We have finally moved from Content is King to Video is King when it comes to social marketing. Learning how to communicate in 5 second snippets is a core competency and required skill set. Where is your video messaging?
Even as Facebook plans on de-emphasizing publisher-posted content in users’ news feeds in favor of posts from friends and family, video seems to be on the way up.
According to data compiled by SocialFlow, a social analytics company used by many major publishers, video content posted by publishers on Facebook is gaining quite a bit of traction. The company—which posts more than half a millions stories a month to Facebook and other social media channels on behalf of publishers—analyzed 30 days of video content to determine the total reach, likes and shares. And while a report last month highlighted a 42 percent drop in reach for publishers from January to May, SocialFlow found reach had grown by a factor of eight in the past month.
According to the data, which SocialFlow presented via Facebook Live on Tuesday, video accounted for just 0.9 percent of posts but for 7.15 percent of reach, 5.2 percent of likes and 11.1 percent of shares. And while the results don’t represent all publishers, SocialFlow said there might be some outlets that are seeing even better results.
“It’s clear that media companies are increasingly turning to video to maximize their reach and audience engagement,” SocialFlow CEO Jim Anderson said in an email to Adweek. “We’ve heard plenty of anecdotal reports of strong video performance, and now we have the data to back up the anecdotes.”
The data doesn’t include Facebook Live video, which is becoming increasingly prominent on the platform, especially since Facebook began paying some publishers millions of dollars to use the format. (According to a Wall Street Journal report earlier this month, Facebook is paying more than $50 million collectively to news outlets including The New York Times, Mashable, CNN and Vox to create video content.)
Anderson said he “wouldn’t be surprised” if video posts grow to account for 5 percent to 10 percent of total post volume over the next six to 12 months.
That rapid growth would be in line with Facebook’s own estimates. Earlier this month, a Facebook vp in Europe said at a Fortune event that she thinks most content on the platform will be “all video” within five years and that it will all be on mobile.
Source: AdWeek June 30, 2016
