YouTube or Facebook Video Marketing?
Visual content is becoming the norm in marketing.
Over the years, Facebook has changed its layout to become more picture and video friendly. Social platforms such as Snap Chat and Instagram are growing in popularity and seeing rapid growth due to its ease of use and the growing popularity in sharing visual content, particularly video content.
This brings up a great question… what is the best channel to share your videos on? YouTube or Facebook? SnapChat has recently passed Facebook with over 10 billion views per day, but I want to specifically focus on YouTube and Facebook because they’re platform allows for videos of longer length. Lets dive right in!
The Positives of Facebook
Facebook has over 1.3 billion users, which allows for easy sharing within Facebook. This allows users to adopt video content easily because Facebook gives users the luxury of not changing platforms to view videos. Everything is in one location!
Additionally, there is also an algorithm built into Facebook that allows for videos that are watched more often to be present more often and increase the likelihood to be viewed by others. This is good because it ensures that good content gets a larger reach. Saying that, every content creator should be striving to create compelling content.
The Negatives of Facebook
Facebook automatically plays videos as users scroll through there news feed. They count video plays right after 3 seconds, so if someone was scrolling through there feed very slowly it would count that. This means Facebook has a seemingly lower engagement than YouTube but has more views. This can be a double edged sword because Facebook can show a lot of views which seem like your brand is getting great engagement but some people may not even be watching it. Be weary!
The Positives of YouTube
YouTube is owned and operated by Google, the largest search engine in the world. Google has pretty much coined its own common expression. YouTube has done this in the video search world, by allowing users to search phrases and expressions like “how to replace a flat tire?” or “how to make a steak sandwhich.” The possibilities are endless. Users who go on YouTube are actively engaging with the social platform which means they’re more engaged with the content and the views tracked are more engaged viewers than Facebook viewers. YouTube has been synonymous with video’s and it’s a great resource for individuals to monetize themselves as a personal brand. Facebook doesn’t allow for that.
The Negatives of YouTube
The negatives of YouTube is that as a brand that is starting off, it is harder to generate views on videos. It takes cross promoting on other social channels as well as promoted posting to generate more views and build an audience.
What should you do?
Shorter videos on fb and longer ones on Youtube. Use both obviously. Facebook has a lot of targeted data so use it to leverage your existing following and use fb to target specific audiences.. the power it has is incredible. Youtube appeals to a larger, wider audience.