Facebook, Twitter Changes Make Music Videos More Important Than Ever
The need for quality promotional video isn't going away – in fact, it's importance is rapidly increasing. With YouTube's continued growth and relevance in music discovery and the moves that other social media platforms are making to optimize the role video plays in their users' experience, having professional footage that engages your audience and stays true to your brand is more critical than ever before.
Video Updgraded At Facebook & Twitter
Video viewing on Facebook is also exploding. Yesterday, the company acquired video startup Quickfire and announced that video views on the social giant now surpassed 1 billion daily.
So in an effort to prove that Pages and the Likes they receive are still valuable, Facebook is upping its game in the video department. Building off changes like video auto-play implemented over a year ago, the tech company is moving towards a featured video layout reminiscent of YouTube's channel feature. Businesses will soon be able to choose featured content to display atop their pages video tab and will be able to organize videos into playlists – a much more sophisticated look and increase in functionality from the current unmarked thumbnails.
With Pages content dropping drastically in organic reach, it appears as though Facebook is aiming to curb the function of Pages from a site that infiltrates newsfeeds with content to a landing page for information. TechCrunch describes this shift as transitioning from reading a newspaper to turning on the television.
Facebook isn't the only one making updates to video content distribution – in an effort to up engagement and get more clips on the platform, Twitter will be unveiling its new video feature in the coming weeks. Unlike Facebook, who has yet to address enhanced capture of video, Twitter's video feature will allow users to shoot, edit and post videos all from within the app. The shift to make native video accessible to all users is one of the most notable changes Twitter has made of recent. Though the company told investors the feature would be rolling out in the "first half of 2015", it appears as though the sense of urgency and perhaps the nudge by Facebook's advancements and YouTube's increasing popularity has driven the company into high gear.
As digital promotion continues to rise in popularity, so does the proverbial bar. These major tech companies are paying attention to the engagement being driven by quality video content – if you're arriving late to the party, now would be the time for you to do the same.
Yesterday Facebook shared that "shorter, timely video content tends to do well in News Feed." That suggests that short videos (tour announcements, backstage and studio snippets, etc.) might drive engagment as much or more than music videos and long form content.
Video is only going to keep growing. Although I will say that I think FB’s view numbers are ridiculously inflated. Actually I just finished an FB vs YouTube comparison: http://www.checkeredowl.com/tests-facebook-video-vs-youtube/