Are You Using Facebook Videos To Grow Your Audience?

Facebook reported in their 2015 financial report that 100 million hours of video is being watched everyday. That is still very small compared to the 6 billion hours of video watched by YouTube everyday. But Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that "Video is an important part of the Facebook experience", and the company will continue to put resources into video. It's apparent that videos directly uploaded to Facebook have WAY better reach than YouTube links on your timeline. That's Facebook's unfair advantage it has as it can control what gets seen and what doesn't.

In October the social media team at GTChannel started to aggressively upload videos on to Facebook to increase our Page Likes and Reach.

We started at 240,000 likes in October and now we are at 314,00 and growing at an average rate of about 1,700-2,000/week.  This rate is also growing. Our goal is to reach 1M likes by the end of the year and we are trying new things everyday.

So here is what you should be doing now.

STEP 1 Create a Page.
If you don't have a Page yet, firstly you should create a Page on Facebook. Personal accounts have a limit of 5,000 friends and you also don't need to fill your personal timeline with car stuff all of the time. Pages have more features fit for what you are trying to do as a creator. You also don't want to annoy your aunts, uncles and friends who aren't into cars as much as you are. Your Page is your essentially your Facebook version of a YouTube Channel so include all of the vital information about your brand here. After you've created your page, you can go ahead and invite your friends who will appreciate your page.

STEP 2 Start Uploading Videos!
You will be really surprised with the difference videos do on Facebook compared to regular posts. But what kind of videos should I post?
Keep the long stuff for your YouTube Channel and put up shorter versions, outtakes and more viral moments on Facebook.  People's watching habits reflect which videos do well on Facebook.  Facebook videos do better on day one but YouTube videos do better in the long haul. Check out the GTChannel Facebook page as a reference and see what we are doing.  We're not just sharing our own stuff, we share everything we feel our audience will like. Even sharing Facebook videos have a greater reach than regular posts!

STEP 3 Use TEXT In Videos
Continuing on from people's watching habits...Facebook videos are all auto play but muted.  They start playing when you scroll down on your timeline.  But they are all muted so inserting large text in the first 10-15 seconds of your videos helps drastically to get people to click to listen or watch the entire video.  Once you got them hooked, you have a  better chance of them commenting, liking or even sharing that video.

STEP 4 Learn From Insights

Facebook Insights has gotten better and we can learn a lot about what is working and what is not. Don't just shoot blindly. Take a second to see the stats, learn from it and then repeat.

As a network of automotive creators, we feel it is important for our creators to get as much reach as possible. Facebook will soon roll out with a monetizing platform and we don't want to wait until then to start growing an audience. We all need to start uploading more videos to Facebook because more and more people are watching videos on Facebook.

-TK

No More BS! Strike Social Can Predict And Analyze Your Next Online Video Campaign- Part 2

In our Part 1 of "No More BS! Strike Social Can Predict And Analyze Your Next Online Video Campaign" post we introduced the Contagious Index(CI).  This index is based on how much your video is getting shared around the various social media platforms out there.
Let's take one of our videos for an example.

Drifting Top 6 Reasons Why We Love It is a video we released on August 27th, 2015.  It has 30,387 views as of today on September 24, 2015.  So it's been a little short of a month since we released this video.

Our goal from the beginning was to produce a video that would get shared by many of our viewers.  That is actually the number one objective when coming up with video ideas these days.  We question ourselves, "hmm, that's a cool video concept but would my friends want to watch and share this video"?

We figured if we compiled videos from our library and made a humorous list of why we love drifting, our viewers would share the videos on social media. Everyone loves lists as Buzzfeed has proven.

On Strike, you are able to conduct individual video analysis and even predictions.  Let's take a look at our above drifting video.

The Contagious Index is 241 which is not too bad but not that great either.  There are substantially more "Likes" than "Dislikes" so that is a good sign. 

Below you can see the engagement on various social media platforms from YouTube, Twitter, G+ and Facebook.  YT and FB count for the majority of the engagement with FB doing just a little more than a point more than YT.  The 160 Shares on FB is not that bad I suppose.  So we can say we somewhat achieved our goal.  Except we would be happy with more. These things take time and the more we practice, analyze and re-try, we get better at it.  

The following tab "PREDICT" is where it starts to get really interesting.  With this tool, we can predict how many views we can generate both artificially/PAID and ORGANIC.  And even run the campaign via the site, by clicking on PROMOTE to run your own Programmatic ad campaign. 

Now creators and online video marketers can analyze video performance, also plan promotional campaigns and even implement campaigns all on this platform.   

Even after campaigns, we can go back to export reports on how the entire campaign performed.  We have used this tool so far to report back to brands on how their videos are performing on GTChannel.  

So partners, use these metrics when pitching to clients and brands and also understand that although you want to have a strong organic view baseline,  you have that option to buy views on YouTube to fulfill view count obligations. 

- TK

How Much Is My Brand Worth?

Do you know how much advertisers or brands are willing to spend on you?  For example, how much would it cost for a brand to have you upload a brand influencer video or a product placement in your video?

