Video marketing strategy for new sites - Youtube / third party vs self hosted?

[MozBoy]

Howdy Mozzers,

We are a new UK solar comparison site looking to implement video to help buid our site traiffic / leads. We currently make a 1 min video summary of our blog posts using Animoto and embed the video at the top of the blog post on our site. The original thought of introducing video was to help our blog posts rank higher.

My question is, which of the following strategy is the best for building traffic and generating leads for our site

1. Hosting video on Youtube and embedding it on our site

2. Hosting video on Animoto and embedding it on our site (not sharing on youtube)

3. Hosting the video on our own domain and not sharing it on Youtube and other third party sites

4. Embedding the video from youtube or animoto on our site and sharing it everywhere (dailymotion, vimeo,etc)

Our target audience is UK only for the time being. We would like to build traffic quickly and are focused on the short term.

I would be appreciate any replies discussing the different advantages disadvantages of the options and a final personal opinion.

Thanks!

[Stramark]

Youtube is the second largest search engine in the world if you measure the amount of searches. the other platforms also have some kind of traffic. If you are not there, others might be and take that traffic. If you make a good video with links to you buying page this is the way to go.

Hosting only on your own domain is good if you expect people to link to it. This rarely happens, only if it is part of a linkbuilding strategy. This is long term always.

[DonnaDuncan]

There are no easy answers to your questions unfortunately Mozboy. You'll need to decide on a strategy first. Start by asking these types of questions:

• What are your objectives: awareness, exposure, engagement, conversions, or customer retention?
• Who is your target audience? Where do they like to hang-out online?
• Where does your competition invest time and resources? How's that working for them?

I think the answers you come up with will shed light on your best option(s).