The Top 3 Video Platforms for 2017

The Top 3 Video Platforms for 2017

Once you’ve created video for your business, you need to know where to share it.

You cannot be in business these days without having heard about how wonderful video can be for conversion. Everything you’ve heard is true: product videos can increase purchase intent by as much as 80%; home page videos can keep visitors on your website 2 minutes longer; about me videos can build immediate trust.

You’ve done all the right things: gave your marketing department the go-ahead to add video to the mix, planned your content strategy and  hired a video production company. Your video is shot and edited and ready to roll out.

Where will you get the most traffic? Which platform will generate the most shares? What other platforms might you be missing.

Here are the top three video platforms leading the pack in 2017.

Top of the list, still, it YouTube. With more than 1 billion visitors per month, YouTube generates most internet video traffic. If you have a business, you must have a YouTube channel: Google owns YouTube, and having a channel that is populated with your video and the appropriate keywords is good for your SEO. While you’re there, investigate other channels and subscribe to those you like or feel will add value to your customers. One more note: take a minute to comment on the videos you watch on other channels. You might pick up a subscriber or two, but you’ll also quietly build some SEO.

In November of 2014, Facebook officially bypassed YouTube for video engagement. By December 2014, 80% of all video interactions on the internet came from Facebook. Truthfully, the numbers may be padded by Facebook’s auto-play feature that starts a video as you scroll through your newsfeed, but that’s not what is important. Natively uploaded videos (videos posted directly to Facebook and not through an outside link) are quickly becoming the norm among big brands – Kleenex just launched a video campaign exclusive to Facebook and supported by promoted posts.

Simply put, this is the one to watch this year. Initially a photo-sharing platform, Instagram introduced video to its platform in June 2013, 6 months after Twitter introduced Vine (now defunct). Instagram has been ramping up the video capabilities over the years, moving from a restrictive 20-second video limit to a more robust 60-second window, allowing more room for storytelling. And now, Instagram has integrated Boomerang into the platform – a video application that allows you to record looping video – great for fun, spur of the moment video.

If the marketing surveys are correct in the prediction that by the end of 2017 video traffic will be 67% of all consumer web traffic, you need to start using video in your social media campaigns.