Imagine you have a storefront that allows you to directly display your products and services to more than 1.5 million people. Not only this, but imagine that this storefront is also open 365 days a year, 7 days a week and 24 hours a day, without interruption. And if that still wasn’t enough, also imagine that these people are your potential clients and that you hold the key to easily attract them without having to invest a lot of resources on it. Not a bad dream, right?
Well, this storefront that never sleeps is Facebook – the second most visited webpage in the world- and this key to attracting your potential clients is video marketing.
In other words, Facebook is the in thing for small and large businesses alike, and video marketing is a constantly rising trend. So why not join the two and publish on Facebook?
Facebook videos are liked and attract people, and the reason is very simple: we are so overloaded with information that users are now looking for the fastest and easiest content to consume.
Therefore, if you want to have a successful social network marketing strategy then you have to include Facebook videos. And better yet: we’re not only referring to the videos you can share from YouTube, Vimeo and the other platforms, but videos that you can directly upload to Facebook being as they’re known for increasing engagement, reach and effectivity.
This being said, do you want to partake in video marketing on Facebook? Below we’ll tell you why you should do it and we’ll be sharing 7 of the most useful tips so you can create Facebook videos that will be loved, go viral and sell. Shall we continue?
Why you should upload videos to Facebook if you have a business
With 4 billion videos every day, Facebook has become one the main platforms to keep in mind when it comes to videos. But this didn’t happen by chance.
Mark Zuckerberg knew long ago that audio visual content was a diamond in the rough for small and large companies, so he wanted to challenge YouTube and started offering the possibility to upload videos directly on to Facebook -it’s extremely easy and you can find the option in the status update section or “videos” tab-.
FYI…
Facebook videos get 2.5 times more views than videos on YouTube that are published on the platform.
And why is that? Because the Facebook videos work better and even more so if you upload them directly to the platform.
To start, it’s like this because uploading your own Facebook videos instead of sharing them from other platforms such as YouTube or Vimeo will guarantee you greater visibility, reach and interactions.
Meaning that Facebook native videos are shown more and play automatically, thus increasing the amount of views and also likes, comments and shares.
In fact, pages that habitually upload videos to the platform get an organic reach improvement of 75% give or take.
All this makes Facebook a very powerful network in terms of video marketing and directly publishing videos onto Facebook should become your main option for your digital marketing strategy.
In regards to this, a SocialBakers study that analyzed more than 180,000 messages of 20,000 different Facebook pages revealed that:
Facebook native videos are taking up about 80% of all video interactions on the platform.
Such is the power of video marketing that BuzzFeed Motion Pictures has a team of 40 people for making their own high quality videos. In fact, with their video marketing strategy the company managed to increase their site’s number of monthly visits from 2.8 billion to more than 7 billion, in just one year. 33% of this increase comes from Facebook.
And while now is the time where video marketing on social networks is attaining better results, in 2014 the effectiveness of Facebook videos was already clear:
Now, how do you get the max out of your videos so that when you directly upload to Facebook your audience will fall in love and be seduced? We’ll tell you 7 tricks that will help you do this.
But before moving on, take a quick look at the different types of content you should include in your videos:
7 tips you should keep in mind when publishing Facebook videos
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Make sure what you want to transmit with your Facebook videos is clear
Just because Facebook videos work doesn’t mean that you can publishing just anything, but you should rather take the time to design a video marketing strategy and have a clear idea of what you want to transmit through your videos and what you intend to accomplish -for example, increasing the number of followers, getting a lot of views, attracting more traffic to your website, generating conversions or getting known.
Also make sure that your videos have good quality content and images and that you choose a title that will make people want to view it.
Basically, you have to make it seem like your audience has no other option than to view your video and accomplish something along the lines of this:
Extra tip: A report form Wistia states that a video’s length shouldn’t go over 5 minutes so think about making it short, attractive, valuable, direct and get straight to the point because videos that go beyond five minutes have lower participation rates. Additionally, remember that the most viral videos are more than 30 seconds and less than 3 minutes.
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Create valuable content that’ll hook your audience
Facebook videos have their negative side in terms of performance: there are so many videos available that you’re going to have to make an effort in order to gain your public’s attention and show them that viewing your video is worthwhile so it doesn’t go unseen.
A good way of accomplishing this is to offer valuable content to your audience, like advice, tactics, tips and videos that inspire your fans’ interaction since this will improve your organic reach on Facebook.
Extra tip: Every user spends an average of 3 seconds deciding whether they want to keep watching a video or not so make an effort to catch people’s attention from the beginning.
Furthermore, Facebook native videos are automatically played while users scroll through their newsfeed so creating an attention getting beginning is a great way to get your audience to view your videos.
And above all, chose a thumbnail that grabs people’s attention. Here are some examples of videos from Buzzfeed, RedBull, GoPro and WestJet that perfectly capture this idea:
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Add a description to all of your video publications
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that just publishing videos is enough: also take advantage of the power descriptions have so when you publish the video add at least one phrase explaining what the video is about or inviting your audience to watch it.
For example, you can take an excerpt of the video to quote, highlight an interesting point or comment on what can be seen in the video to encourage your audience to watch it. You can also include a hashtag related to what you’re publishing.
