Three Great Alternatives to YouTube for Businesses

Ever since Google's YouTube platform took off in the mid-aughts, it has been the go-to destination for web video of all kinds. Today, it hosts entertainment content, instructional content, and no shortage of cat videos. It's also the preferred video platform of digital marketers around the world.

YouTube's primacy has made it so that other video platforms have a hard time gaining any traction (with Twitch.tv being a notable exception), but there are some alternatives for marketers to consider. In some situations, businesses could find that making use of other video platforms increases their exposure since they don't have to cut through as much noise and competition as they had on YouTube.

As they say, however, you shouldn't go on a journey unless you know your destination, so here's a look at three great alternatives to YouTube for businesses and marketers to turn to in 2019.

It should come as no surprise, but the biggest and most popular alternative to YouTube online today is the Facebook-owned IGTV (also known as Instagram TV). It's an Instagram long-form channel with its' own app and direct access to the over one billion users the service has worldwide. Best of all, big brands have been slow to adopt the platform, which makes it a great, low-competition alternative to YouTube that businesses can exploit to get attention for their products.

The only thing for businesses to be aware of when they make the leap to IGTV is the fact that the platform is built to handle vertical videos as the default standard. That means it can be difficult to repurpose existing content, and it may be necessary to start fresh when building a channel. In reality, that's probably the best approach to take in any case, but it is something to be aware of.

Since 2005, Dailymotion has toiled in the shadow of YouTube, trying to secure a slice of the online video pie. Quietly, it has achieved that goal, sporting over 300 million users that generate over 3.5 billion video views every month. For businesses, that's a market segment that shouldn't be ignored.

There are some pretty big upsides to using Dailymotion as a business marketing platform. First, it's far less riddled with advertising than similar websites. With a reported 47% of all internet users now turning to ad-blockers to clean up their browsing experience, businesses on cleaner platforms should see some benefits. Second, Dailymotion has a large user base in Europe, so it's a great channel to reach an overseas audience for businesses that need that. If nothing else, it makes an excellent companion channel for businesses that already use YouTube as a marketing platform.

If there's one thing that counts most in the world of digital marketing, it's being first to discover a new platform. For that reason, businesses should give the new BitTubers platform a look. It's a blockchain-based video sharing site that's getting plenty of attention from the cryptocurrency crowd. At the moment, it's still in a beta stage, but that's what should make it so attractive to digital marketers.

BitTubers offers the rare opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a platform that could make some serious waves in the very near future. Best of all, it supports sharing content from most other video platforms, so it can function as a force multiplier for a business's existing video channels, without the need to find a YouTube video downloader that still works. All that's required is to create an account, link existing content, and you're up and running.

Put simply, the days of YouTube being the only game in town for businesses and digital marketers are over. While they're still the big kid on the block, there are viable alternatives that businesses can use instead of YouTube or as an additional valuable marketing channel. It really all comes down to which particular market segment your business needs to reach, or if the overarching goal is to expand visibility to the widest possible audience. No matter the goal, though, the important takeaway is this: there are options if you know where to look.