Video on social media as seen an impressive rise over the past year. With videos on Facebook getting the highest engagement rate and being shown most predominantly on our news feeds these days (thanks to the news feed algorithm), it doesn’t come as a surprise.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced at the beginning of the month that the biggest trend for their products will be the growth of video. Instagram stories turned out to be a huge success and give reason to focus strongly on the moving image on the social media platform. In his statement, he said:
‘We’ve found that live videos generate 10x the number of interactions and comments as other videos. But too often right now, watching video is just a passive consumption experience. Time spent is not a goal by itself. We want the time people spend on Facebook to encourage meaningful social interactions. So we’re going to focus our products on all the ways to build a community around the video that people share and watch. That’s something Facebook can uniquely do.’
Bearing that in mind, we can see that Facebook wants to encourage videos that are liked, shared, commented on and enjoyed by a wider community. This makes it an ideal place to share any content that creators have made and is successful. Just like on YouTube, this can lead to a community being built around the videos and on pages, rather than just being a simple clip being watched briefly or scrolled over while trying to find your friends updates.
Facebook has also rolled out some new developments which make sharing content worthwhile and hopefully, interesting and fun.
- Longer videos are now encouraged! Initially, we all thought that short videos were the way to go on Facebook. But lately, longer videos have been pushed into the spotlight. This is particularly interesting for brands and creator monetizing there content as mid-roll ads are becoming more common and likely to appear on longer videos.
- Facebook monetization will be available for creators! Yes, you heard right. You will need to apply for the Facebook Rights Manager first and need to be approved by Facebook first. You may have noticed an increase in the ads you see on videos, which is a promising step for it to be more widely available.
- Facebook has added a section to the Video Insights for Pages to show publishers information on post engagement and average watch time of shared videos.
- New developments are constantly being released, currently, the compatibility with 4k videos is being tested and you can now use multiple cameras for live streaming
- Facebook live is becoming more relevant, with the live button on the app being more prominent than before, encouraging platform users to engage and share their events, life and happy moments with their communities. It’s easier than ever before to go live instantly (though announcing it may help you get more views).
Sure, Facebook is still no YouTube and is very unlikely to overtake the video streaming giant any time soon, but they are taking steps to make the site more appealing to creators. It is always good practice to share content on both sites to get maximum reach and engagement. When it comes to live streaming options, do your research and decide if Facebook might work better than YouTube for you.
If you have questions about Facebook developments regarding monetization and rights management, feel free to start a conversation with us and get the help you need.