I can hear you groaning from here. “What?? There’s another thing I should be doing?? I don’t have the time!”
Not really. Consider this one to be a bonus.
But first, a quick back story. Last year, Facebook set out to crush YouTube. YouTube, as you probably know, is the #1 source of video content on the internet, with 3-4 Billion hits per day. It is also the #2 search engine in the world, next to Google (which owns it).
Facebook decided they wanted to do a little damage to the competition, so they made some adjustments to their algorithm. They decreased the amount of weight YouTube video links would get when posted to Facebook, and increased the amount of weight videos would get if you uploaded them into Facebook instead.
This is Facebook Native Video. The other thing they did was introduce autoplay on FB videos, so as you are scrolling through your feed, any videos posted there will automatically begin to play. You may choose to scroll on by, or, it’s possible the video could catch your eye and you will stop and watch it.
Take, for example, this video on how to make Kale Chips that I made last week. I uploaded it to YouTube, and then embedded it on my blog. It has gotten 16 views. That same video I also uploaded to Facebook, and it has gotten over 400 views. Big difference.
You need to keep in mind, however, that Facebook considers a “view” to be 3 seconds (about the time it takes you to scroll by on your phone), whereas YouTube considers a “view” to be 30 seconds watched.
Having said that, it’s not difficult to take advantage of Facebook’s native video. If you’re making video anyway, and uploading them to YouTube, instead of copy/pasting the link into Facebook, upload the video instead. It’s simple and basic re-purposing.
Now, here’s today’s infographic:
Infographic courtesy of Relevance.com