This podcast is about Facebook videos verses Youtube for online marketing. In this episode, It is also discussed how to get the best reach with your videos.
TRANSCRIPT OF PODCAST:
Welcome to Webmaster For Hire’s CyberBulletin podcast. Get the power to increase your business’s web impact.
Elizabeth Varian: Welcome back to Webmaster For Hire’s CyberBulletin podcast. Once again, it’s Elizabeth Varian here, CEO and President of Webmaster For Hire. Today, we are going to talk about a topic that has marketers battling each other. It’s been crazy reading the blogs out there on this topic. We are going to be discussing video marketing in 2016. What’s the battle in video marketing, you want to know? The battle is Facebook videos versus the big giant of YouTube. Technically they’re both giants for online marketing and your business, and how to get the best reach with your videos.
Let’s start out first by talking: why video marketing? Everyone has talked for years, content is king, write those blogs, original articles, etc., etc. That is very true, so don’t stop writing those articles. A lot of local small web design companies who also dabble in web marketing, they typically stick to either SEO or social or they go straight to pay per click, so there is very little work on their end. They miss a major component, and a lot of businesses do as well, by not doing video marketing.
We are sitting here in February 2016, I don’t know when you are going to be listening to this, but just to give you a point of reference, we just had the Super Bowl 50. A lot of reasons people watch this, it’s the most-watched game is because it’s a huge event. The football teams here in America have played all year-round, it’s down to the final two, and who is going to win this year’s championship, and who is going to be the MVP cheering your teams on, tickets go for astronomical prices, it’s the game. It’s totally the game. But, not for everybody, some people it’s the halftime show. There is dispute and issues regarding this year’s halftime show, but that’s irrelevant to this conversation.
Others like myself this year because I didn’t – my Redskins weren’t in, let’s just be honest, so I could care less who won. The reason I was watching them and a lot of people look for and they don’t go to bathroom breaks during this time is the commercials. Some of the past commercials have stood out and done more for corporate marketing branding sales than any other commercial throughout the year, because you have tens of millions of viewers, and they are anticipating the best commercials yet. And, we were on Facebook this last time, and people that’s the first thing, as soon as the commercial was over everybody had their comments: Liked, Disliked, someone had issue with some commercials. There was more discussion about the commercials than there were about the game itself during the game.
That’s the point of videos on the Internet. You’re capturing the audience’s attention. Video sells your message through not just your eyes sensory, but also the ears together. Videos can create viral marketing because they, really good ones can be shared. Good doesn’t just mean cute cats, dog videos, heartfelt share giving videos. Those do get shared quite a bit, but if your message hits people in a way that moves them, emotion sells, then it gets shared.
Why would you skip doing videos on the Internet, which can be done at an affordable cost of say a $200 camera that a lot of bloggers, video bloggers and YouTube celebrities do and they sit in front of the camera and talk? It can become more expensive if you create an explainer video, cartoon-like creation, graphic designs, etc. That’s a bit of “why video marketing”.
You want to try and create that commercial or the video on the web. It doesn’t have to be the Super Bowl sensation, but the more you put out, the more of a following that you get, and the more that people anticipate watching your videos. The other thing that we have found is generationally the younger generation actually bypasses search engines and goes directly to YouTube to research. Baby boomers have caught on as well and Gen Xers totally are there.
What happens is if you need to put something together, you need to learn how to do something, you want to know about a product, they’re going directly to YouTube and searching. Because of this, YouTube has become the number two search engine on the Internet, right behind Google who owns YouTube. We’ll talk about that here in a moment.
Let’s talk about some changes that have taken place. In the past, you uploaded your video to YouTube, embedded in your site, then you went out to all your social networks and sent them that YouTube video link everywhere. That’s not how it’s done anymore. Facebook now allows you to directly upload your video right into Facebook. You can click a button and you can actually record your video right there to Facebook. It has the direct upload capability. Since Facebook has done that, that has started the war of the marketers as to which is better for you to post to. I have an opinion, of course, on which is better to post to for your marketing value.
