Welcome, welcome to another episode of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris. Today episode 438. Holy moly. I wanna talk about something that I actually got on Instagram as a question a while ago. And I have written this down and written this down and written this down on the calendar and it keeps getting moved for something. So today I saw it on my calendar and I went, we’re definitely doing this episode because I cannot put this off anymore.
Today we are going to talk about Facebook Live versus IGTV versus YouTube. As a bonus, we’ll add in LinkedIn. How to decide essentially what goes where, when it comes to your video content. Here is the deal-ya. All of this is really dependent on you having a clear picture of your goals for that video and your ideal clients, your ideal viewers. Who you want watching the video. Otherwise, all of these things have their place.
You’re gonna hear me as we talk about this today, you’re gonna hear me reference strategy and some things we’ve talked about on past episodes. If you haven’t yet built your plan, that’s gonna be step numero uno. That’s gonna be the first step, because that will answer a lot of these questions. Okay? So I think the best way to go about this would be to talk about each of these sort of neighborhoods, these locations and what kind of video I like to share where.
With that said, again, and I cannot over emphasize this. It’s going to come down to knowing who you’re talking to. It’s gonna come down to that ideal client piece. If you don’t have that ideal client piece in check. If you don’t have that clarity of who you want watching, who you want commenting, who you want taking action after the video. This content, this information will be of no use to you. So figure that out first. Cool?
All right. So let’s start with Facebook Live.
I wanna start here, because so many people are asking me about Facebook Lives. How to make them work? If they’re worth it? So let’s start there. Facebook Lives, super easy. You can do it from your mobile, you can do it from your desktop. You can use third-party tools. I use E-Cam Live for those who are wondering. The thing that’s cool about Facebook Live and live video as a whole, is that you have the ability to connect with your live audience.
You have comments happening, you have polls happening. That’s relatively new if you haven’t it out, it’s super fun. You have the option to connect, talk back and forth, instead of talking at them. And then leaving comments and you coming back and those kind of things. Now you also though, get that because there is a replay. And so you also get that. You talk, they leave comments, you come back and engage. And the polls still work, which is cool.
What I want you to keep in mind with Facebook Live is not everyone wants to watch them and not everyone wants to watch them live. So I like to use Facebook Live with a very specific goal in mind and also a very specific next step. And by next step, I mean how I’m gonna repurpose it. Now, my friend Holly G. Holly Gillian over at hollygstudios.com.
She talks a lot about not just replanting your videos, not just taking them from Facebook and dumping them on YouTube. And I think this is so smart, because there are things we do to optimize a live video experience that don’t make sense on a replay. On the other hand, the hand emphasizing transparency and honestly, I do often just do that.
That’s shifting, as I have shifted this year how we’re using Facebook Live, but I have done that in the past. So like do what works for you, knowing that it’s not gonna work as well. But if you want to look at what your next steps are, that’s really key. Where I see this being a really cool repurpose is podcasts. Actually recording a podcast through Facebook Live and then ripping the audio, editing out what you need to and then sharing it through your podcast channel.
So like I host with libsyn and then it gets distributed via libsyn to all the places, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, all of those things. That for me, is a critical and too often overlooked step of choosing to put content on Facebook Live. Is that piece around what’s next? But also the call to action. I think too many people are doing Facebook Lives with no real goal to the conversation. And so they end up going on and on and there’s never really like a here’s what’s next. And they get caught in just talking in sort of circles.
And I think that’s where we end up getting frustrated that no one’s showing up or that people aren’t staying around or that it’s not having an impact on our business. So look at your goals for each and every time you hit that go live button. Whether that’s to sell something, to grow your list, to drive traffic to you in another piece of content. This is something a couple of our clients over at Uncommonly More do super well. Is this thing about … And I tried it a lot last year and didn’t have as much success with it.
