So, you’ve got a shiny new video for your business that you want to get out to all of your fans on Facebook… Nice work!
But WAIT!
Before you send it out into the world, consider the following best practices (and don’t worry— at the end, we’ll walk you through step-by-step to show you how to do it).
First of all, we wouldn’t blame you for wanting to consolidate all of your views on a single platform, especially one like YouTube. After all— YouTube is the second largest search engine… Videos on the platform are super easy to find and the links are conveniently sharable. Not to mention, if you focus your efforts and grow your YouTube channel enough, you can start to make passive revenue from advertising. Cha-CHING!
But while it might be tempting to simply copy and paste your YouTube link over into a Facebook post and go about your day, you’d actually be making a big mistake… Here’s why.
While no one outside of Facebook knows exactly how the Facebook algorithm works, we do know from experience it doesn’t play nice with YouTube links. And why would it? Facebook wants to keep its users on its platform, rather than sending them away to a competitor’s site. So, it will discourage and de-incentivize posts containing YouTube links with tricks like shrinking your video’s thumbnail.
However, equipped with this knowledge we can play by Facebook’s rules in order to achieve our best results.
Uploading your videos directly into Facebook ensures that your engagement rate will be much higher. Think about it: People are on Facebook for one main reason: namely, to connect with their friends, family, or network. If they are in this frame of mind, they are less likely to jump away from Facebook to watch your video, so by uploading directly to Facebook it will be more noticeable, and more importantly— convenient— for your audience to watch right then and there.
You might not get a second chance to appear in their Feeds. Don’t miss your opportunity!
Plus, consider this: videos native to Facebook have the added benefit of auto-playing when users encounter them while scrolling in their feed. This feature alone will help generate significantly more video views for you.
Here’s a “fun” fact. Did you know? On Facebook, your average organic post is only ever going to reach about 10% of your page’s followers. So, one of the easiest and quickest ways to reach more people is by boosting your post via your Facebook Business Page.
When you boost a post you’ll be able to reach the other 90% of your page’s followers and their friends, or even extend your reach to a broader audience altogether (we’re talking about getting your video in front of people who may have no idea that you exist). If you’re interested, we have resources and best practices that will help you with boosting a post (or, running a Paid Ads Campaign), so we won’t get too deep into those topics here.
The main takeaway is that you’ll have the best results in the long run if you take the time to consider the best practices of each platform to which you plan to distribute your videos. That way you will have the best chance of ensuring your audience views it.
So, now that you know why uploading videos directly to each platform is important. Let’s get into the specifics of how to do it.
Here’s a handy video for you:
For a full text breakdown of the steps, as well as upload specifications to keep in mind— check out this Facebook Help Article: Click Here.
Before you go, here’s one more bonus tip to thank you for reading all the way to the end:
Be sure when you upload your video to Facebook that you take the time to ADD CAPTIONS— we have a separate post that dives into why this is so important and shows you how to do it.
Fiat Lux!!