Before we go into my opinion, let’s talk about what are the benefits of posting to YouTube, and what are the benefits of posting directly to Facebook? You have some more educated options and decisions of which one you want to put your efforts into. Benefits of posting to YouTube, now these are some numbers that have increased drastically over the years. You want to be careful and I want to be careful to state these numbers as accurately as possible to you because it sounds crazy, the size of these numbers compared to the number of people on this planet, compared to the number of people in China who can’t get on Facebook yet. I know Facebook is still working on it, I don’t know that they are yet, unless they change their IP. When we take all that into account, we have to be realistic about the numbers.
What are those numbers? On YouTube one of the benefits is, it’s already established video sharing site. It has a social network component to it. You can build up your subscribers, which is what vloggers, video bloggers tend to want to do, and YouTube videos sensations who are making six figures a year. I’m not kidding you on that.
The number one video person last time I checked, his videos are literally a video of him playing video games and his reaction to it. Why didn’t we think of that? He is now making six figures a year and is unapologetic about it as he should be. Good for him, but it’s already established, he has a large subscribership. He has people commenting on the video, liking and sharing and making favorites of his channel.
There are one billion user accounts on Facebook. Now there is just a few billion people in this world, not a few, fewer more than a few. How is it there is one billion user accounts? That doesn’t mean an individual person, a user account is if I have five user accounts, they are still five user accounts. It’s still a large number of accounts to reach out to. They have four billion video views on average every day. Let me repeat that, four billion video views on average every day. Employers might want to go check out their employee’s computer and see if they are watching a lot of videos during work hours. That is a lot of views and you want to tap into that traffic.
With the search component, you want to make sure your description is filled in with the right keywords, you choose the right keywords, you make sure it’s optimal, but you really want to tap into to that viewership by making sure you set up your channel correctly, and every video is, you take the time to put in all the right keywords and you target it, you make sure your niche can find you.
I mentioned it earlier, but YouTube is owned by Google. This means you’ll get search engine rankings with your video. You will notice if you type in any search into Google that you’ll see YouTube videos popping up. They pop up pretty high in the search pages because as you’ll learn, if you don’t know it already Google loves Google. If they own YouTube, they are going to promote YouTube. That helps your search engine optimization rankings.
The other benefits as you’re able to build that subscribership and make revenue from having paid ads and commercials on your channel and your videos. You can build your subscribership by consistently posting, but you get paid like the guy who is video recording himself playing a videogame, he makes that six figures because he has that few second ad placement that he revenue shares in. That’s a great component and how a lot of Gen Xers are making their money these days or attempting to.
You can save your web hosting storage, this as a web designer and webmaster is my favorite part of it. As a web marketer I like all the other components and benefits, but a lot of my clients get small storage space hosting and we don’t have to use one ounce of it for heavy file size videos. They can upload their videos for free to YouTube and then embed them into their site so that the video is viewed on the site. People don’t have to go to YouTube to watch the video, they can see it right there on their site. You’re saving money in hosting fees by not hosting your own videos. You can, but it’s a good saving place.
That’s all the list of just a few benefits of YouTube. Now, since Facebook has now started allowing you to directly post to them, what are their benefits? Some of these numbers maybe shocking to you, maybe not. Facebook users, they are posting 75% more videos now. This number came out at the end of 2015, and has carried over 2016 because obviously we are so new into the year we don’t have the latest numbers. Compared to 2014, people are getting so they’re more actively directly posting videos now right into Facebook.
Part of the argument and debate amongst marketers is watching the corporate world. Large corporations, they too are now massively directly posting and uploading their videos to Facebook. When they’re starting to do it, you got to key in, there is a reason for it. Facebook, they have on average four billion views per day. Now remember, China is not yet into Facebook, Facebook is working on it, little boy billionaires going to get them, but they’re not there yet because they have the censorship. The views, the four billion views isn’t videos, it’s views of Facebook in general. The four billion views of videos for YouTube is actual video viewing. We want to keep that into the right perspective when we are looking at stats because they can be skewed in any direction.
We don’t have a number yet for how many videos are being viewed specifically from Facebook. I don’t know that it would be four billion a day… yet. They are still fairly new at it, it started just a few years ago. More than 65% of Facebook views are done via mobile. If you are in Facebook and you just click it, you can watch the video right then and there, and in your hand mobiley, and it’s easier to do than clicking the link and going to another, deciding do you the YouTube app versus YouTube channel to then click it and then make your way back to Facebook again. Right then and there 65% of Facebook is using mobile.
