Anyone who has been a member of Facebook has noticed an increase in video presentations throughout their news feed. Even more importantly, you have probably noticed that when you scroll to a video and pause it will still play. Facebook video has become an essential piece of the social media marketing platform, allowing for easy integration of small videos to impact a wide audience.

Different from YouTube

For many years YouTube was the go-to video marketing platform. Companies would create a channel and post videos of related content to their channel. Then they would share that link to their social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. While it was innovative and helped increase SEO for a company’s online presence, it was not the most user friendly option. People were not automatically exposed to your content unless they happened to see it and click on the link to your social media.  Instead, they had to be looking for you or your services to find your content. Then, if they saw it on Facebook, they had to actually click the link to see what the video was about.

Facebook video is a wonderful alternative to YouTube in several ways. First, if a video is shared directly through Facebook it becomes native content. These videos begin to run as soon as they appear in a user’s news feed without the user clicking on a link. Secondly, anyone who follows your business will see your video even when they are not searching for you. The video will appear in their newsfeed to view. Some businesses will opt for a sponsored link for their video, in which case the video will appear in the news feeds of any Facebook member that fits the selected criteria. Finally, Facebook videos offer interaction with the viewer, wherein they can watch it again or watch more of your videos.

With YouTube, Not Instead of

The inclination would be to replace one form of video with the other. However, that eliminates any and all customers that may not be part of Facebook or may not follow you on Facebook. It is never a good idea to limit your exposure to your client base, especially when the exposure is of little or no cost to you. Instead, it is the best practice to utilize both YouTube and Facebook video to maximize your exposure and increase your SEO presence. By combining both mediums you are expanding your reach to a much wider audience. You are ensuring you are capturing an audience that is part of Facebook and receive the majority of their news and marketing information from Facebook. This way you can impact the percentage of the population who stays away from Facebook at all costs, and all those in between.

Skol Marketing are experts in social media marketing and increasing your web presence. Contact the experts at Skol Marketing  612.787.SKOL (7565) or info@SkolMarketing.com to learn more about YouTube and Facebook video and how they can work together to increase your revenue.  

Image courtesy of digiday.com