Why Use A Video Content Management System (CMS)?
Research released in December 2021 by leading market research company Imarc Group shows that the global digital video content market size reached a value of $151.4 billion in 2021. Moreover, said market is expected to grow at 13.38% through 2022-2027.
In other words, if you thought there was a huge amount of video content out there online right now, it’s only going to increase further going forward.
But with organizations creating an increasing amount of video content to connect and engage with their online audiences, how to best manage it all becomes a top priority.
If their video content strategies are going to be successful, organizations must be able to create, store, organize, and subsequently monetize their video content. One solution is a bespoke Video Content Management System or video CMS.
In this article, you will learn what a video CMS is and look at why your organization should be using one to manage its video content. So if you’ve been wondering what is the best way to organize videos, you’re in the right place.
What is a Video Content Management System?
A video CMS is a digital platform that helps organizations manage their video content. It acts as a central repository to organize video content, making it simple and easy to organize and find the right video when you need it.
In addition, a video CMS can also help you control who has access to your videos, track how they are being used, and improve their online reach by boosting their Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
When To Use A Video Content Management System
There are many reasons why you should use a video CMS, but here are four of the most important:
- Organize Your Video Content: A video CMS can help you organize your videos so that you can easily find the right one when you need it. With a good video CMS, you can also create playlists and add appropriate metadata to tag and categorize your videos so that they can be searched for using multiple parameters.
- Improve Video Quality: A video CMS can help you improve the quality of your videos by providing tools to enable you to encode and transcode videos to optimal bitrates for the platforms you'll distribute them on, affording an optimal consumer experience. These features can all help you improve both the quality and consumption of your videos.
- Increase Video views: A video CMS can help you increase the number of views your videos receive by providing tools for sharing and promoting your videos. You can seamlessly embed your videos on your website, deliver to your own streaming apps, share them on social media, or share them via email newsletters. Furthermore, a video CMS allows you to distribute your content to third-party OTT streaming platforms and devices like Roku, Apple TV, etc., for even greater exposure.
- Reduce video production costs: By taking advantage of a video CMS, you can potentially reduce the time (and costs) associated with video production. By providing tools for managing video files and metadata, a professional video CMS can help you more efficiently transcribe and caption your videos, add tags and descriptions, and create thumbnails.
- Control access to your videos: A video CMS can help you control who has access to your video content. For example, you may want to give certain employees access to your training videos but not your marketing videos. The same goes for the video content you want people to be able to stream online. For example, you might have membership programs that allow access to videos based on subscription fees.
- Track how your videos are being viewed: A video CMS can provide video analytics to help you track when where and for how long consumers are watching your videos. For example, you can discover some demographic data relating to who’s viewing your video content and see how long people consume your content. This information can be valuable for understanding what type of videos are most popular with your audience and for driving decisions about future video projects.
How to Choose A Video CMS
Now that we've outlined why organizations should be using a video content management system (CMS), we will now take a more in-depth look at such systems, including some of their features and functionality, to provide you with a clearer idea of what you should be looking for when choosing a video CMS.
First and foremost, we should mention that what constitutes the right video CMS and which one you will ultimately choose depends on the business outcomes you want to achieve. So while one video CMS could be perfect for one business, it might not be for another.
Nevertheless, there are a number of core features any video CMS worth its salt should have. Let’s start by taking a look at them.
What Features to Look for in a Video CMS?
Here are the video CMS capabilities you should have as a minimum:
Multi-platform support
You want to distribute your video content across as many OTT platforms as possible. That’s why any video CMS you are considering must feature multi-platform support. A great video CMS enables you to upload your video content once and then deliver it across multiple platforms, channels, and devices with just a few clicks.
Organization and tagging capabilities
Tagging, categorization, and other metadata management serve two very important purposes. First, they allow you to organize your video content based on a number of different parameters so you can find the video(s) you want quickly and easily. Second, the same metadata can be used by your viewers to find content. Tags, in particular, are a great way to signpost viewers to any other video content you have published that is similar to the stuff they like.
Strong privacy controls
Privacy today is immensely important. The people consuming your videos want to do so knowing that their private data is being kept safe. Likewise, you want to have full confidence that any video content you publish is only accessible to the people it’s intended for. For example, you might have a pay-to-view subscription model. If anyone could access the video content behind your paywall, it would defeat the entire purpose.
Streamlined processes
One of the fundamental aspects a video CMS should help with is streamlining your content management, distribution, and reporting processes. At the absolute least, your video CMS should allow you to upload, encode, edit, and distribute your content intuitively and efficiently.
Cost-effective cloud storage
Storing videos in the cloud means they can be securely accessed from anywhere. This allows your team (regardless of where they are located) to seamlessly collaborate on your video content efforts. Something extra to consider here is how much storage space the video CMS provider can allocate you and whether there are any extra charges for using more than the basic amount. Many video CMS providers offer unlimited cloud storage as standard.
