“In 5 years, most of Facebook will be video.” – Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO (2014)

If you are an entrepreneur who is leveraging video content on Facebook, you deserve a high five.

Seriously, nice move.

As it currently stands, video content will out-perform any other type of content you post to your Facebook page.

Video has proven over and over again to be more engaging and to convert better than text or picture content.

Videos attract larger audiences than other media. Insivia reports that 59% of executives agree that if both text and video are available on the same topic, they are more likely to choose video.

Promotional videos are also very engaging and super easy to share. According to Responsive Inbound Marketing, social video generates 1,200% more shares than text and images combined.

The allure of social video is not going to slow down – especially on Facebook. Facebook’s algorithm favors video content over any other type of content, ensuring your video posts will get more views and more engagement than your text posts, your picture posts, and your link posts.

But wait. Not all video posts are created equal.

The way you post video to your Facebook business page matters – that is, if you want to get the most out of your Facebook videos.

Here are 3 ways to post video content on Facebook…

1.    Post a link to a video on Facebook

The easiest way to share a video on Facebook is to link to a third-party platform, such as YouTube.

While uploading your video to YouTube is beneficial for many reasons, (most notably improving your ranking on Google), it is NOT the best way to get more views and engagement on Facebook.

In the Facebook universe, links to YouTube (or links to any other third party platform) do not perform very well. This is because of Facebook’s algorithm, which serves to keep audiences engaging on Facebook, and not getting distracted and drifting away towards other platforms.

It makes sense when you think about it. By not encouraging posts that rely on other social media platforms, Facebook ensures people stay on Facebook, and that keeps the platform relevant and worthy of advertising dollars.

So what’s the solution if you’re an entrepreneur trying to get more visibility on Facebook? Simple – keep your videos native to the platform.

2. Upload a native video to Facebook

Uploading your video directly to Facebook – so that your video is “native” to Facebook – will get you way more views and more engagement.

Native video on Facebook gets 10X more views on Facebook than videos posted via links to third party platforms like YouTube (Forbes, 2017).

If you want to take things further, consider the fact that 85% of Facebook videos are watched without sound (Digiday, 2016), and provide subtitles by ways of an SRT (SubRip caption file) to get you even more views.

As if that wasn’t amazing enough, uploading your videos natively to Facebook will get you 530% more comments and 477% more shares (Quintly, 2017).

3. Broadcast live video on Facebook

Now, if you really want to go that extra mile, you should also try Facebook Live.

Once again, Facebook’s algorithm will ensure you get a bigger audience by broadcasting live video on Facebook.

But, the allure of live video goes well beyond the powers of the algorithm.

Audiences tend to stay 3X longer with live video than they would for pre-recorded videos (Buffer Social, 2017). And, that has nothing to do with the algorithm, it has to do with the powerful connection that happens when you engage live with your audience.

But wait, it gets better…

What’s even more fascinating is that companies that use Facebook Live often see an increase in engagement with their non-live videos (Social Media Examiner, 2017)!

Why is this?

It’s been speculated that creating a live video presence creates deeper connection and rapport with your audience, because you appear more available and engaged with them, so they are more likely to visit your Facebook business page and check out your other content on a regular basis – specifically, your pre-recorded videos.

So to sum up, video content is excellent for Facebook. If you plan on building your business presence on Facebook into the near future, you need to create video content. Not all video posts are created equally, though. Links to YouTube don’t perform as well as native videos and if you want to go that extra mile, look into doing Facebook Live videos as well.

If you’re ready to take your business blog to the next level, check out my FREE eBook, “How To Blog Like An Entrepreneur” here…