Facebook Video: Beginner's Best Practices
As an agency who lives, breathes, and sleeps social, we know that Facebook is the big kahuna when it comes to setting the precedent for social activity. And while it seems like Facebook constantly updates its algorithm to keep us marketers on our toes, it’s really just progressing and changing with the times. We know it’s up to us to keep up, and to capitalize on the latest changes, so we can maximize our effectiveness and stay on the forefront of reaching customers in the most impactful way through social channels.
As some know by now, the latest, and perhaps biggest, update to the Facebook algorithm in 2016 has been video. More specifically, Facebook now loves video, and sharing it in our news feeds. It wants publishers to create good content in the moving visual images sort of way. In fact, it favors video content above all other content pushed out on the site. According to eMarketer, videos posted natively to Facebook received a 13.2% organic (aka free) reach. Videos on YouTube only received 7.9% and Instagram, 6.8% organically. People are watching video on Facebook, and that fact is not going away anytime soon.
It may seem intimidating to now have to think about creating great videos, but we promise that it doesn’t have to be. In fact, we encourage our clients to take advantage of this trend. So jump on board and think of all the fun things you can show your viewers!
To help get you started on your Facebook video journey, here are a few of our favorite beginner’s tips for creating recorded/uploaded video on Facebook:
1. First and foremost, if you are recording video, be sure to upload it natively to Facebook because that will get better organic reach versus linking to it via YouTube, for example.
2. Create watchable content. Make sure you’re entertaining, inspiring, or educating your viewers, for example. Offer exclusive content only found on your Facebook page. Utilize video to connect with your viewers.
3. Captivate your audience within 3 seconds of the start of the video. News flash! Facebook users scroll through their news stream quickly. You’ve got to be able to make them stop at your video and draw them in in order to watch more.
4. Create good quality video. You don’t need to have a professional production setup (although, it can’t hurt), but you do need to have good quality production. Think, good lighting, good audio, and good content. Yes, iPhone cameras work just fine!
5. Keep it concise and to the point. A good goal for video length on Facebook is two minutes. Depending on your content, try to keep it less than this length.
6. Video captions are your friend. Although good sound is important, good captioning can be even better. Since Facebook does not automatically play sound on a video (at least not yet,) as much as 85% of video views occur with the sound off. Work to convey content with both sound and non-sound.
7. Analyze your video analytics. Once you begin posting videos, it’s key to review the analytics on them. Take advantage of amazing analytics that can help you track exactly how long people are watching your videos, how they’re engaging with them, if the content is being shared, etc. If something is working well, try to keep doing it and testing whether it works more than once.