How to make Facebook Videos work for your Brand?
Some months back, HelloMeets was live on Facebook with Brian G. Peters, from Buffer, where he handles the Digital Marketing & Social Media. Brian shared his knowledge and experience about how important videos have become today & also gave some tips and tricks to easily use them for your own brand.
Here’s a question for you to think about:
What is a Facebook live without audience’s questions?
Such questions enhance the learning and the engagement of the audience & the speaker. There were a lot of great questions asked by the viewers during the live video. Read on till the end to find out!!
Facebook marketing has been around for years now and has worked very well for a lot of brands. But it has only exploded in the last few years. Videos are really winning now — The brands that are creating great videos are winning on Facebook in terms of organic reach.
Brian started off with a study that BuzzSumo recently came out with. They studied 100 million hours of Facebook videos & looked at top videos by brands and what kind of videos those brands were posting.
Brian says that the study was eye opening for him, it really pointed to the fact that Facebook video is somewhat simple.
“At least the concepts of what makes a great video are simple. There’s not that much that goes into creating a super compelling and engaging video. The actual creation of that video is a different story altogether. But when you break down the facts, it’s not rocket science.”
Continue reading to find out those simple hacks that’ll give you ideas on what videos to create…..
You can have a look at the BuzzSumo study here: Facebook Video Engagement: What We Learned From Analyzing 100 Million Videos
Video Marketing today
Videos are growing at an exponential rate today and have shown a 50% organic growth in reach than text or images.
Just a glance at these numbers confirms the need of making a video for any brand.
According to BuzzSumo, the top 10 performing categories on social media are:
It’s great if you fall in any of these categories. This is because a lot of people might not fall in any of these. It will be an advantage over your competitors.
But, if your brand doesn’t fit into any of these categories, not to worry. There are ways of implementing a little bit of D-I-Y into your industry, or you can even talk about tech in your industry.
So, what are those ways?
1) The optimal video length
This is something that’s got brands confused all the time. What kinds of videos are better — Long or Short? Which is the sweet spot for the viewers?
In terms of optimising videos, BuzzSumo found out that the sweet spot is between 60 to 90 seconds. Videos that are in the 60 to 90 seconds range, see the most views, most engagement and the most complete watch. The next is 90–120 seconds and after that it is 30 to 60 seconds.
Quick Takeaway: Try to make your videos super short and sweet. 60 to 90 seconds and definitely try to avoid going beyond 120 seconds unless its a Facebook live.
Note: This is because 92 to 93% of Facebook users are mobile users. Facebook is a mobile platform & people on it are on the go. They could be watching at a subway or in the metro or while at work. They only have a few minutes, maybe even a few seconds to check their phone whenever they log onto FB.
They are not going to patiently sit and watch a 10 minute or even a 3 minute-long video. They’re going to watch short little clips made by their favourite brands or people. Thats the kind of videos they want to see, like and share.
Short videos will be shared more, because more number of people will watch it.
Why is Facebook live different?
In Facebook live, it is hard to show the value of the video before some time has passed, because the users need to log in to watch the video. According to BuzzSumo’s study, this takes about 15 minutes. This is the peak viewing and peak engagement time in a Facebook live — when the maximum number of viewers are curiously watching the video.
It is also getting more engagement than pre-recorded videos because it is direct and has a more human touch. They are more interactive and more authentic. Due to this, people tend to watch these videos for a longer duration.
How can we implement live videos for our brand?
There are endless ways for this. All you need is a little creativity and content.
You can take a behind the scenes tour, set up an influencer and make him talk live. Here Brian used the example of his FB Live with us at HelloMeets. HelloMeets made him a live contributor for the video. All one needs is a Facebook profile and you can go live from there.
If there is someone you always wanted to work with, but couldn’t do so due to schedules, you can reach out to them and ask them to come live for 10 minutes to do an AMA (Ask-Me-Anything) session or maybe a D-I-Y — to mix it with a popular topic.
Caption can work wonders
This is a part which is often overlooked, but is super important. The caption you choose should be short and sweet. They should just give a brief idea of the video and not giveaway its contents.
According to BuzzSumo, an ideal caption that engages the readers is 60–80 characters in length.
The caption for your video should compel the audience to watch the video, urge them to wait for it and then make it worth their wait, through the content of the video. This will increase the amount of people watching the video.
The more brief the caption is, the better.
Gear for video-making
A good video doesn’t have to necessarily burn a hole in your pocket. You can film a video on your smartphones. It’ll also work the same for your brand.
However, buying certain equipment might be of great help. Cheap, yet very effective.
A small mic and a tripod stand — and you can get started in less than $40!
Where to get all the ideas from?
This is probably the most frustrating part. After certain videos, one might run out of ideas. You might wonder-How do I keep making fresh videos then? What do I talk about?
The number one tactic that has been successful for Buffer is re-purposing the top performing content across their blog and website.
We at Buffer might have a lot of content that has worked in the past to drive traffic. By re-purposing that into a video, we give that content extra shelf life.
But, how do you get started with it?