As you can see in this video by Thalia, which has more than three million views, she uses a description and hashtag that are related:
Extra tip: So that its easier for you, you can program the rest of your Facebook publications directly from Postcron where you’ll also be able to get content recommendations for your audience and discover the publishing times that will be very successful for your post thus causing a larger impact. This way you only have to manually upload your Facebook videos, while the rest of your content will be published automatically.
The ideal thing is for video marketing to form part of your previously planned and designed social network strategies, so the best thing is for you to create a social media calendar with the videos you want to publish and when, and then program them all at the same time on Facebook. It’s super simple, effective and you’ll save so much time.
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Strive for your Facebook videos to be sharable
There’s nothing more effective than word of mouth or, in this case, your videos being shared for more and more people to follow you and for your brand to be more well known.
Therefore, focus on creating audio visual content that can easily go viral because this will guarantee you get more reach, interactions and conversions.
Now, how can you find out what type of audio visual content is more likely to go viral? BuzzSumo conducted a study on more than 100 million article in order to figure out what makes content sharable. The answer leaves no room for doubts:
The most shared content is that which invokes fear, laughter or amusement and appeals to people’s narcissistic side.
This means that people don’t share videos in order to talk about your brand, but rather to talk about themselves. Give them content they can identify with or that they’re proud to share and you’ll have guaranteed success. This maintains a relation with your sector.
Extra tip: A good option to guarantee more views of your Facebook videos is to use the playlists feature that appears in the video tab on your company’s page on the social network.
It kind of works like YouTube: it allows you to group similarly themed videos under different playlists that your audience then use to view to watch videos related to the same theme without having to search for them.
ABC News, for example, has various playlists:
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Use Calls to Action
If you’re not a fan of calls to action, you should become one because there’s no better way to make your audience do what you want them to do by clearly telling and showing them with graphic, textual and visual resources.
On the other hand, Facebook native videos give you the possibility to add calls to action in your videos with which you’ll be able to directly tell your audience what you want them to do: visit your website, watch more of your brand’s videos or purchase some of your products and services.
Some calls to action you can use are “more information”, “see more” and “sign up”. In this example you can see how they appear:
Extra tip: Facebook also allows you to select a featured video that will appear in the “about” section of your company’s profile, which is located in the top right column.
What if we took this opportunity to publish a really attractive, friendly video that has value, helps you reach your goals and is visible for your audience to see every time they visit your profile? Not only will you be making a big impression, but it’s also something so simple you can do to make your business more profitable.
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Tag people and pages
You could have the best video on Facebook but if no one sees it then it’s useless. That’s why you have to work hard in order to increase your organic reach on Facebook.
A good way of doing this is by tagging various relevant people and pages that are somehow related to your video.
This doesn’t mean to randomly start tagging people or brands, but rather it should be done tastefully with things related to you so it’s not considered as spam.
For example, you can tag people who have directly contributed to the video, are mentioned in it, inspire you or are somehow related to your audiovisual content.
So, if you had a company offering coaching and entertainment services to help people bring out their potential, then you could say something like: “Learn Leo Messi’s 3 tricks for leading a great work and personal life. We’ll show you how in this video”.
Bill Gates, for example, tagged Mark Zuckerberg in the bucket challenge for raising awareness about ALS since he was the one who challenged him in the first place:
Extra tip: You most likely receive a lot of consults so why not take advantage by creating a Facebook native video that responds to your audience’s frequently asked questions? On one hand you’ll be satisfying their needs and on the other you’ll become a real expert for your sector.
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Closely follow your statistics
One of the advantages to publishing Facebook native videos is that the platform provides a lot of metrics that can be of use to you when trying to analyze your video marketing campaign’s results and knowing how to advance and improve. For example, you can find out statistics such as number of video views, single visits, average amount of time your audience spends viewing your videos and retention percentage among other things.
This is how statistics for a video on Facebook are displayed:
Extra tip: if you have a YouTube or Vimeo channel or have already made numerous videos, take advantage of it by downloading it to your computer and uploading another time but on Facebook.
Furthermore, take note on which of the videos you published functioned best and try to mimic this in order to continue creating your personal style that makes your Facebook videos your lethal weapon.
And above all, remember that starting a video marketing strategy is like planting a tree: while it’s a gratifying process and rewards will come, it takes time to see results.
Did you know the power of native Facebook videos? Are you going to include them in your social media marketing strategies? Were these 7 tips for creating amazing videos helpful to you? Leave us your comments, we’d love to hear what you think!
And feel free to share this article on social networks so that your small and medium sized business connections can get the max out of the power of Facebook videos. They’ll thank you for it!
Want to know more on how to get the max out of social networks? Here are some articles that will help you do this:
- How many times a day should you post in order to reach your audience?
- 9 new Facebook functions you should take advantage of in 2016
- 7 changes you should be applying to your Facebook posts to improve your organic reach
- The new Facebook algorithm: how will it affect you?
- How to create a successful post and improve your reach on Facebook
- How to get more likes on Facebook
- 5 tips to increase your sales on Facebook
- YouTube SEO: 10 foolproof tips for positioning your videos on YouTube