Where do you store your photos, videos, etc?

A nonprofit legislative director recently posted this question to the NTEN list-serve:

"Does your organization use Flickr (or any of the cognates) for photos? We have activists across the country, and they frequently send us links to flickr of their events. This seems easy and useful. I don’t have to edit the photos for size, put them onto a page in our CMS, make sure the layout works for us, make sure the page is not so large as to cause anyone not on a broadband connection to go to a different page, etc. That’s a BIG advantage.

"BUT...

"I know that, once I go to YouTube or Flickr, I’m gone. There’s ALWAYS something I can look at that will interest and/or entertain me. I can search for sports videos, music videos, pictures from my friends’ vacation in Asia, photos of the rain forest from my friend who has joined a zen monastery in Central America, etc. The beauty of social networking sites is that it’s easy to put a lot there. The downside is that it makes them a complete time sink. I went on earlier this week to view some video that would elucidate a discussion my wife and I were having about sports, and we left the computer some two hours later, having found a billion other things to look at.

"What balance have you found? Is it worth it to have a lot of photos available, knowing that, sometimes, you’re going to lose your readers? Or do you keep them on your site? Or is there a mixed solution you’ve established?"

Our response:

Doesn’t it depend on what you want to accomplish?

If you want to keep people at your site, then lots of content there will help (and sending them to flickr won’t).

If you want to BRING more people TO your site, then lots of content at Flickr, YouTube, etc. will help do that.

It so often comes down to priorities. Should you do both? Sure. If you only have the time to do one? Then look at your site’s traffic and conversion rate. If you convert very few site visitors to become supporters, then you need to work on the site (and the number of photos probably isn’t the only thing to work on here). If you have a decent conversion rate, then you probably want to expand the traffic at your site, so off-site content like YouTube is a good idea.

Do you have other opinions? We'd like to know. Just find the "comments" link under this post and share your thoughts with us.