As Facebook has grown its platform to integrate with as many aspects as possible of its users’ online behavior, it should come as no suprise that they would offer a more favorable experience for using their proprietary apps. With the advent of FB’s auto-playing ads/video, you can probably see the impact it has had on the presence of other video competitors in the Facebook feed, *cough* YouTube *cough*. In this blog, I will explain a way to regain some of that CTR potential while promoting your brand’s own onsite interaction. There’s also a free .PSD file that we created to be used for this technique!

Here’s how videos uploaded to Facebook’s video service looks in the newsfeed:

And here’s how Youtube’s videos show up in the feed:

You can probably guess which one gets better scores in interaction. Facebook Video gets a pretty hefty advantage in regards to total Feed real estate compared to Youtube Videos. That’s all fine and well, but Youtube is arguably a better video service compared to Facebook’s. Plus, it’s more than likely that you already have your video content uploaded to Youtube and nobody has time for double uploading #internetmarketerprobs. If you want to edit the audio of your video content, check out this audacity tutorial to do it yourself.

In an effort to counteract this, I propose using a site link instead of a video link. When you use a site link you have the opportunity to upload a custom link image which gives your videos a fighting chance against videos uploaded through Facebook. Another perk for using a site link is the fact that you can point it to a dedicated blog post where you can then embed the video, as well as include any commentary or notes on the video. Also, it allows you to get traffic into your brand’s ecosystem to build that familiarity and awareness. If you want to get really fancy, you could set the video to auto play for when the user lands on the page. I would almost never condone autoplaying, but the fact that users are getting to this page with the intent of watching the video makes this a viable option.

Here’s what your site/video link will look like in the feed:

This is a much more compelling feed item compared to ones that are automatically provided to Youtube links. Additionally, it has the visual call to action of the play button, which will allow the user to infer what kind of content is ahead after the jump.

The way this look is achieved is by downloading our handy Youtube Overlay Template and screenshotting (Cmd + Shift + 3 on Mac; ‘Print Screen’ on Windows) a suitable image for the button layer to get overlaid on. Go into the Photoshop file and add the image so that the button is on the top layer. Export as any file type you’d like and upload it as a custom image for your link (click here for an explanation of this).

Clicking through the above feed item will land you on a page just like this:

Have any questions or comments about this Facebook feed technique and how to properly implement it? Let us know in comments below!
Blog by Webhead Interactive