Vimeo’s New Tools Help Creators Distribute Work On Facebook, YouTube

Vimeo just launched two, new social distribution tools aimed at making the platform a more appealing place for creators to post videos. The appeal is that those videos can now easily show up on social platforms that aren’t Vimeo.

The tools, Simulcast and Publish to Social, both focus on pushing Vimeo creators’ content to other social platforms, such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, and even Periscope, which most of us have probably forgotten about by now.

With Simulcast (short for the portmanteau “simulcasting”), users who post to Vimeo Live can simultaneously stream their live content on the aforementioned social platforms. The process is as simple as creating and customizing a live event through Vimeo’s platform. Through the live event’s settings, a social tab lets users connect directly to their other social accounts.

The Publish to Social feature is only available to certain paid tiers of Vimeo user (Plus, PRO, Business, and all live plans, which range from $65 to $800 per month). It lets users publish Vimeo videos natively to other platforms—right now the company only mentions YouTube and Facebook—which is useful because those platforms favor natively published videos when it comes to promotion.

Vimeo also offers an analytics dashboard to creators who publish their videos to additional social platforms. Creators can see how their same video performed in different places by getting side-by-side information on feedback such as likes, comments, and views.

Vimeo doesn’t seem to be worried about its new tools’ off-platform focus. “As ad-supported platforms become increasingly walled off to keep content on their sites, we are building new ways to be an agnostic distribution hub, so creators don’t have to choose,” said Vimeo’s CEO, Anjali Sud, in a press release. “Our new social distribution tools will give Vimeo creators a wider audience, deeper engagement, and a fundamentally simplified distribution process.”

A simplified distribution process is a draw for those managing content on multiple social platforms, something that has become more common as “influencer” becomes a widely recognized job title and brands feel the need to advertise across all social platforms in order to remain relevant. It is also part of a more creator-focused initiative for Vimeo, started under the leadership of Sud, who became CEO in August.