Video Is King But It Has Two Castles!

Not exactly a news flash that videos are eye catching. If a picture says a thousand words then video multiplies that enormously. When scrolling through a social media feed, stunning images are more easily scanned and will register more clicks but if your goal is to garner engagement (and it should be), videos are king when measured by likes, comments and time. People will spend precious, measurable time watching your videos.

Though there are many options to consider, we are going to only touch on the two biggest, most widely used and affordable ways to get your videos out there: YouTube vs Facebook.

Remember too that with video's ability to capture attention for a longer time, there is also a little more leeway when comes to quality. However, a poorly lit, bad audio or long, boring video will still be less effective as well as damaging to your brand or perceived level of competence and skill. You have about 3 seconds to capture someone's attention and once you've got it, they'll watch.

The first name in social video is YouTube and with good reason. YouTube has a monthly active user count of 2 billion, according to YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki. YouTube attracts roughly a third of users on the internet. There are 30+ million active daily users on it. Seriously, when was the last time you tried to fix or create something without watching how someone else did it on YouTube first? It also doesn’t hurt that Google owns YouTube. However, it is not as simple as posting a video and calling it a day. YouTube is search driven. The typical user must be looking for something that relates to your video’s subject matter and that can be huge if your competitors aren’t using video (but I bet they are), and what percentage of your ideal customer hasn’t gotten around to searching for it? It may be too that your video is one of thousands on a particular subject and not as easily found. An incredible 300-400 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute yet only 9% of small businesses in the US use YouTube.

With Facebook, videos just pop up in your feed based on your interests and engagement activity. So we would say that Facebook is more of a passive audience while YouTube is more of an active one. Yet, YouTubers are more patient, and longer videos are more accepted. The most liked YouTube video in 2019 was a how-to about a paint tecnique that was 13 minutes long. On Facebook a 3-minute craft-hack video came out on top.

Facebook has continued to grow year after year. It is estimated to have 2.45 billion active monthly users. While teen use is in decline, the 65+ demo growth is more than making up for their loss. According to Pew research, 74% of Facebook users are high-income earners; for YouTube viewers it's 83%. Knowing and targeting your audiences should direct your marketing efforts and help you decide which video platform to use. We say both. We also recommend the affordable advertising both offer.

Facebook viewers are more often on mobile devices, and their frame of mind is usually that of trust when viewing posts - it's friends and family, right? YouTubers are ready to spend some time to binge, learn, laugh, or explore. Uploading videos is free on either platform but YouTube ads are pricier than Facebook ads. Facebook ads can be more effective in that most viewers visit their page daily, while YouTube is the leader in quantity and monthly views.

So Google owns YouTube and Facebook owns Instagram which is why it is easy to share Instagram to Facebook, but it is not easy to share YouTube to Facebook or vice versa. Your video may do well on one channel, and not on the other. But to discount one over the other is, for the time being, like giving up a whole castle with all its riches.

The video you shoot on your phone or create through a video editor should be uploaded to Facebook and YouTube separately. Facebook shows more liked posts to more people but their algorithms can get a bit wonky when a they detect a YouTube video. It doesn’t get as much of a viewer bump and the measurement of video views is only tracked on YouTube and is not given credit through Facebook. The best chance to maximize your video views is to post it twice, once on YouTube, once on Facebook. This can be an opportunity to test what works best with your audiences as well - each adjustment can help you determine what you should do to better appeal to your potential clients and customers.

Another thing to keep in mind is that 85% of Facebook viewers watch video on silent, and it is pretty easy to upload an original video and add subtitles. YouTube makes it easy to upload but adding subtitles/closed captioning can be torturous. Fortunately, a higher percentage of the YouTube audiences watch with sound. Of course, by the time you finish reading this there will probably be a how-to called "Put Subtitles on a YouTube Video" video.

Bottom line? Be the king in both castles! If you need help with your social media accounts, contact our EDU director Margie: at margie@342mad.com