Online video marketing can be crucial for brands in today’s technology-savy world. It allows businesses to educate, instruct and provide useful information to fans and consumers in a medium that is highly accepted and engaging.

Did you know?

• Globally, online video traffic will be 55 percent of all consumer Internet traffic in 2016. (Cisco)

• 52 percent of consumers say that watching product videos makes them more confident in online purchase decisions. (Invodo)

• 92 percent of mobile video viewers share videos with others. (Invodo)

There are many online tools for developing videos as well as hosting sites to store them. For the purposes of this post, I’ve focused on three video development tools and two video hosting sites — Animoto, Vine, Instagram, YouTube and Vimeo.

Video Development Tools

With today’s online tools, videos can be created and processed quicker and easier than ever before, but knowing which one aligns best with your brand’s needs is essential.

Animoto: Animoto is a video creation service available both online and through mobile that makes it easy and fun for anyone to create and share videos using their own pictures, video clips, words and music. For businesses, Animoto offers two different packages — Pro (for creative professionals) and Pro Premium (for small businesses). The Pro package allows businesses to create and upload as many videos as they want, create videos up to 20 minutes long and stream in high-definition resolution. If your business requires more support, Animoto’s Pro Premium package also includes custom branding, phone support and an account with Vimeo Pro. M/C/C utilizes Animoto to create videos for client Hudson & Marshall to showcase upcoming auctions in various states across the U.S.

Vine: Vine is a mobile service that lets users capture and share short looping videos. Vine also has its own social community within the app development. The videos are a maximum of six seconds and can only be created within the app itself (no sharing a video that was previously made through the smartphone’s native capabilities). Vine was recently updated to where users can now edit videos and save multiple drafts with the features Sessions and Time Travel. Vine users only have a few frames to impress their audience, adding a creative element that is not seen with other video creation services. This tool can be quite tricky for brands because of its limitations; however, quite a few have excelled. These brands include: eBay, Oreo, Target and Dove. Vine can also be a great tool for showing off and sharing your brand’s unique company culture with fans, just like M/C/C.

Instagram: Instagram added video capabilities to its already established photo sharing app earlier this year, and since, it has been a big hit with brands. Instagram Video is similar to Vine in that it’s a mobile service with capabilities of sharing videos and social community. However, Instagram videos differ greatly due to fewer limitations. Creating videos can either be real-time or by sharing previously made videos from a smartphone’s native capabilities. Videos can be altered using filters and video stabilization and are longer in length with 15 seconds of allotted recording time. The most shared brands on Instagram Video are MTV, NBA, Peanuts and GoPro according to research by marketing technology company Unruly.

Video Hosting Sites

While it’s still encouraged to embed videos directly on a company’s website and social profiles, utilizing a video hosting site exposes more people to the brand through search and ease of sharing.

YouTube: With more than 450 million unique, monthly visitors worldwide, it’s almost impossible to not consider YouTube for a brand’s video hosting site. In addition to this, Google’s acquisition of YouTube has increased the exposure of these videos by indexing them in the world’s largest search engine. Setting up a YouTube account is free and allows brands to customize the look and feel through the account holder’s YouTube channel. YouTube also offers a number of advertising opportunities for businesses, including display ads, in-video ads and promoted videos. A few examples of brands maximizing the capabilities of YouTube are Nike Football, Home Depot, our client Chuck E. Cheese’s and Roxy.

Vimeo: While Vimeo has fewer than 17 million unique, monthly visitors worldwide, it is definitely not a hosting site any brand wants to overlook. Vimeo has earned a reputation for being a site in which videos are based on quality and customization. Vimeo offers a paid, “Pro” account in which businesses can skip the video queue and upload videos ahead of other unpaid accounts. Vimeo also allows complete customization of its video player, allowing businesses to completely brand the video player itself with the look and feel of the company. In addition, Vimeo paid accounts can choose to disable in-video advertising allowing viewers to focus on the brand’s message rather than distractions. Users can also create groups and organize videos into different albums. Great examples of brands using Vimeo include: The Lincoln Motor Company, Nokia HD and BMW.

Take Home Lesson — If your brand isn’t already utilizing online video marketing, start now. Be wise in your decisions and be sure to think about budget, flexibility and ease of use when it comes to selecting your video tools and hosting sites.