1. Set up Google analytics. Sort your blog post or blog pages by ‘most visited pages’ within the last 60–90 days.This is our audience’s vote for top content. Now, you already have 20–30 ideas for video content that you can re-purpose.
Take the blog post, make it in a video by summarising it, post it to Facebook or other social media channels and add a little description and a link to the blog post in case people want to read more about it.
2. Keep an eye on your competitors and peers, and what they’re talking about. Brian’s favourite tool for this is Facebook Pages to Watch. Here you can follow people and see what the related companies are doing — What subjects are resonating with a similar audience as yours can be known in no time.
It sorts all of the videos by ‘most popular’ in the last week and you can see what content is working for them. This gives an idea about the trends we should be talking about.
It was then time for Brian to answer the audiences’ questions that had been coming throughout the video. We’ve got all of them here for you so you don’t miss a thing.
Question 1: How can we track audience in the first 10 seconds on Facebook?
Brian: Facebook and YouTube are completely different. Don’t treat Facebook like you treat YouTube or vice versa. YouTube usually has long videos — fully polished content and very lengthy introductions. In Facebook videos, you want to get right into the content of the video.
For Facebook, use a caption that makes people click on the link. Once people start watching it, you need to get right into it because people don’t want introductions in Facebook videos. That’s not what they are there for. Use the first 3 seconds to grab people’s attention. For example, using a phrase like ‘Wait for it till the end’ and then use the video as a story. Make people guess. At the end, have a solution, or some CTA (Call-To-Action), to make people feel good about watching the video. Any second wasted is a loss.
Question 2: Can you suggest some tools to research for content marketing?
Brian: Some tools that are my absolute favourite are Facebook Pages to Watch, BuzzSumo, Quora, Reddit, Hackernews and Growth Hackers.
Apart from these, any of the news aggregation websites can give you an idea of what people are talking about.
Also, you can also use tools like Google Keyword Planner to find out what keywords are being searched for the most.
Question 3: Is it necessary to do a promotion to increase the reach for the video?
Brian: Every great advertising strategy starts with great organic social media. Every promotion should be done with the thought that you are trying to get the maximum organic traffic. Some content is going to be more successful than the other. Post it organically first, and only promote the posts that are working best because unless it is too important, like a product launch or a company announcement, you should only boost the posts that are really working.
With this, you’ll reduce cost, won’t waste money and it will amplify the content to the next level by reaching more people.
Question 4: Does sharing Facebook live videos to various relevant groups help?
Brian: Yes, you can use various Facebook groups to share the live videos or pre-recorded videos as long as people don’t think you are spamming them. Be careful of how much you actually post to them. Make sure you save the videos for good. Only take your best content for sharing!
Question 5: Sugesst a phone for shooting good videos.
Brian: My choice is iPhone. But, there are also many Android phones with great cameras. It is less about the phone than it is about the set up. Phones generally shoot more or less the same quality videos.
3 things that make great videos and has absolutely nothing to do with cameras:
1. Lighting — Try to film near natural light, near a window. If there is no natural light or if it is windy outside, white light is the second best option. There should be no direct light on the face, but try to make it look like an aura.
2. Sound — Make sure you have a microphone attached for a good sound quality.
3. Stability — a tripod is an absolute must. Otherwise, you will have a shaky video, which will give a bad viewing experience.
Question 6: Do you think animated videos are better in Facebook?
Brian: No, I don’t think so. This is because there is not enough data in animated videos. It’s a lot tougher and expensive to create animated videos. Most successful videos are the ones which are raw. You can use a tool like Animoto to create animated videos. It helps to create stock videos with text overlays. For tech releases or updates, such quick videos are amazing and work well.
Question 8: Mostly videos are abandoned before the videos ends, resulting in audience not visiting our website. What can be done?
Brian: Videos are not for driving traffic. They are majorly for brand awareness, shares and engagement. Great thing about videos and why they are so popular is because people don’t have to leave the Facebook platform to be entertained. Previously, you had to leave Facebook to see an image or read an article. That is not what Facebook wants, and not even what user wants. You can post on Facebook organically and then create a video that talks about the posts. With this, people will know more about your brand. You have to find someone who is curious to read more about it. Facebook videos are an engagement tool.
Question 9: How can we market events in the videos, before the event?
Brian: Using videos to drive awareness about a certain event or a product launch is a great idea. Traditionally, we would tell someone — “Hey this is our event, come and check it out.” Now, we can give people some content and say “If u like this content, the event is gonna be really interesting for you. Check it out.”
The video itself is not a promotion. It’s content. It’s a way to provide value where, when people look at it, they look for more of it. It’s a way to provide useful content that your audience can consume and make an informed decision for themselves.
Question 10: GIFs, videos, memes or animation — which is more eye catching and engaging?
Brian: Right now, videos are most eye catching in terms of content. But if you can mix all of them, it’s the best. For example, you can mix a meme with a content in the video.
Now that you know so much more about videos, what are you waiting for? Start creating one already!
Hope you’d be creating some awesome facebook videos now! Also, do share your thoughts in the comments section below.
Subscribe to us as www.hellomeets.com for updates on our events & FB lives.
Thanks to HelloMeets & Neha Kulshreshtha
