First off, I want to express a warm thank you to Steve & Ernest for inviting me to participate in edSocialMedia. Adoption of social media is becoming an increasingly important component of school communications and I’m thrilled to share my thoughts & ideas with the edSocMedia community.
My first post aims to jump start a conversation about using video in your social media outreach- that will likely carry over to Thursday’s bootcamp at Montclair Kimerbley Academy — by focusing on a question that I kicked around when I decided to feature video on AdmissionsQuest: Youtube, Vimeo or both?
Initially I saddled up with Youtube- its sheer size (70,000,000 videos hosted on Youtube as of March 08; 200k publishers), cost (not a dime!) and devoted audience made setting up a channel a no brainer. The best part? Folks found my channel within a few hours of my first upload making me an instant member of the Youtube universe.
A few weeks later I set up shop on Vimeo by claiming a boarding school channel and uploading my first set of videos. The channel enjoyed fewer views than its Youtube counterpart, but the video quality made up for a lack of eyeballs (more on that later). I eventually upgraded to their pro option for a small annual fee ($50 per year) and saw an even greater bump in quality.
Checkout the same video hosted on both services for comparison purposes:
From a quality standpoint, I find the colors in the Youtube video less crisp than the Vimeo example. It seems more washed out than my Vimeo hosted video- something I’ve noticed consistently whenever I compare my work across the two services (even when I wasn’t a paid Vimeo member).
From what I understand, It has something to do with Vimeo’s conversion process, but I’m the first to admit that I don’t really get the mechanics. All I know is that I like the way it looks on the screen.
My testing led me to favor Vimeo, but I ultimately decided to maintain channels on both sites. Why? It boiled down to two reasons.
- Access
Youtube’s massive audience (i.e. millions of viewers) makes going to where the party is a must. It’s hard to ignore the fact that millions of videos are viewed each month on their site. I wanted a piece of the action too. - Quality
Vimeo, on the other hand, gives me the quality that I need for embedding videos on my site. An important point considering that a good percentage of my video views come from people visiting my site.
So here’s the rule for AQ… anytime I publish a video it goes to both communities. Youtube for eyeballs; Vimeo for its outstanding quality and embedding flexibility.
Yes, uploading to two sites is a bit more work, but the benefits are worth the small investment of time.
