Facebook live video… how can you use it to engage with your customers?
What would you remember more? Reading an interesting article or watching a video that lets you become a part of the conversation? No prizes for guessing the right answer of course, because the video will win every time!
However, when it comes to video, not all video is created equal. Did you notice the bit in the question above about “video that lets you become a part of the conversation”? That’s the crucial bit because here we’re talking about live video or live video streaming. After all, there’s nothing more authentic and genuine as live video, and that’s exactly the sort of video that audiences are clamouring for today.
Okay, but so what, you ask.
Well, in business, the first steps in coming up with a successful digital marketing strategy are finding out what your customers want, and where and how they want to find out about it. In other words, it’s about knowing how to create content about your product or business that will engage them.
Today, users of social media and other digital platforms are all about being ‘in the now’ and consuming ‘in-the-moment’ content. This is where a video has a huge impact and can function as an exceptional gateway to drive traffic to more valuable content on your website. With the proliferation of smartphones and other mobile devices, more brands than ever before are making greater use of video content, especially live video streaming, to engage with their customers. Video content is one of the digital marketing trends we predicted would take off in 2017.
Does your digital marketing strategy include live video?
Today, no business development marketing strategy should be without social media for connecting with potential customers – and the kingpin of social media, namely Facebook, should be one of the key tools in your digital strategy game. So, if you are not taking advantage of Facebook marketing for your business – and Facebook Live Video Streaming in particular – it’s probably time you did.
Live streaming is an awesome way for businesses to use the power of live video to communicate their brand stories and build authentic relationships with fans and followers (a.k.a. potential customers), creating connections with them that far transcends traditional marketing limitations. You can read more about the value of Facebook Live Video Streaming for your business in one of our earlier blogs.
Facebook Live and the News Feed Algorithm
Over the last year, Facebook has been gradually making Facebook Live available to its more than one billion daily active users. First, it began allowing celebrities to share live videos. Later, it included journalists, verified accounts and other beta users, before opening it up to all iPhone users and then Android users too.
Facebook has found that people spend three times more time watching a Facebook Live video on average compared with a video that’s no longer live. This is because videos are more interesting in the moment than after the fact. As a result, Facebook has been and is continuing to tweak its News Feed Algorithm to give greater ranking in News Feed to live video over a video that is not live.
Now, when it comes to your social media (and Facebook) marketing strategy, it’s all about boosting the organic reach of your business page to ensure your content gets seen by as many people as possible. How the Facebook News Feed Algorithm works, therefore, has implications for the organic reach of your page. That’s why it’s worth becoming familiar with the main levers in the Facebook Algorithm so you know how to craft your content to ensure it can continue to be seen by as many people as possible.
Compelling video ranks higher in News Feed
Facebook pays constant attention to the various signals about what its users want and with what they want to engage. As a result, Facebook first updated News Feed rankings to take into account how many people watched a video and how long people watched it for. They used the date to help them personalise News Feed based on people’s preference for watching a video. Over time they also learnt that certain actions people take on a video, such as choosing to turn on sound or making the video full screen, are good indications that they wanted to watch that video, even if they didn’t choose to ‘like’ it.
Then, as they saw more and more people preferring to watch Live videos, Facebook made further changes to the Algorithm so that Facebook Live videos were more likely to appear higher in News Feed when those videos are actually live, compared with after they are no longer live.
More recently, Facebook has made further changes to the way they rank videos in News Feed by adjusting the value they give to how much of a video is watched. Here they look at the “percent completion” – in other words, the percent of each video that users watch. If users watch most or all of a video, that tells Facebook that users found the video to be compelling. Of course, completing a longer video requires a bigger commitment from a user than completing a shorter one, so Facebook has realised that it needs to weight percent completion more heavily the longer a video is, in order to avoid penalising longer videos.
So, longer videos that people are willing to spend time watching may see a slight increase in distribution on Facebook – and some videos, even if they are shorter, may see a slight dip in News Feed distribution if people have not been willing to watch them to completion.
Create videos that are relevant and engaging
Which brings us to our old adage of “content is always king” or rather “quality content is always king”. The message coming from these latest tweaks to the Facebook Algorithm as far as a live video featuring in News Feed is that any business choosing to incorporate live video into social media in its digital strategy MUST focus on creating videos that are relevant and engaging for their audience.
So, when creating video content, remember this important point: the best length for a video is whatever length is required to tell a compelling story that engages people, which is likely to vary depending on the story you’re telling.
Do you want to boost your social media marketing?
Net Branding’s team of digital marketing experts offers the widest wide range of digital marketing services, including social media marketing, to enable you to expand your digital reach, improve your customer funnels and exploit every opportunity to grow your business.
Contact us today to find out more about what we can do for you.
