New Video Strategy: Fewer Sites
So for the last 2 years, my video distribution strategy has been to distribute to as many sites as possible. Blip.tv carries the main podcast feed, then others like YouTube, Veoh, Vidder, Revver, and so on, also have my “channel.” So I was distributing everywhere.
This is the same strategy preached by Wine Library TV’s Gary Vaynerchuk, so I am not alone.
But now I have completely switched. I am only going to distribute my Mac podcast to two places: Blip.tv for its ability to serve as a podcast platform, and YouTube because of its reach an ad share program.
Why the turn-around? Here’s a few reasons:
— It takes effort to distribute to multiple sites. While much of this effort can be handled by TubeMogul’s service, I don’t like relying on TubeMogul, or any other single service, for this kind of thing. If TubeMogul went away, or they insisted on charging me, then I’d have to stop distributing to most of the sites anyway.
— Having the same content on multiple sites dilutes my search engine traffic. A single MacMost video would appear in 12 places, plus MacMost.com itself. So people were being directed all over the place when coming up with search results that included my videos. With just MacMost.com, YouTube.com and Blip.tv, I can control that better.
— Most of the smaller video sites are all about community. Without being a participant in that community, I can’t hope to gain ground there. And I don’t have time to participate in all of those communities. So better to focus on my own community at MacMost.com.
— Most of those smaller sites gave me no traffic at all anyway. Together, they accounted for less than 1% of my views, while MacMost.com, YouTube.com and Blip.tv combined for the other 99%.
— Making changes is easier with fewer sites. I ran into this two weeks ago. I had a spelling mistake in a title that I didn’t catch until the video went out on TubeMogul. It took me the rest of the day to correct all of the titles for all of the videos, mostly because some of the sites didn’t make the videos live until hours later. It was pain I don’t want to repeat.
So there you go. You’ll find new episodes of MacMost Now only at the home site, YouTube and Blip.tv. You can still watch it as a podcast, of course, through iTunes. But that is a function of Blip.tv.