing is coming from iPhones.
- YouTube is trusted and will embed (or play) without any issues on all websites and platforms without any security warning. Facebook is also blocked by many corporate firewalls at the workplace, but often, YouTube is not.
- YouTube’s content distribution network is unmatched. While the video you want to show may just be for your blog, using YouTube to play your video opens it up to a huge audience who might not follow your blog. Your video could show up when people are searching on YouTube, they could watch your video, then visit your website or blog.
- YouTube is owned by Google, so you can bet videos being searched for on Google will show YouTube videos with a higher relevance then a Facebook video.
- YouTube videos are easy to share on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media channels. Depending on your privacy settings, trying to share a video on Facebook might require a Facebook account to view that video.
- YouTube is even integrated into many TVs and BlueRay players now, opening your content to even more potential viewers.
- Why re-invent the wheel and try to use your own “custom” video player on your website? YouTube is free, and it’s a really awesome all-season performance wheel.
Remember, when properly used, social media can help you distribute content to a much wider audience with little effort. YouTube might not be a social media buzz-word like Twitter is these days,