When GTChannel has these conversations with brands, the formula is something like this:

Cost to Produce Content + Reach & Engagement = Brand Integration Quote Amount

This has always been difficult to come up with because all the data is sprawled throughout several different platforms and it's changing everyday.  So then came Social Blue Book.  SBB is like a social media version of Kelley Blue Book we car guys know very well.  It gives you a "suggested price" of anything from a custom brand integration to a shout out.  No need to take it literally but it gives you and brands a ball park figure of what we're dealing with here.  Obviously if there are extra specific production requests from the brands, those kind of things need to be reflected in the pricing.  So take it as a starting point but not the end all solution. 

The app just went live in July and the service is fairly new but it already has platform integration with YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and Vine.  It looks like Facebook, Snapchat, Twitch and Blog integration is in the works.  

Give it a shot and see how much your brand is worth.  It's all about building your brand, whether it's on YouTube or any platform for that matter.  

- TK

Top 10 YouTube Tips to Boost Your Channel

Evan Jones our YouTube Certified and Social Media ninja has given us top 10 YouTube Tips to boost your channel growth.  Many channels have followed these basic tips and grown substantially.  Make sure all of these things are done!

1. Video Titles: Use attention-grabbing, descriptive, and relevant keywords towards for the beginning of your titles and display branding and episode numbers towards the end. Keep titles concise so they fit on one line. Represent videos accurately without using misleading information. Thumbnails should reinforce the title but not necessarily duplicate.
 
See how we have used attention grabbing copy, "1000+ Horse Power Drift Machine..."?  Who doesn't like high power drift cars?   The series title "Controlled Chaos" and episode number follow to make sure these videos show up as relevant videos in the series.  

2. Thumbnails: Clear, in-focus, high-res images (640px by 360px minimum) that stand out at any size. Text should be legible at any size too. Thumbnails should never be misleading and instead, accurately represent content. Should be high-contrast, visually compelling imagery. Thumbnail support page on YouTube.  

3. Descriptions:  Explain your video in 1-3 concise sentences at the top of the description section. Use relevant keywords to help in discovery. Add experience-enhancing links like subscribe, similar videos, playlists, social media links, website, etc. below the video description. Titles and descriptions should be able to be understood by anyone, not just those who are subscribed to your channel or have previous knowledge of the content in the video. 

4. Annotations and End Slates: Annotations are clickable text overlays that can be used to boost engagement, give more information, and help with navigation within a video. End slates are title cards at the end of a video that ask the viewer to subscribe and promote more videos with the use of annotations. Annotation support page on YouTube. 

5. Playlists: These can be used to group a set of videos that you want viewers to enjoy in order. They can be grouped around a theme or event, can separate different shows, or can combine most-viewed pieces with new uploads. Great for helping viewers watch multiple videos on your channel. More on Playlists. 

6. Social Media: Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Instagram, etc. are awesome tools to build your brand, give your channel exposure, and interact with fans. Promote every video you release, and go about this in a variety of ways - use links, photos, direct uploads to social media platforms, or simply text. Be a consistent, authentic and authoritative leader. Share videos on social media.  

7. Consistent Themes and Characters: Having consistent themes and characters in your videos will bring viewers back to your channel time and time again. They will learn what to expect from your videos, driving watch time. You can even be that character yourself! 

8. Program Schedule: If possible, make a set release schedule for your uploads and communicate that schedule to your audience.

9. Image Quality: It's important to maintain a professional level of work when it comes to cinematography. Try to avoid camera movements that are overly shaky, make sure to include a wide variety of shots, shoot images that are crisp and clear, and upload to YouTube in HD if possible. 

10. Editing Quality: Editing can affect the mood, pacing, and storyline of your videos, amongst other things. Make sure your edits are tight, are not monotonous or predictable, and create a coherent piece. Text and graphics can also play a major part in your work by providing appropriate titles, pushing the story along, and giving your piece a certain feel. Audio levels should not peak and be somewhat equal throughout the video, with fades between audio cuts.

There is more you can do but we feel these 10 steps are minimal adjustments you can make on your own that will help you not only immediately but in the long run to get more video views and subscribers to help you grow your channel.

(TK)

Use Facebook To Drive Traffic To YouTube

Facebook is a tricky one. But no matter what people may say about it, it's not going anywhere.  So we better get used to it and get on it if you're not.

We admit, they do shady stuff like hiding your reach to only a certain percentage of your fans but they make the rules.  Here are a couple things you need to do to use Facebook to your advantage.

    1.    Create a PAGE: Use your personal account for friends and family.  Create a Facebook Page that is linked to your YouTube channel.  Your YouTube channel is a brand and it needs a Facebook Page that can accept unlimited numbers of fans.  A personal account is limited to 5000 friends.  

    2.    Create a community on Facebook:  YouTube is great for videos but Facebook is great for posting pictures and most of all sharing.  Share your own videos and videos you like.  You may notice that on the GTChannel Facebook Page,we share a lot of our partner videos but other random videos, photos and stories we like as well.  Make it a destination spot for your fans!



    3.    Upload videos and images to your Facebook Page:  We have found out that you get more REACH when uploading videos and images directly to Facebookand NOT posting links.  It's just a way for Facebook to keep people on Facebook.  How to get around this is to upload 15 second teasers of YouTube videos on to Facebook with a "Click here for full version" link in the description.  See how we did it on this Travis Pastrana rally video! 


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