How important is Facebook to business video content marketing

Back in 2011, Facebook was the #2 video discovery site so if you covered YouTube and Facebook, from a business video marketing standpoint you covered about 95% of where you need to be. Now, a number of years later, that is still the case but Facebook has made some major upgrades to their online video content platform and is challenging YouTube as the dominant force in online <a title="One video is not a business video content marketing strategy.

Facebook has made major upgrades to their platform because they know that online video for social media is a major force to help reach their business objectives of increase engagement for driving customers to, and keeping them on, their platform.

So what does this means to a business that is serious about getting ahead of their competition with a digital video content marketing strategy? It means that if you cover YouTube and Facebook you’ve covered about 95% of where you need your videos right now.

Challenging YouTube’s social media video supremacy, Facebook is now giving their users the ability to embed their social media videos that are uploaded to Facebook.   Just like YouTube’s familiar cut and past embed code functionality, Facebook users will be able to post their Facebook social media videos anywhere online.

Facebook used to not be the best place to put a B2B promotional video, business sales video or other types of branding and promotional videos because it would only be seen on Facebook. But now that they launched their embeddable video player, business can now post their B2B promotional video marketing content to Facebook and then put the embed code directly on their website, blog or any other social media platform. This is significant for companies that have website promotional videos or other type of videos on their website as it gives them a familiar brand and more options than just YouTube (note, Vimeo has also been an option for small business video). For most videos for small business, the only option has been using the free hosting services that YouTube offers. Now, any company that has an online video content marketing strategy has options on which platform they use.  This is a big challenge to YouTube, and seems that is it paying off for Facebook, as they are have been seeing an increase in social media video views since the summer of 2014, the number of videos watched on Facebook has tripled, now (April 2015) totals over 4 billion per day.*

According to social media analytic tool provider SocialBakers, Dec ’14 was the first time that there was more video uploads to Facebook than videos were shared via YouTube. Although there are not reliable studies on what percentage of views is B2C social media videos vs B2B promotional videos, it would be safe to say that they are mostly B2C social media video content. So with YouTube being the place that small business goes to post their B2B sales promotional videos, the question still remains if Facebook will challenge YouTube anytime soon with online video for small business and other types of B2B promotional video content.

But does that mean that only two online video powerhouses that is easier to get the exposure than it used to be? Actually, it is a lot harder. First off, a sound digital video content marketing strategy takes into consideration the distribution channel and matches the appropriate content to that channel….in this case social media video content (sorry, that repurposed TV commercial will not work). Then you have to produce the right content that is fun, educational and or engaging to your audience so they will watch and pass it along to their networks. Remember both Facebook and YouTube want your videos to be watched and shared (remember the business objectives of driving customers to, and keeping them on, their platform) and have some pretty complex algorithms working in the background that tell them which videos to display to their users.

What can business owners and corporate marketers deduce from this epic video battle? Online video content is THE #1 piece of online marketing content to increase engagement, for driving customers to, and keeping them on, a website…. an doing that will help every business increase their awareness, create more qualified leads and more sales. 

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* https://www.fastcompany.com/3045369/fast-feed/at-3-billion-views-a-day-facebook-video-is-zuckerbergs-next-cash-cow