Because again, I found my audience just doesn’t love regular Facebook Lives, like weekly Facebook Lives. It’s just too much content. But we’ve seen a couple clients do really well with using it to drive traffic to other pieces of content. Or to engage with listeners in almost like an after-party after-show kind of vibe and so that can be a really cool way. But again, you go into it knowing what you’re doing.
So for me, if I’m looking for straight up engagement, if I am looking for the ability to very easily drive traffic to another piece and/or I’m looking to create content to repurpose into other channels. Then Facebook Live will get a big check mark from me and be a really good fit. Now, here’s the caveat and this is where I’m gonna start talking about why I’ve made some of the choices I’ve made. Not everyone wants to sit and watch a Facebook Live. A lot of people prefer to watch video sped up, using one and a half or two times speed. You can’t do that with a live video.
I find that a lot of you guys, a lot of the people who listen to this show and who hang out with me, fall into that particular chasm. And so for me, weekly Facebook Lives don’t make sense. And for me, it’s gotta be valuable enough to keep them there for any extended amount of time. That’s why we’re testing … And by the way, today, the day this goes up, February 28th is our very first actual training, happening over on Facebook Live. So if you’re listening to this, you can go check that out.
We went live on the 28th, if you happen to be listening to this in like the … I don’t know, nine hours between publish and the live show, you should come join me. But we’re testing this new version to see if I can get any attraction with Facebook Lives. But for me, the best things that have happened with Facebook Lives, is when I’ve jumped on for a sub 10 minutes to share something cool, that’s literally me jumping in to drive traffic to something else. That’s been the best results for Facebook Live for me.
So watch those numbers.
And when you’re watching those numbers, don’t just watch the views because they can be wildly deceiving. Anything three seconds or more is considered a view, which could just be scrolling. Okay? So make sure that you’re looking at video completion. Make sure you’re looking at engagement. Make sure you’re looking for clicks to the link. Make sure you’re looking at the actual results. Cool? So that’s Facebook Live. The number two thing in the list that was sent to me on Instagram and the question was IGTV.
How do you know when something goes on IGTV?
Again, your audience is on Instagram. The cool thing about IGTV is that it is prerecorded. You’ve have the ability to batch, you can schedule them to go up, you can share them via your stories very easily, even if you have less than 10,000 viewers. But you’re going to be looking at an audience that is watching mobile video and is willing to sit around and watch a video for a little while.
I again, run into with my audience, it being a matter of not being able to speed it up, because it’s happening in the Instagram app or the IGTV app. One big improvement Instagram has made and this is something that I’ve been holding out on for a long time, is the discoverability piece. You do now have IGTV showing up in the newsfeed. So it’s not hidden behind some extra clicks, which is an improvement. I still find discoverability making it hard for me to want to really invest a ton of energy into IGTV.
I think IGTV is a really great way to repurpose videos if you thought about IGTV being the or a distribution component when you created it. Meaning, you shot it so that it could be cropped into a vertical video. And I don’t mean you squish down a box and put graphics above and below it and call it a vertical video. I mean you cut out two thirds of the sides and make it legit, look like a vertical video. This is something we’ve done with a couple of clients with varying degrees of success. I haven’t seen anyone do this exceptionally well to be honest.
I haven’t seen anyone in the B2B space really run away with IGTV, but if you or somebody you know is in the B2C space, I have seen some fitness people do exceptional stuff with IGTV. Some like beauty brands and beauty bloggers and influencers do some really cool stuff and get some decent comment and engagement attraction. I don’t know how it’s converting because I don’t see the backend, but from a front end perspective, I see that doing really well. So again, it comes down to who are your clients? Are they watching IGTV? They might be and so try it out. Test it out. All of this is gonna be about testing.
The third option that was mentioned in the question that was sent to me on Instagram was YouTube.
So for me, the thing that YouTube has above Facebook Lives or IGTV is, are you ready? Are you ready? It’s a search engine guys. People can actually search. That discoverability thing is completely lost when we’re talking about Facebook and when we’re talking about IGTV. However, YouTube brings it strong with the discoverability, that search functionality is amazing. So that’s what I’m using YouTube for.
