Facebook Video Marketing Best Practices
Facebook jumped on the video marketing bandwagon years ago when it realized how important video is to storytelling and user engagement. If your brand is not marketing with video, social media is a great place to start! Not only can you set up a video marketing schedule ahead of time, but you can produce your content for cheap and free.
Simply creating content and uploading it to Facebook will not do you much good for viewer engagement or return on investment (ROI). So here are a few tips to ensure that your Facebook videos are watched and work to increase your views, leads, and sales.
Tip #1: Upload your Video Straight to Facebook
Facebook has made it pretty obvious that they favor videos uploaded directly to their site over those shared from other social media platforms.
The display image from a Facebook direct upload looks larger than the Youtube video thumbnail. More importantly, direct uploads will play automatically as you scroll the timeline increasing user engagement.
Since Facebook & YouTube seem to be direct competitors now it would make sense that videos shared from YouTube show up less often than those directly uploaded to Facebook.
It’s worth sharing your videos on as many platforms as possible so taking the extra time to upload and market your videos on Facebook & YouTube is a necessity!
Tip #2: Start your Video with Engaging Shots
With the amount of content that the average Facebook user sifts through each day on their news feed your video has about 10 seconds to catch the attention of your viewers before they’ve passed you by.
Include eye-catching visuals to encourage users to stop scrolling and pay attention to what you have to say.
Tip #3: Sell by Telling a Story
The best way to design video content so that people will actually want to watch it is through the form of a compelling story. Viewers have come to expect commercials and ads on TV, but are turned off by them on social media.
If you want to sell something to your audience, convince them into purchasing after watching something that compels them to do so. Tug on their heartstrings or show them how your product is the solution to a problem that they’ve been searching for!
Tip #4: Caption your Videos
When Facebook implemented their video auto-play feature, we as humans adjusted and no longer required the sound to watch. If your video auto-plays without any captions or some kind of text to inform the viewer what they are watching, most people will scroll right by it!
About 85% of videos are watched with the sound off, so you can’t afford to skip out on captions.
Tip #5: Test your Video's Engagment
The first step in creating a video is determining who your audience is. If your message doesn’t resonate with the people it’s meant to, then your video is pretty much useless.
A great way to monitor this is through Facebook’s insight page, which provides you with massive amounts of user engagement information for every post you make.
Play around with different elements of your videos in the editing process and monitor how well they engage with your Facebook audience to determine what type of videos resonate the best.
Create a Social Media Strategy for your Videos
Facebook video marketing is so much more than simply uploading a video to your page. When done the correct way you will begin to see your audience increase and along with it your sales.
New to video marketing?
Markins Media offers social media marketing packages alongside our videos to ensure that you get the most out of your product. Contact us today to discuss ways in which we can help you to better promote your videos!