Powerful and intuitive analytics
Video content resonates more when it’s personalized. But the only way to deliver personalized video experiences is by analyzing data from your video CMS. Knowing when your video has been watched, by whom, and via what channel is pivotal if you’re to carry out any kind of audience behavior analysis and look to personalize your content going forward.
What CMS Features Do I Need?
As we’ve already mentioned, the video CMS features you actually need will largely depend on your business and its video content strategy/goals.
For example, a news-gathering organization might want the ability to incorporate a live stream for breaking stories. A fitness provider may require a more sophisticated metadata management platform so they can easily create playlists of their different videos, making them more easily consumed by their followers.
Given this reality, it is important for you to come up with a video content strategy, including clearly defined goals and objectives, before you choose a video CMS. This strategy should help guide your decision and enable you to select the right video CMS for your business.
What Is The Best Video CMS Platform?
Now that you’ve got a better idea of how to choose a video CMS platform and the kind of features you should be looking out for, it’s time for us to expand your knowledge and offer some additional food for thought to help you reach the right decision.
What separates the best video CMS software from the rest of the field? Here are some aspects to consider:
Is the Video CMS API Driven?
API stands for Application Programming Interface, and despite its rather technical-sounding name, it’s a pretty easy concept to understand. An API allows two applications to talk to each other and does so invisibly, i.e., you do not see what’s going on, and the full complexity is hidden.
Arguably, the best video CMS platforms are the ones that are API driven, also referred to as headless. This is because they take care of all the hard work and allow you to focus on producing, publishing, and distributing your video content exactly how you want to. For example, an API-driven CMS provides you with an intuitive interface from which you can control the look of your videos, manage who can and can’t access them, and dictate appropriate monetization settings.
Your organization’s developers will thank you for choosing a video CMS that is API driven.
Does It Allow For Customization?
Many organizations find that they encounter customization limitations with off-the-shelf video CMS platforms. After all, these products are designed to accommodate as many different organizations’ needs as possible. Faced with such roadblocks, businesses have two main choices: follow the custom-built video CMS route or leverage an API-driven video CMS. The latter of these choices is usually more cost-effective, more flexible, and less time-consuming because most of the hard work has already been done for you by the video CMS provider.
With an API-driven video CMS, you can manage a variety of video customization elements, including the player skin, metrics collection, and on-page interactions like social sharing, overlaid messages, and ad integration.
Can I Integrate With My CRM?
Chances are you already use a Customer Relation Management (CRM) solution. Now imagine how powerful (and potentially lucrative) it would be if your video CMS integrated with your CRM.
Suddenly, you’d be able to see and capture exactly how each of your customers is interacting with your video content. With this information recorded in your CRM, you can then look to tailor your future content to appeal more to the customer. This will exponentially increase their consumption of your content, which should translate to more revenue for your organization.
Does It Offer Cloud Storage?
Traditional video CMS platforms sometimes rely on on-premise infrastructure to store your video content. While this is okay if you’re not storing that much video, it can soon become expensive when you need to expand. With the best video CMS platforms offering unlimited cloud storage as standard, this is no longer an issue.
Cloud storage means you can not only access your video content from anywhere and on any device but also affords full scalability for your organization’s expanding needs. Moreover, the cloud is secure, cost-effective, and mitigates the risks associated with on-site storage. Did we mention that cloud storage is maintenance-free, too?
Can I Distribute Content To My O&O Platforms?
Something else the best video CMS platforms facilitate is the distribution of your content across your owned and operated (O&O) platforms.
While social media is an extremely effective tool to get your video content in front of more people, why should all the interactions be happening on someone else’s platform? O&O is your opportunity to bring people back to your domain and interact with your video on your terms (not the social media platform owner’s).
It’s pretty ironic to think that we all clamor to achieve X number of views on Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube – platforms we have zero control or influence over. A better strategy is to leverage social media to drive people to your O&O offering, allowing you to drive genuine long-term loyalty with your audiences. The best video CMS platforms enable you to do this.
The Best Video Content Management Systems: Final Thoughts
The final consideration we want you to leave with today is the idea of how your video CMS should be able to facilitate growth. Your current video strategy is just that: current. And while it will inevitably include future requirements, none of us know what’s around the corner. That’s why your video CMS needs to be flexible enough to scale with your organization’s changing needs.
Something you may want to take advantage of in the future are Fast Channels. FAST is an acronym for free ad-supported streaming TV services – think live TV streaming without the associated subscription. FAST Channels are a great way to monetize your content at no cost to the viewer.
The best video CMS platforms will enable you to set up FAST Channels and realize all the benefits they afford.
All Your Video Content In One, Easy To Manage Place
Zype’s VideoMeta CMS is an all-in-one OTT (Over The Top) video content management system that is designed to not only make your life easier but also help you monetize and get the very most from the video content you create.
Contact Us today to request a demo of our video CMS so you can see exactly how our platform can help you easily, securely, and intuitively manage your organization’s video content.
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