If you are currently using Sitecore as the CMS to manage your organization’s website and are looking to implement video then you have come to the right article. This short post covers the top online video platforms that integrate and work Sitecore. If you don’t know what Sitecore is, it’s a powerful enterprise content management and marketing platform for creating and managing websites and engaging with buyers and web-visitors in a personal manner.
First off lets take a look a how Sitecore handles video right out of the box today. Anyone using Sitecore can embed a YouTube, Vimeo, or other free video player into a Sitecore page using a basic embed iframe or javacript code. This method provides a simple way to include videos in your experiences and is probably the most common option used by marketers today.
Here are things to consider about Sitecore’s native video management functionality:
- The user interface: While simple to use within Sitecore, there are many limitations to functionality, since video management is not a core component of Sitecore. If you have a larger library of videos you may find the lack of bulk management features restricting.
- Video security: While Sitecore itself may offer security at the page level, user level, the video content itself may not be encrypted or protected using the same protocols as the pages being served by Sitecore. Also, if you are using a 3rd party video player like YouTube, the security would be controlled outside Sitecore.
- Video delivery: Sitecore’s main focus is on the pages and content it hosts and with video being so unique in how it’s managed and delivered across the web, is an afterthought for the platform. Delivering video viewing at scale warrants looking at a premium online video platform.
The second option is to use a premium online video platform and connect it to Sitecore, platforms like Brightcove, Kaltura, Ooyala, Wistia and others provide brand-able video players and powerful content management toolsets designed specifically for video. There are a few benefits to using a premium video solution with Sitecore:
- Solutions like Brightcove have developed out-of-the-box connectors with Sitecore making it easy to manage and publish videos from directly within the Sitecore interface providing a clean workflow.
- Premium online video platforms not only integrate from a publishing perspective but also through analytics. For example Brightcove offers a connector that pushes video engagement information such as play duration, percentages watched, etc directly to Sitecore. Using Sitecore’s tracking and personalization features marketers could could leverage the data to completely personalize web experiences or email nurture.
Sitecore should be looked at as both a publishing and web marketing platform and combined with video engagement data and the high powered algorithms of the software, video quickly becomes your most high performing asset.
