We’ve discussed before on the Top Pup Media blog about the pros and cons of using YouTube or Vimeo. With recent developments on the Facebook platform, the social media site is now a force to be reckoned when it comes to uploading, storing and sharing videos. The choice between dominant video platforms like Vimeo and YouTube is no longer your only options.Over the last year or so, Facebook has been working hard on its video sharing capabilities. And now, embedding Facebook video on your site is a viable option. Here, we present the pros and cons of using the Facebook video platform for your videos.
Pros of Using Facebook Embedded Video
- Interaction: Research demonstrates that Facebook videos get more comments and likes on average than YouTube embedded content. Users do not use Facebook so much as a video sharing platform but do watch lots of content.
- Tagging: With Facebook embedded video, you can tag people and pages to the video, something you cannot do with a shared YouTube link though you may tag them in the comments section. Tagging the video looks cleaner.
- Prominence: Once you’ve uploaded your video, it will sit in your page’s video gallery, but a shared video will soon drop down your feed as you add more content – unless you pin it to the top.
Cons of Using Facebook Embedded Video
- Analytics: YouTube’s tool is by far the superior model for analyzing the success of your video. You could use both, but that would double the work for you or your social media team.
- Sharing: On Facebook, your content is easily shareable, but it seems that posts with embedded YouTube videos are shared more often than Facebook embedded videos.
- YouTube Channels: This is a great way to get people to engage with more of your video content. If they see you have a channel, the likelihood of browsing and subscribing increases due to the YouTube’s sidebar “you might also like…”, so it acts as a gateway.
Now You Can Share Your Facebook Embedded Videos Anywhere
2015 has seen some great inroads into challenging YouTube’s dominance in the video sharing market, and Facebook is a contender. At the F8 Facebook developer conference in March, Facebook unveiled on the world that it is now possible for users to embed Facebook videos into any site, bypassing the need to use YouTube. Much like how WordPress and other social media platforms permit easy embedding of YouTube, you should now be able to do this with your Facebook content.Once difficult to find the source code – a search that in itself could be intimidating – most simply didn’t bother, but now there is a menu option on every Facebook page video for you to view and copy the embedding details. The average Facebook user is still not aware of it, but as a business owner looking to drive potential customers to your Facebook page rather than to YouTube, it is a critical and welcome change.
