Video content in social media continues to go from strength to strength and now Facebook are contending with YouTube by encouraging businesses and individual users to utilise video uploads directly through their site. According to Facebook, video views grew more than 50% from May through July last year [2014], and since June there has been an average of more than 1 billion video views on Facebook each day.

For marketers, digital video content – particularly on mobile – is becoming increasingly important. Combining sound with dynamic visuals, video creates experiences with the potential to be memorable and inspiring — the types of experiences that help brand marketers drive important metrics such as awareness, consideration and, ultimately, sales. Now that Facebook videos play automatically as viewers hover over them, objective marketers have seen their campaigns soar. Videos also show the view counts (much like on YouTube) so viewers can see how often a video has been watched.

“Using videos we uploaded to Facebook during Fashion Week in February, we saw an 85X lift in view rates versus our previous Fashion Week campaign, which linked to videos from other players. This fall we will begin tapping into the new video views objective, and our ads are now eligible to automatically play in News Feed. Facebook is and will continue to be a key part of our video marketing strategy going forward.” — Jen Daly, Senior Brand Building Manager, TRESemmé & Nexxus, Unilever

It is a well-known statistic that video content is three times more engaging than other forms of content and it is proving to be a winner for many businesses. So how should you go about creating video content for your business that will boost your campaigns on Facebook?

The auto-play feature of Facebook video means that it’s important to make the first few seconds of your video captivating and attention-grabbing, so that people don’t just skim past.

As with any other forms of content marketing, it’s also important that the video has a point to it and that it does something for your customer: remember that the essential reason for using video in business is to provide added value that will convince the customer to utilise your business rather than your competitor’s.

Videos can be quite expensive to develop, but with improving technology on smartphones and simple video editing suites, it doesn’t have to cost the earth. Browse app stores and do some research on types of free/low-cost editing technology to suit your needs.

Don’t be reluctant to create video content for mobile devices either. As Rebecca Lieb notes, “Mobile today equals mass media, a trend that offers brand marketers unprecedented opportunities to connect with people in incredibly personal ways on devices that are by their sides nearly 24/7.” It’s important advertise this way via Facebook video, as more than 65% of video views are happening on mobile devices.

Start using videos with Facebook advertising to reach out to your customers and deliver another dimension to your online marketing.

What do you think? Let us know in the comment box below.

By Harriet Thacker

Harriet is a marketing expert, social media enthusiast and Shake Social’s champion blogger.