Facebook just upped their video sharing game, and it’s sunshine and roses for real estate marketing.
Earlier this year, Facebook released a slew of improvements to the platform, many of which directly impact the video sector. With the new updates, you can expect better client targeting, clearer analytics, and more ways to share your content. And real estate professionals everywhere are seeing green.
Get ready to empower your video marketing strategy like never before:
A Detailed Look at Facebook’s New Video Features
Facebook has long outgrown its days of a peer-fueled networking site. Having found popularity as both a business and consumer outpost, the social media giant continues to develop and enhance its features with both camps in mind. Take a closer look at what the platform’s most recent updates can mean for your video marketing strategy:
Facebook’s algorithm got a face lift.
Facebook continues to make waves in providing users with content that matters to them with their newest algorithm update. Included in this latest revision are the goal to better identify and authenticate content, and make predictions and rankings in real time to provide more relevant posts.
Facebook cares about cutting down on the spam that has encroached on the platform, but does not want to largely affect how your content is already being distributed. So your live open houses, drone footage, or client success stories will still permeate the news feed, but hopefully to a more targeted audience.
Say hello to the video-only news feed.
Video continues to surge through Facebook news feed everywhere, so much so that mobile users can now toggle to a videos-only news feed.
In this exclusive feed, Facebook displays suggested videos based on the what the user has Liked in the past and what Facebook thinks will boost relevance to each individual. Videos will still show in the main feed, but having a completely separate feed shows two clear advantages:
- Users must purposefully visit the feed, which means they probably already have an interest in videos. They are actively searching and willing to watch video content, which could potentially boost your chances of viewership and engagement.
- Your videos are no longer engulfed in status updates, family vacation photos, and political drama. The video feed helps give the user some breathing room from the typical clutter and potentially heightens your visibility.
This feed has been a long time coming, and as video popularity continues to soar, so will the way the user can view and interact.
Dress up a boring ad with a GIF.
Now you can add a GIF (Graphics Interchange Format), or short animated clip of images or video instead of a single image or long video to your boosted post.
The strongest selling point about a GIF is its short-but-sweet factor. It offers enough motion to get attention but doesn’t force the user into a lengthy viewing. As a realtor, your visual-rich industry offers plenty of opportunities to create unique GIFs, like a brief slideshow of featured properties. Or to save time, visit a site like GIPHY, where all the hard work is already done.
Gain additional insight into your video marketing efforts.
In addition to Facebook’s former suite of video analytics, the platform has rolled out a few new data tools that can help you make every millisecond count:
- View the total number of minutes your video has been watched
- See who is watching with sound on vs. sound off
- Discover how many times the video was viewed up to 10 seconds
While these specific metrics may not fit into your current data needs, it does show that Facebook recognizes the prevalence and need for increased video analytics, which they more than likely will continue growing and developing.
If you haven’t yet pulled the trigger on using video to reach your audience, there’s never been a better time to start, especially since you won’t need an entire film crew to create your content. Facebook long ago estimated that video would one day rule the platform. And with users watching over 100 million hours of video on Facebook each day, that day may come sooner rather than later.