Host your videos at YouTube or your own site?

A client and colleague were in a discussion about where the client should host their videos. The colleague rightfully pointed out that if we direct visitors to a YouTube page, we run the risk of having them get distracted. The client likes the ease of hosting there.

My colleague is right, of course -- we don't want email subscribers or site visitors to end up at YouTube watching skateboarding accident videos, or whatever.

But so is his client. Hosting the video on your YouTube nonprofit account has great value. There are about as many YouTube views as there are Google searches, so a strong presence there will help people who've never heard of you find your videos if they're searching on relevant terms (which means your video pages in YouTube need to be search-optimized as well as your landing pages at your site).

You should already have a nonprofit account with YouTube. For more information on the benefits available to nonprofits at YouTube and the rest of the Google empire, see http://www.google.com/nonprofits/

In addition, it's easy and free to host your videos at YouTube.

So, it seems to me that you'll want the best of both worlds. You can have that by embedding the html code from YouTube in the code of your landing page. For example:




This way, you can design a great landing page at your site to “capture” visitors and keep them at your site, while still hosting the video at YouTube and enjoying the benefits of YouTube exposure.

Web 2.0 video

Thanks to Robert Prisament for sharing this great way to express the potential (so far) of the web.

Great use of video in a personal fundraising page

Rob Prisament is a long-time friend and colleague who works at March of Dimes. He has a great personal page on their fund-raising site that includes a video (hosted at YouTube). It also has a very touching letter from the parents of a premature child.

Rob's ability to poke fun at himself (he's actually a much nattier dresser than he appears in his video) and his willingness to display it to the world deserve your attention, and maybe a small gift (call it online donor cultivation research).

Rick...