Mari Smith: 3 Tips For Using Animoto Videos for Facebook Marketing

It’s no secret that video is big on Facebook. According to the company’s Q4 2015 earnings call, Facebook users are watching 100 million hours of Facebook video a day and businesses are wisely taking advantage of this trend by beginning to use video to reach more potential customers. Facebook makes it easy for businesses to be successful with video marketing — auto-playing videos help capture attention in the News Feed, the ability to add call-to-action buttons to videos helps with conversion, and Facebook’s algorithm favors video over other types of media.

But for many businesses, getting started can be daunting. Luckily, it’s not as difficult as you may think to create a video you’ll be proud to share on Facebook. One tool I like to use for easy video creation is Animoto. Here’s a video I created using Animoto that has over 15,000 views and 40 shares on Facebook.

I’ve put together 3 tips to help you get the most out of marketing on Facebook with Animoto videos.

1. Upload videos natively for best organic reach

Let me just start by saying that you need to be posting videos natively to Facebook. By “native,” I mean uploading your video directly to your Facebook Page via desktop or mobile. When you upload video directly to Facebook, you’ll see much further reach than if you simply share a link to a video on your YouTube channel or Vimeo account, for example.

And, the good news with Animoto, unlike most third party apps, is you can share your video to Facebook directly from Animoto and it’s published as a native video. Read more about sharing to Facebook from Animoto.

2. Create seasonal videos to stay top of mind

Big brands create commercials around major holidays for good reason — they want to stay top-of-mind, especially during the times of year where major purchasing decisions are being made and heartstrings are being pulled.

Go through the calendar and make a list of holidays, like Mother’s Day, or specific times of year, like the start of Spring, and create promotional videos around those topical times and events. Animoto has over 100 video styles and many of them are designed specifically for major holidays, seasons, and other unique use-cases to give your video the appropriate flair. I really love the various templates and styles that Animoto offers.

Goldtinker, a high-end jewelry store in Red Bank, NJ with just over 1000 Facebook fans, created this 20-second video with Animoto to promote their offering around Valentine’s Day. They received nearly 1,000 views.

For Goldtinker, video gets over 3 times the amount of reach as photos and 50% more engagement on their Facebook page — and that is just for organic videos with no paid promotion. With promoted videos, Goldtinker sees 4 times the amount of engagement on video posts as they do with promoted photos.

3. Spend $100 to amplify the reach of your videos

Anemos Greek Cuisine, located in Manalapan, NJ, has been in business for just over a year. Restaurant owner, Helen Arvanitis, created a video featuring herself, as well as mouth-watering video footage of Anemos’ food.

After posting her video to Facebook, Helen paid $100 to boost it and received 11k views, nearly 200 likes, and 28 shares. She also received lots of rave reviews from soon-to-be new customers, along with regulars.

By the way, whenever possible, choose to boost your posts using the Facebook Ads Manager and not the Boost button directly on the post. The Boost button is useful if you’re in a hurry. However, for much more advanced targeting and placement options, the Ads Manager is a far superior promotional tool.

Bonus tip: Repurpose Facebook videos for other platforms

Don’t let your video marketing strategy stop at Facebook. You can also create multiple versions of each video to share on other social channels, such as Instagram, Twitter and YouTube, and embed on your blog. Animoto lets you easily make a copy of one of your existing videos to add or remove assets and make other changes. (I especially love this feature!)

For example, you might test the performance of a 2-3 minute video on Facebook. Then make a copy in Animoto and create a version for Instagram of up to 60 seconds, and another version for Twitter of up to 30 seconds. Animoto makes it really easy to slice and dice your video content for a variety of uses.

Have you started marketing with video on Facebook yet? If so, what kind of results have you seen? Share your experience in the comments!

Are you new to Animoto? Find out how it works and sign up here.