Facebook Video is Working Better for Me...

[Shockadalite]

Lately, I've started posting my videos on Facebook and they have gone much, much further. My "likes/fans" are close to 2,000 where as my Youtube Subs are at around 680. I've been watching other Facebookers' pages explode with fans as a result of their videos and it has been so much easier. My last video received 17,000 views. I know a "view" on Facebook is counted differently than Youtube, but the post also received close to 600 shares and counting.

I'm really starting to think I want to focus more of my efforts on Facebook and promote that audience over to Youtube when reaches a bigger level.

Has anyone else ever done something like this? Is anyone else focusing more on Facebook video?

 

[ApexxWolf]

That's quite interesting and something I have considered to do myself. Like you said, obviously the views are counted differently but interactions in likes, comments and shares does seem to be more prevalent with Facebook videos.

I'll have to keep an eye on how it goes for people

 

[xingcat]

If you're looking for more views and no monetization, then Facebook is definitely the way to go. Because Facebook native videos start playing the moment someone scrolls to them, you suddenly get a huge uptick in views, but as of right now (as far as I know), there isn't any real monetization involved.

 

[Shockadalite]

True Xingcat,

There is no monetization involved. My fan base is small right now, so that's really not a huge deal.

What I am more interested in is building my brand.

I post on both Facebook and YouTube. Since the majority of my traffic came from YouTube before I started posting on Facebook, my numbers there have drastically dropped. Which has had an effect on YouTube's recommend algorithms.

Journalists still favor YouTube. When they do stories on my work, they all use YouTube and the low numbers have discouraged some of them it seems, even when the numbers on FB are high.

What I am going to do is focus on one platform, build it up and then refer that traffic to my YouTube account.

I'm also going to play around with some other models as well.

 

[Rogpalmeruk]

I've been starting to post a few videos to Facebook a week to the page and it seems to be working in getting the page out as the reach is higher than most other content...

 

[Taylor and Daniel]

I've been wondering about whether I should try to make the same move. I feel like the conversion would be great for a youtube channel. Once they get on to your FB page, you could have the "Watch Video" tab programmed with your youtube channel.

Has anyone seen a bump in their youtube stats after doing this?

 

[LiveLoopers]

I have seen a huge shift in fb to YT conversion: I used to post links to YouTube videos on my facebook and get a nice passthrough. Now it seems like I get a fraction of that. Facebook has definitely changed it's algorithm to encourage you to post native fb videos and discourage you from YT links. I've even tried making short preview clips of my youTube videos and posting those natively and the native preview gets a lot of views and still little or no passthrough.

My personal concers with switching focus over to fb are these:
1) I can't figure out if a fb view is really worth anything. There seems to be a really high view count compared to the accompanying activity so I am skeptical about how much "view"ing is in a view.

2) fb continues it's downward spiral of pushing you to pay to contact your network that you worked to build. And they seem to push harder and harder as time goes by. Yes there are ways to keep your fb connections fresh and engaged but that is such a huge investment in time that it detracts from making videos any more for me.

Over time I have seen huge diminishing returns per work for BOTH yt and fb, and it gets harder and harder to start-up on either one as time goes by. But I still prefer YTs model. I know if I get a YouTube subscriber that they will at least be shown my video if they log in. A fb liker will likely never be anything more than a number.

 

[Taylor and Daniel]

I have seen a huge shift in fb to YT conversion: I used to post links to YouTube videos on my facebook and get a nice passthrough. Now it seems like I get a fraction of that. Facebook has definitely changed it's algorithm to encourage you to post native fb videos and discourage you from YT links. I've even tried making short preview clips of my youTube videos and posting those natively and the native preview gets a lot of views and still little or no passthrough.

My personal concers with switching focus over to fb are these:
1) I can't figure out if a fb view is really worth anything. There seems to be a really high view count compared to the accompanying activity so I am skeptical about how much "view"ing is in a view.

2) fb continues it's downward spiral of pushing you to pay to contact your network that you worked to build. And they seem to push harder and harder as time goes by. Yes there are ways to keep your fb connections fresh and engaged but that is such a huge investment in time that it detracts from making videos any more for me.

Over time I have seen huge diminishing returns per work for BOTH yt and fb, and it gets harder and harder to start-up on either one as time goes by. But I still prefer YTs model. I know if I get a YouTube subscriber that they will at least be shown my video if they log in. A fb liker will likely never be anything more than a number.

That's exactly how I'm feeling. Is a view really just a brief lull in scrolling combined with happening to stop on a video...then quickly scrolling again? It'd be better if FB had a metric in place to show you their retention. I'm getting the feeling they'll just be numbers too. I'll still try it out to see how well it does with conversion. Posting a trailer for your channel on FB seems like it would be pretty worth while