Have you noticed more and more videos in your Facebook feed? Maybe you’ve been the one posting them – I know I’ve increased my Facebook video posting and watching in the past few months. But how do you decide where to post your videos? Today your options are endless – YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Flickr…
Here are my rules of thumb on where to post online video
I don’t really use Instagram – the maximum video length is 15 seconds. Great for a quick selfie video, but not my regular videos. And I can’t keep up with all the social media sites, so I have to create some limits – sorry Instagram 🙁 Flickr is in the same boat.
Vimeo is beautiful, but I want my videos to have an audience. And that audience isn’t on Vimeo – unless my audience is a bunch of filmmakers.
YouTube is still my favorite. YouTube is the #2 search engine in the world, so viewers everywhere can find my videos. YouTube will also share ad revenue with me – which is cool, but I turned advertising off. And I have subscribers on YouTube who are interested in my videos and who interact with me in the comments.
Facebook is really popular. Most people have a Facebook accounts, so if you have an audience on Facebook, then you can probably reach them with a video in your feed. Native Facebook videos also start playing immediately – viewers just need to click for sound. Facebook also doesn’t like YouTube, so posing a native video to your feed will result in more views than posting a link to a YouTube video. Sorry YouTube.
But Facebook isn’t a place people go to find videos. The video has to pop up at the right time for them to watch – there’s no going back a month later to re-watch a video (OK, it is possible, but Facebook doesn’t make this very easy.) Facebook isn’t sharing their ad revenue – any money they make off your awesome video is theirs. Unfortunately, Facebook also doesn’t have Content ID, so if someone posts your awesome YouTube video onto Facebook, there’s no protection for you, the creator. YouTube has a system to make sure the original creator can still get paid. I’m thinking we’ll be reading about a lawsuit soon.
Pinterest plays really well with YouTube, so I suggest posting to YouTube, and pinning that video on Pinterest.
Takeaway – Online Video is hot!
Post your cute / brand videos to FB. Post your teasers to get people on your email list on FB. Post your searchable videos on YouTube. Post your content for subscribers on YouTube (cause FB still only serves up your post to 1-5% of your fans.)
And the money is still in the list. Collect your audience’s email addresses because you never know what’s going to change. Facebook taught everyone that lesson in late 2013 when they changed their algorithm and businesses stopped reaching the vast majority of their fans (even if they’d bought advertising to attract those fans.) Your customer / potential customer list is one of your most valuable assets – make sure you own it.