And just sort of as a bonus, people ask me not infrequently, if I prefer YouTube or Vimeo and my always answer is I use both. All the videos that are on Backstage, any videos I wanna put behind a pay wall. Meaning you’ve got to pay to see it, I don’t want just anybody finding it. Those are on Vimeo, because I have so much privacy control. I mean, I can keep it to a point where you can’t embed it anywhere but my site now. I will say, if somebody wants a fricken video, they’re gonna get it. There are ways to pull it from a webpage, but I have a lot of options to prevent that or at least make it really really difficult. If you’re gonna do it, you’re gonna have to work for it right?
And so for me, that’s Vimeo. YouTube is anything I want somebody to find. So the easy way to think about this is Vimeo is delivery video. YouTube is marketing video. Meaning, if I’m trying to generate traffic or if I’m trying to generate sales, if I’m trying to sell something in the video. If it’s happening pre-purchase, it’s happening on YouTube. If you paid to get a video from, it’s on Vimeo. That is a really important distinction.
From a marketing perspective though, getting back to how I decide what videos go on YouTube. It’s anything I want to be around for a while. So these aren’t one and done announcements. Like, Oh hey, the cart is open. No. What these are are tutorials and trainings and legit valuable content pieces. Again, I mentioned Holly over at Holly G Studios talks about replanting in a way that’s in alignment with YouTube. I highly recommend if you’re really serious about generating your video content for YouTube, generate your video content for YouTube.
It can absolutely be edited content from somewhere else, but there is an incredible value in knowing that that’s where it’s gonna end up and creating it with that understanding. That it’s gonna be around for a while and you want some longevity to it. So look at what you’re creating for that space and create it for that space. There’s a lot of competition there and you wanna make sure you are treating it with the respect it deserves from a creation standpoint.
Also though, don’t skip the easy steps as far as discoverability. Use those keywords. I love, it’s called Tube Buddy to help identify keywords and optimize my YouTube videos and client YouTube videos to make sure we’re not missing anything. It’s really cool tool. There’s a free version and a premium version. I’ve used both over the course of the years and I really like it. I recommend it a lot. The bonus one I wanted to talk about and this wasn’t in the question I got.
But I wanted to talk about it because it’s relatively new is LinkedIn.
Specifically LinkedIn Live. So LinkedIn for a little while had the ability to natively upload a video, but now we can actually go live on LinkedIn. I think this is great. We’re seeing LinkedIn really pay attention to their need to stay relevant in this space and really catch on to what’s working outside of it. By outside of it I mean, outside of the corporate structure, the B2B structure.
I think it’s gonna be really cool for speakers. I think it’s gonna be really cool for B2B people. If again, you’re being strategic about how it makes sense in your marketing and that your audience is there. And for some of you who are B2B and for some of you people who listen to this who are B2C. Remembering who you are talking to in this network, because although you may be pointing to the same content, although you may be sharing some of the same lessons. The way you present it, the language you use, the angle you take might be slightly different than when you’re posting on Facebook or you’re posting on Instagram. So pay attention to that with your LinkedIn video. All right? Just a quick and dirty on those last couple.
The thing I wanted to not get too far away from and I started here and we’re gonna end here. Is the answer to this question lies in who are you talking to and where are they consuming content? Because I could have come on here and told you that I only, I exclusively use LinkedIn video, which is not true. But I could have told you that. I could have said LinkedIn video. I will put all my video in LinkedIn video. But if you are not talking to people who are using LinkedIn, then it doesn’t really matter if you go all in on LinkedIn video. So pay attention to who you’re talking to. All right? Cool.
That’s all I’ve got for you today. Thanks for hanging out. Thanks for joining me. Welcome to the last episode of the second month of Q1. Meaning, the next episode will be A Three Things You Need To Know episode. And I will see you there because you need to know stuff. Have a great rest of your week. See you next week.
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