Kind of a side note, you need to have your websites mobile, not just because Google started Mobilegeddon last year in April, the end of, but 74% of people searching the Internet, they are doing it via their mobile phones as well. You need everything to be mobile.
There are 1.3 billion user accounts on Facebook. Again, let’s put it in perspective. There is a lot of fake Facebook accounts out there, for marketers, for spammers, hackers, ISIS, Anonymous, the hacking group, there are catfishers out there. If you don’t know what that is, go check out on TV. There is tons of fake accounts out there as well. We don’t know how many actual — of the 1.3 billion user accounts are actually people, but like with YouTube we can assume there is a lot.
Facebook has its own SEO game. Just like Google is SEO, search engine optimization, Facebook they have their own algorithm. You need to have interaction and engagement for more of your posts to be seen by your friends and fans on Facebook. Having your video and getting that viral and that interactivity will help your other posts to get seen as well, because Facebook wants your buying ads, they want money, it’s a business. We can’t fault them for wanting money, it’s a business. They give it to you for free, so that’s how they make their money, not that they are crying starvation here without any money.
You want to have those views. Increase views on the videos because you’re in a sharing site, that’s a social sharing site, whereas YouTube is a video sharing site. If people aren’t thinking to go to YouTube, but they are on Facebook socially, it’ll show up in their timelines and it’s faster to click, like I said earlier, to view the video right away. Then while viewing the video, which I have done myself numerous times, I will stop halfway through if it’s funny, if it’s meaningful. Again, emotion triggers action, I will stop and share it immediately with someone else.
I have that capability so swiftly and so easily, that my video is going to get viewed more times than not if I don’t put it on Facebook. You also have faster and better share rates or what Facebook calls the Reach. How many people are you reaching? if you have a very good video that has a good message, a funny message, tricksters, catching people doing goodwill, animal videos. The Grumpy Cat has made that owner wealthy, and everybody knows it, because it has been shared so many times with photos. Now the same is happening with videos.
Those are just a few benefits of videos on Facebook. I told you there is a war going on amongst marketers. How do you do video marketing and which is the better platform? I told you I have my own opinion on it. My own opinion isn’t just an opinion, it’s actually what we do for our clients here at Webmaster For Hire because I don’t believe in the power of only one strategy, I believe in a campaign of multiple strategies. We use both, which I think should be the obvious answer, and there should be no battle amongst marketers.
You want to garner the value of uploading to YouTube, having that free space on your hosting and embedding, getting into Google’s search engine optimization with the videos. Many clients, we get them ranked faster with videos than we do with their articles, then we want to go after we finish zhuzhing up, get the right title with the right keywords on YouTube, get that description, put your web link in there with the HTTP:// so it’s clickable, get your phone number in there if you are a local marketing or phone calls are what you are seeking for leads, then we get our keywords in there, choose our thumbnail. Once it’s published, I do not grab that link and go to Facebook and put the link in.
I go directly to Facebook, to my client’s fan page or business page, and I re-upload a fresh copy of that video right into Facebook. Go ahead and hashtag, share, comment, make sure there is keywords in the comments. A lot of people don’t know that Facebook status posts can actually be added into search results. Hey, if you get the video in both places in the search result, bonus, but the best choice ever, it doesn’t take that much time out of your day or your assistant’s day after you’ve taken the time to make the video to hit both places, and then of course take the YouTube embed and add it into your site, send it out everywhere through your e-newsletter. If you set your site up properly, so that it auto-posts to all the social networks, you’ll get hit everywhere. You can uncheck so it doesn’t hit your Facebook because you are already uploading it directly.
I think the conclusion in my opinion is the obvious answer. There should be no battle over it, make both YouTube your friend and Facebook your friend and get them working for your business.
Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. I very much appreciate all the comments that we’ve been hearing that are positive. We had some rough starts just figuring out formats, but I am very appreciative and thankful for your taking the time to listen to these podcasts. I pray and hope that you are gleaning a lot of information from them.
If you or someone you know wants a website or needs Internet marketing, we typically work with small mid-size businesses and larger businesses, such as hospitals, CPAs, etc. They can reach us at 561-822-9931. Again, 561-822-9931 or find us on the web at WebmasterForHire.us. Thank you so much and I look forward to sharing more with you on the future.