Should your veterinary hospital post your YouTube videos on Facebook? Video is a huge social media trend that veterinarians should take advantage of, but you need to be up-to-speed on how to share it.
Due to the decreasing organic reach on Facebook, simply posting your video’s YouTube link to Facebook won’t work anymore.
Due to the decreasing organic reach on Facebook, simply posting your video’s YouTube link to Facebook won’t work anymore.So what’s an animal clinic to do with video posts on social media? Excuse me while I nerd-out about video strategies.
Veterinary hospitals should share video in a few ways
Quick videos can be shared on apps like Instagram or Vine, but what about that 3 minute “How To Pill A Cat” video you spent all that time making?
Sharing long-form video should be done in a few ways:
-Posting it to YouTube, as this has SEO benefits
-Embedding that YouTube video into your website, preferably in a blog post
-Uploading part or all of the mp4/original file DIRECTLY to Facebook
The most important takeaway here is that I do not recommend sharing Youtube links on Facebook. I see so many veterinary hospitals making this mistake, and it can really hurt your post’s reach. Video takes a lot of effort, so I want you to get the most out of it!
Why should veterinarians upload videos directly to Facebook?
Video posts are going to dominate social media for a while, no doubt in my mind about it. Facebook has been pushing more and more video content into the Facebook feed – meaning directly uploaded to Facebook video content.
You will simply get better reach uploading a video DIRECTLY to Facebook than you will sharing a link to a YouTube video.
Why is this the case? Here’s a few reasons:
- Basics of how Facebook works – if you upload a YouTube video link, it’s a link post – which looks small. If you upload a video, it’s going to take up half of someone’s screen.
- You will likely get more video views on Facebook than YouTube. Social Media Examiner recently wrote an article about this.
- Facebook is making video a priority on all sides of what they do – whether it’s promoting video ads on Facebook, launching the Hyperlapse app, or unleashing video ads on Instagram
- New “Call to Action” buttons are being included at the end of Facebook videos. These give you an opportunity to either: a) Drive traffic to Youtube to watch the rest of the video or b) Drive traffic to your website to have clients do something else important, LIKE BOOK AN APPOINTMENT!
Here’s an example of the “Call to Action” button at the end of a video I shared of some puppies playing in our office:
Examples of Facebook vs. YouTube video to prove I’m not crazy
Ok – the fact that I’m writing a blog post about this proves that I’m a little crazy. However, I have some examples of a YouTube link posted to the Companion Animal Parasite Council Facebook vs. THE SAME video directly to Facebook.
Here’s the original post, shared on Facebook as a link to YouTube:
Here’s another post, with the same video directly uploaded to Facebook:
Here’s some important takeaways from this test:
– The YouTube link only got an organic reach of 573 people
– The YouTube link was shared 5 times
– The direct-to-Facebook video was shared 16 times
– The direct-to-Facebook video got an organic reach of 2062
– The direct-to-Facebook video had 740 views
– The YouTube video only has 214 views
Have you used video on Facebook?
I’d love to hear more about how you’ve used video on Facebook. Feel free to leave your experiences in the comments below, or share them in our Facebook group.