If you have not yet experienced the abject horror of having one or more facets or sources of your online marketing content completely and arbitrarily shut down, chances are you will at some point. What exactly do I mean by this? Read on my friends …
A good example of not having control of your content is having all your videos hosted with YouTube. We all know YouTube is owned by Google, and as such, is the Google equivalent as the place to search for video information and video content. As such, being a savvy marketer and knowing you need to be where all the people are … chances are that you have most, if not all of your videos hosted on YouTube. Your videos are embedded in your web site pages, your blog and blog posts, perhaps in your auto-responder follow up e-mails to your list, … probably in most all of your marketing and especially if you do a lot of video marketing.
What happens if YouTube decides to shut off your channel? Think this can’t happen to you? Think again. You may say, “Well, I don’t post video content that is copyrighted, objectionable, or even questionable when it comes to complying with YouTube’s rules and guidelines. I post good, relevant content and I’m not a spammer.” Guess what, neither did I.
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
Here’s the scenario that happened to both me and my business mentor .. and it happened to us both the very same afternoon. He and I had co-hosted a training webinar earlier that day for our business team, we were teaching people how to use SEO (Search Engine Optimization) methodologies and techniques to drive traffic to their online businesses. (Now that I think about it, maybe this is what Google got PO’ed about … we were steering people away from being paying customers on Adwords/Pay Per Click .. maybe they had a spy on our webinar?!) …. just joking about the spy, of course.
Within just hours of the completion of our training webinar, YouTube suddenly, unexpectedly and arbitrarily, shut off both his and my video channels. My mentor had posted and accumulated well over 150 videos in his channel, most all embedded into his marketing content, and I had well over 50 on my channel, all equally embedded into my marketing. We received no warnings, no e-mails, nothing from YouTube prior to being shut down. When we attempted to find out why we had been shut off, we were only told that we were found to be in violation of their rules and guidelines. They did not tell us what specific video content they had found that caused them to shut us off, and we were given no chance to remove or correct whatever they had found objectionable. Nor were we given any chance or opportunity of appeal or recourse, and the worst part … we both lost all our video content we had hosted with YouTube. Gone, Kaput, Adios, See Ya !!
After discussing this with another member on our business team who had also fallen prey to a YouTube channel shutdown previously, we think it may have been an angry or perhaps, envious team mate on our webinar that day. Someone disgruntled for whatever reason, who went to YouTube and reported that we both had spammed them with video content from YouTube. Apparently, any such report to YouTube will cause them to shut you down. They don’t ask questions, nor care whether the accusations are true or not …. and you have absolutely NO recourse with them whatsoever. You are presumed guilty and sentence is carried out … period. (Think about this … in our U.S. Courts and legal system, you are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. You also have the right to confront your accuser. I guess Google and YouTube consider themselves outside and above our due process of law.)
Here’s How to Keep Your Content Safe and Reliable
So, the bottom line and solution here is to utilize alternative and even multiple sources for hosting your videos and other content. You can also upload your videos to other free hosting sites as backup sources … Viddler, Vimeo, etc. The best option is to host where you have full and complete contol. Even if you have to pay a monthly fee, it’s well worth it to know your marketing and content is safe and reliable. Since my YouTube shutdown, I have since moved all my marketing videos to EZS3.com, which is a video hosting service owned by Amazon.com. They charge a nominal fee each month for amount of storage used and also for the amount of bandwidth that is used when people access and view your videos there. They support all video formats too. The small amount of money I pay now monthly for video hosting, where I have full control and know I won’t be shut down arbitrarily, is well worth it to me and I sleep much better knowing my video marketing is safe and secure. The negligible amount leads or traffic I may have lost from no longer being on YouTube is well worth it to me.
Finally, if you are a blogger as I am, another area of your marketing that may be in jeopardy is your blog and blog content, if you use any of the free blog hosts such as WordPress.com and Blogger. These free blog hosts can also arbitrarily shut you down with no prior warning. If this happens, guess what, there goes all your posted content too! You should always have your blog hosted with a paid host, that way you have complete control over your content, you can post whatever content you want, and you cannot be shut down by lame-minded, zero substance accusers.
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Great post Scott – We hear of this happening so much. Thanks for the tips on where to host videos. Keep Rockin!
Thanks Michelle, I appreciate your comments and your support, you are a true friend and a great networker buddy to have !!
Brilliant post, I too have been at the sharp end of this stick, two blogs shut down ( I think due to having a post like this one where I was moaning about You know who, I won’t say the name for fear of reprisals LOL.)
On video sites I’m sure it’s your competition that flags your content, there are a few big time spammers in a branch of my company and I’m sure it’s them that helped my YT channel vanish into thin air.
Thanks for your comments and observations Mark, I appreciate them! I find it hard to understand why those people who live with no integrity can have such an impact on those of us that do.
One other thing here Mark, if you go with a self hosted blog, they can't shut you down. Stay away from wordpress.com and blogger.com, get yourself a blog where you pay for the hosting, that way you have full control. Mine is with Blue Host, which is one the most highly recommended hosting companies for a self hosted WordPress blog.
Thank you very much for your continued support!
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