Huge increase in engagement on Facebook without ads. Here's how...

[JamesSJ]

I run a few blogs that mainly post video content (my own) from my youtube channel.

For months (slipping over a year) now i've been posting links to the blog posts on Facebook with a custom designed thumbnail and was getting pretty poor post engagement unless I boosted the post or promoted it via ads.

This months I thought i'd try something different.

I still publish the video on Youtube and house that video in a blog post. I share the new videos on Google + and to my mailing list. Nothing changes there.

But on Facebook i've been uploading the video directly to FB also. The engagement is insane - literally thousands of views and the engagement (comments, likes and shares) is multiple times higher than the direct posts i've been making from the blog.

And get this, i'm not seeing any disruption in the number of blog post views or youtube plays or views. It is not affecting those channels.

I'm guessing that FB penalizes you for posting links to content outside of FB by holding back the number of people who view your content. However if you are going to play in their sandbox and keep them on the FB platform it's a free for all. Also with the video auto play feature your going to get a lot more people watching the video.

It's a bit of extra work to upload the videos to FB but i'll definitely be doing it ever time I post a new video on Youtube.

For example according to FB insights - without any ads or boosted posts...

• My post reach this month is 63% up on previous months (!!)
• Page likes are up 11.3 %
• Engagement is up 53.6%
• Engagement this week alone is 6.1k (all my competitors are sitting at below 100!)

Give it a shot next time you are posting a video to Youtube - instead of posting the YT link or a link to your blog post with the video, post the video directly on FB.

As a bonus , i believe FB are trying to really push their video platform right now with all the recent additions and features around video. If that's the case you'll get some extra oomph from FB themselves trying to push video content on their platform!

As we know, FB will show more of your content to more people the higher your engagement levels are with your audience, so this is for sure going to help you grow your channel (aka lead generation).

 

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[James Turchetto]

Yes if you've been keeping up with facebook changes you'll know facebook has had a massive surge in video engagement on their own service in the last 12 months and even surpassed youtube with more desktop views in the last few months. It helps that they autoplay a lot of the videos but there's no denying that is an effective method for increased engagement and post reach on your page.

And facebook does indeed penalise you for linking to youtube rather than uploading the video directly, anything to get publishers to keep the content on facebook, now if only they could figure out that monetising thing that'd help a lot of people and is the main incentive to stick with youtube if it's one of your revenue sources anyway, otherwise there are massive growth surges happening for publishers focused on video right now.

 

[Esquire]

Interesting.

I can see why that makes sense ... from Facebook's point of view.

I mean ... if you are not paying them to promote your video ... why would they want to do something that encourages users to leave Facebook ...? Much better ... from their point of view ... that they promote something that keeps the user on Facebook.

Of course ... there are trade offs on that approach.

1. You are limiting your potential audience ... compared to what would otherwise be available to you via paid ads.
2. The users are staying on Facebook ... instead of going to your site
3. Posting videos on YouTube or Facebook does nothing to help your SEO.

I use Wistia to self-host my videos ... $25 per month ... and it's 10x better than YouTube.

Me personally ... I will stick to paid ads.

My end goal ... is to get the people OFF Facebook.

And I don't mind paying for that.

Quid pro quo.

 

[JamesSJ]

Interesting.

I can see why that makes sense ... from Facebook's point of view.

I mean ... if you are not paying them to promote your video ... why would they want to do something that encourages users to leave Facebook ...? Much better ... from their point of view ... that they promote something that keeps the user on Facebook.

Of course ... there are trade offs on that approach.

1. You are limiting your potential audience ... compared to what would otherwise be available to you via paid ads.
2. The users are staying on Facebook ... instead of going to your site
3. Posting your videos on YouTube or Facebook does nothing to benefit your site (from an SEO perspective) the same way posting a self-hosted video would

I use Wistia to self-host my videos ... $25 per month ... and it's 10x better than YouTube.

Me personally ... I will stick to paid ads.

My end goal ... is to get the people OFF Facebook.

And I don't mind paying for that.

Quid pro quo.

I see your point and to a certain extent i agree.

However I use Facebook and Youtube like this - I want increased engagement and to generate large subscriber and fan bases on those platforms.

When I have a new product launch or service that's when I invest $$$ into ads targeting ONLY the subs and fans of my pages. I do this over interests (on FB) or google ads targeting people looking for specific keywords because they are engaged with my brand already - they have chosen to Like or subscribe and so are being exposed several times a day by content I post.

I get a much higher conversion rate with the audience who have liked my page or subscribed to my channel, and an even higher conversion rate from those that engage with that content (like, share or comment). So posting quality content, even if it means they don't leave FB or Youtube, helps to increase my conversions on those platforms when i come to promote services and products.

So in that sense i'm happy to keep people on either FB or Youtube and keep those platforms happy (who in turn help me grow my audience/leads for free) by keeping people on there so when I want access to that audience I can get it , albeit i'm paying for it. So posting quality content and more so getting engagement is very important.

I could drive people to landing pages or blog posts (and hope to capture their email address) with ads from the get go - but then i'm using interests to target people (lets ignore re-marketing for now as that's a different approach) which as above i've found to get a lower conversion rate.

For self hosting - i would be up for that, in fact i looked into it, but what that cannot give me is access to the second largest search engine audience - YouTube. The niche i am in, YouTube is the go to place my audience look for content. It's very much in my interests to post my content there otherwise my audience will just watch my competitors videos. It's keeping my viewers stuck to my brand rather than straying to other companies for the same information. Every day i'll get 120+ new subs on Youtube - that's 120 more potential customers i'd never get without a Youtube presence!

 

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[Esquire]

I see your point and to a certain extent i agree.

However I use Facebook and Youtube like this - I want increased engagement and to generate large subscriber and fan bases on those platforms.

When I have a new product launch or service that's when I invest $$$ into ads targeting ONLY the subs and fans of my pages. I do this over interests (on FB) or google ads targeting people looking for specific keywords because they are engaged with my brand already - they have chosen to Like or subscribe and so are being exposed several times a day by content I post.

I get a much higher conversion rate with the audience who have liked my page or subscribed to my channel, and an even higher conversion rate from those that engage with that content (like, share or comment). So posting quality content, even if it means they don't leave FB or Youtube, helps to increase my conversions on those platforms when i come to promote services and products.

So in that sense i'm happy to keep people on either FB or Youtube and keep those platforms happy (who in turn help me grow my audience/leads for free) by keeping people on there so when I want access to that audience I can get it , albeit i'm paying for it. So posting quality content and more so getting engagement is very important.

I could drive people to landing pages or blog posts (and hope to capture their email address) with ads from the get go - but then i'm using interests to target people (lets ignore re-marketing for now as that's a different approach) which as above i've found to get a lower conversion rate.

For self hosting - i would be up for that, in fact i looked into it, but what that cannot give me is access to the second largest search engine audience - YouTube. The niche i am in, YouTube is the go to place my audience look for content. It's very much in my interests to post my content there otherwise my audience will just watch my competitors videos. It's keeping my viewers stuck to my brand rather than straying to other companies for the same information. Every day i'll get 120+ new subs on Youtube - that's 120 more potential customers i'd never get without a Youtube presence!

That makes sense ... given the context. I think the difference in approach just boils down to our having different objectives ... that's all.

 

[Esquire]

You know ... the more I think about it ... the more I think perhaps a hybrid approach is the way to go.

Use "your" method for promoting the free stuff ... for higher Facebook engagement ... and use "my" method for the paid version ... to get them off Facebook and on to my site.

So rather than pick one or the other ... I'll pick both.

That's what I'll do. Thanks for the tip.