I've been using YouTube for a long time now as a way to provide video content on this blog. I remember the early days of YouTube being primarily for teenagers and vehicle for people to show off their babies and pets. 🙂 The quality, well, um, kinda sucked! I just didn't really find it remotely good enough to host the kind of content I wanted to share. Well all that has changed now. YouTube is GREAT for sharing videos in 720p HD quality, up to 10 minutes in length. It's easy to use and to embed the clips right on my site. Now don't get me wrong, I know that there are other GREAT video sharing sites out there too like Smugmug (which does all the way up to 1080p with a paid account), Vimeo, BlipTV, etc. However, I find that YouTube seems to be the most universal and has the largest audience. After all, if I go through the trouble to produce a video and make it available for free I wan to have the largest possible viewing audience I can get. Also since YouTube is BUILT-IN to the iPhone and now the iPad, I can reach millions more people with this one service than I can with any of the others. Another nice surprise was that Apple gave the iPad's Safari the ability to view embedded YouTube clips right in the page without having to launch the App or go to another browser window. Sold!
A funny thing happened on the way to this post
Like I said, I've been posting videos up on YouTube for a while now. When I started my original intent was to simply have an easy FREE video hosting service. However, what ended up happening was something I never considered at the time. I started building a following on YouTube! What? Huh? NO! Don't look over there, look at my blog 🙂 Every day I was getting emails from YouTube about how a new person or two or three or twenty had subscribed to my "YouTube Channel." Then of course people started commenting on my videos and in many cases asking questions about the video. The last thing I wanted or needed was yet another place to have to respond to comments. So I started making sure in my latest recordings that I stated clearly "for more information, head over to my blog…" That helped, but the subscriber numbers continued to grow. So I decided that 2010 is the year to "Be Everywhere!" Social Media is HUGE and showing no signs of decline. Although I'd like it if I only had to post things in one place, the reality is that not everyone sees things in the one spot you expect them to see them in. Case in point, I recently posted some pictures on Facebook when I returned from a trip. A few weeks had gone by and I decided that I wanted a couple of those shots to be in my Facebook portfolios. So I reposted a couple to those galleries and I got more comments the second time than I did the first time. I felt like saying, "hey! These aren't new pictures", but the reality is not every one sees everything you do when you do it the first time. Not everyone reads my blog, not everyone follows me on Twitter, not everyone is a fan on Facebook, Not everyone watches my Creative Suite Podcast. Not everyone watches my clips on YouTube. Not everyone knows about my Best App Site. As a matter of fact I didn't even realize how many places out there my content exists in until my colleague Richard Jenkins put together this profile on me for his blog.
So in order to reach the widest possible audience, you have to be EVERYWHERE! So rather than FIGHT this, I'm going to embrace it. My YouTube channel will continue to serve as the host for my video reviews, but that doesn't mean that I won't now post some Creative Suite tutorials there too. The Creative Suite Podcast site will continue to be the primary destination to download my Creative Suite tutorials, but that doesn't mean I won't post some on Facebook too.
It takes a LOT of my time to constantly provide content. So if I'm going to take the time to produce this content, I going to put it EVERYWHERE!
Subscribe to my YouTube channel today! Also looks great on the iPad, iPhone, Apple TV, Droid and iPod touch 🙂
Great job! and i wish you all the best.
Hi Terry,
Totally with you on this post. My philosophy this year too has been to get everywhere. Let’s face it, if it’s free then surely we’d be foolish not to make use of it. Funny what you say about subscriber emails to your YouTube page cos I experienced a bit more of this lately; videos are definitely something BIG that people love to see.
I generally post my videos to YouTube, Facebook & Vimeo. I’ve recently uploaded them to Blip,Tv which is great as from that I’ve not created a Podcast that is available on iTunes; and again, all this for free.
Anyway, I’m now subscribed to your channel so look forward to seeing more content as and when; especially with the recent launch of CS5 which I’m still struggling to come to terms with; absolutely incredible upgrade!!!
Cheers and all the best to you,
Glyn
That’s my problem – I never can remember all the places I need to post material. From the blog to Facebook, to Twitter, and Flickr (and YouTube!) – it can get pretty demanding to even keep up in this literal “rat race” when all I wanna do is eat the cheese! 🙂