The first thing you want to make sure you do is have your videos uploaded to whatever host you are using. We are going to start with youtube.

YOUTUBE

Find the video you want to embed in your video dashboard and click on it. Then click on share under the video title. Choose embed, and this is the most important part, click the words show more right under the code. This is going to give you a couple of options that will change the look of the player. If you want to get rid of the title bar on top so that you’ll get a clean image of your thumbnail and the play button just uncheck “Show video title and player options” . If you want your audience to watch all the way through and not be able to skip ahead or rewind uncheck “show player controls”. I’ve seen this used a lot for webinars or training courses, but  not usually for blog posts. You can also uncheck “show suggested videos when the video finishes” Again, this is really used for your exclusive content thats isn’t publicly available. If you are embedding your video on your blog I’d suggest leaving this on, so your viewer can move on to watch more of your videos. Once you choose all of the options you want or don’t want, scroll up and copy your code. then you would paste the code into your webpage just like you normally would. I’ll show you using WordPress. And there it is!

 VIMEO

Now, let’s move on to Vimeo. For Vimeo, you can’t get rid of the player bar unless you have a pro account but you can get rid of some of the other stuff that is put by default on your thumbnail. To do this, click the paper airplane icon on the right of your video. It appears when you hover over it. What you can change here is whether the Portrait or profile picture, title, and byline appear. You can do this by unchecking these boxes. THen go up to the embed box and copy the code. Then paste it into your website.

WISTIA

For Wistia, click on the video you want to embed and then Video Actions in the top right. Choose customize in the dropdown. A side bar will appear on the left. Click on the controls box. You’ll see a few checkboxes. You can turn off and on your big play button and controls. If you play your video and uncheck the rest, your small play button, play bar, volume control,  and full screen control, you can see what they do. The great thing about Wistia is that you can go back and change these controls without having to copy and paste the embed code again. I’ll show you what I mean. Let’s grab that embed code by going back over to video actions and clicking on embed and share. Copy your code and paste into your webpage. There it is! Now let’s change a setting back in wistia and save that. Now, if you refresh your webpage the change will show up.

So that’s how you can customize the way your player looks on youtube, vimeo, and wistia and make your videos look great on your site.

If you want more tips to creating online video, download your guide to the Top 5 Video Tools that will help you make beautiful online videos for your business Or if you really ready to dive in join my free course to Amp Up You Online Video Presence. By signing up you’ll also get exclusive Tips, Tricks, How-to’s and my personal insights about editing and using Online Videomaking in your business that I only share with my VIP storytellers.

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Ok this is a question that comes up over and over again. YouTube, Wistia, or Vimeo? I want to simplify it for you. The answer is YES! Use all three.

There is no war going on between these 3 hosting sites because they have 3 completely different purposes.

YouTube is to get found.

Wistia is for business.

And Vimeo is to share art.

Let me explain a little more.

YouTube is the second largely used search engine behind google, so if you want people to search keywords and organically find your videos, this is the perfect tool. It also has annotations which are clickable links that you can add to videos to link your audience to your sites. If your hover over my logo in the corner you’ll see that you can click on it and it’ll take you to my website. It’s the best for weekly TV shows, Vlogs, and interview series.

Vimeo is much like YouTube in that it is searchable, however it’s geared much more towards the arts (filmmaking, photography, animation and other things like that). The advantages of Vimeo is the much nicer looking player that when embedded on your site look less clunky than YouTube and the ability to have more control on where your videos are accessed from. For example, say you have a video course that you only want accessed when people sign up for your email list. You would want the videos to only be embedded on your pages and not searchable in Vimeo. With the free and pro features you can easily pull off great looking video courses and promotional landing page videos. The big drawback is that you can’t have clickable links on-screen.

Wistia is GREAT for businesses. If you are creating a video series to launch a product, or as an opt in offer, or even a landing page video, you need to get this tool. The basic features are free and with a small investment you can get some great small business controls. Wistia is not searchable like Vimeo or YouTube but it has clickable links (called mid roll links), post roll call to action links, complete customization over the design of the player, and so much control over who can access your videos from where. This is also awesome for sharing video content privately with your team or assistants.

If you want more tips to creating online video, download your guide to the Top 5 Video Tools that will help you make beautiful online videos for your business by clicking the button below. By signing up you’ll also get exclusive Tips, Tricks, How-to’s and my personal insights about Online Videomaking that I only share in email.

If you liked this post please comment and share. I’d love to hear from you.