According to data released earlier this year by Syndacast, 74% off all Internet traffic in 2017 will be video. That’s a staggering statistic. Twitter has adopted the video revolution by allowing it’s users to shoot, edit and share videos directly to their followers through their platform. Facebook love video content to be shared. Did you know that the number of videos upload to Facebook overtook YouTube for the first time back ion November 2014? Over 1 Billion videos are viewed every day on Facebook globally.
Content marketers are beginning to understand that publishing videos directly to Facebook rather than YouTube alone can be very beneficial. One of the reasons for this is Facebooks decision to allow the videos to play automatically, but without sound as the user scrolls down their news feed. It means users are drawn to content rather than having to do the work of pressing play. Facebooks future of video will probably entail them poaching You Tube stars over to their platform at getting them to publish direct.
UK department store John Lewis uploaded its Christmas ad direct to Facebook last year for the first time. Data provided from the social-video marketing company Unruly found that 24 hours after John Lewis’ video launched, 40% of its views were on Facebook, whereas in 2013 the views all went to YouTube. The Facebook video also dominated in terms of shareability. In the first day after launch, the Facebook video attracted 76.9% of the social media shares versus 23.1% for YouTube.
The Facebook algorithm that determines what appears in news feeds also favours content hosted natively—meaning it’s in the interests of people looking for exposure to upload their content to Facebook directly.
So, if you want to engage with your audience, video is something you should definitely add to your marketing mix. It’s an engaging, easy to use, shareable media and a great way to get your message across. But don’t forget, you can rehash your content in to written form to make PDFs, Slideshares and articles to get more bang for your buck.
