How-Tu Tuesday: Using Facebook Video

Have you noticed anything different about Facebook recently? The biggest of the social media giants (with over 1.5 billion users) has added a new feature to it’s platform; video auto-play.

Yes Facebook has featured video capabilities since the beginning of its existence, but the site now automatically plays videos when users scroll through their feed. Furthermore, when a user watches a video, they are then presented with a feed consisting of the most popular videos on Facebook, which is very similar to YouTube.

With over 4 billion views per day on Facebook, businesses are missing out by not making the most of their video content. Below is a list of the best practices for gaining a higher organic reach and higher levels of engagement with your audience.

Rich Content

As with all other online platforms, content is king. Many people stop watching a video after only the first few seconds, so it is crucial that the opening frame instantly captures attention and engages the audience. This is even more relevant to videos on Facebook as they auto-play silently in the user’s feed until they are clicked on, making the visual elements paramount to the video’s success.

To further entice people to view your content, video on Facebook should be used as a platform to showcase exclusive material that can be seen nowhere else.

Call-To-Action

After your video has finished, viewers should be directed to another destination (i.e. company website, social channels, product collection) where they can learn more about the content they just watched.

A “Watch Video” button can also be added to the top of your Facebook business page, drawing your followers attention to a video on your website, which in turn acts as a traffic-driver.

Spread Awareness

In order to raise awareness and increase the shareability of your videos, the Pages of people who either appear or feature in the video in someway or who you want to make aware of the video, should be tagged. This will increase the opportunity of gaining organic distribution, a higher reach and viewer numbers, and ultimately will make more people aware of your brand.

Facebook videos are similar to YouTube videos in that they can be embedded into blog posts and other pages on websites. This use of cross-channel promotion will increase views and encourage viewers to explore other content featured on your website or other videos stored in a playlist.

Check The Insights

In order to go forward and progress with your video content, you must understand how well you have done so far and identify whether your strategy needs refining. For every video published on Facebook, you can access metrics including number of views, unique video views, audience retention and the average duration people spend watching your video. Analysing these figures will allow you to name your strengths and weaknesses and make the appropriate alterations depending on where improvements need to be made.