YouTube vs Facebook Video: Which is the Best Option for Business?

When it comes to marketing your company on the internet, using videos makes a lot of sense. For a long time YouTube was the only game in town, but over the last few years a number of competing platforms have come along. While YouTube is still the biggest video hosting site there is (by a long margin), Facebook Video is becoming more popular as an alternative channel.

Both sites have something different to offer you, and can help you to reach your target market effectively. You can use pay for placement adverts on either site, or try to generate organic interest. Using a combination of both makes a lot of sense, and will let you take full advantage of the opportunities these sites create.

Content Matters

Even though both platforms offer you different capabilities, when it comes to content the criteria is the same. When you produce videos to market your company, the quality has to come first. Both platforms reward users who offer good quality content that people like sharing, so make sure that your company puts an emphasis on creating engaging content. Conversely, if you are uploading videos that are of poor quality or don't create any interest, both platforms won't do anything to help your videos to be noticed. So no matter which platform you decide to focus on, content comes first. 

Facebook Is Integrated 

One of the advantages that Facebook Video offers you is that it displays your videos in a popular social network setting. This means that in addition to being featured on a site that people use frequently, the users are apt to share your videos if they like them. This gives you a much higher chance of having your marketing shared organically, which has been shown to be extremely effective.

Facebook is a far more convenient platform for video now that you can host video content directly. Previously, a business would have to host a video themselves or on YouTube and post the link to Facebook. This was time consuming and created streaming issues. Facebook is now a fast and effective video platform. Both business and personal users are used to watching video content on Facebook, and indeed expect to find it there.

When a colleague or associate shares your content, it is seen differently by the user. Facebook also offers you a huge amount of consumer data to take advantage of when you decide how to market your videos. When creating a video advert you can isolate a demographic to a very specific level, and use many parameters to ensure that the viewers are actually potential customers.

Facebook Live also opens interesting possibilities for businesses to create a buzz around an event or new product launch. Experiment with it to broadcast footage from a conference or a flash mob, or even an impromptu webinar.

YouTube Is Huge 

While YouTube doesn't offer you the advantages of live streaming and an active social audience in the same way that Facebook does, it has some characteristics that are completely unique. When people think of video on the internet, most will instinctively come up with YouTube. It has a 10 year head start over Facebook Video, and allows users to search for exactly what they want to see. YouTube also has partnerships with all of the major mobile OS providers, with their app as standard equipment for most smartphones.

YouTube is also owned by Google, with the result that YouTube video content features very prominently on the Google search pages. Type in any search query and select the Google video tab, and we guarantee that seven out of the top ten videos will be YouTube links, at least. This is a double edged sword, though ultimately it benefits your company to have content hosted on one of the most popular websites in the world. Its domain authority is comparable to that of Wikipedia. While you will have to work harder to make videos that stand out on YouTube than you do on Facebook, that effort will put your content in a good position to be noticed in the wider digital world.

The Metrics Are Different 

If you are considering paid advertising on either one of these sites, know that analysing them head-to-head is difficult. While YouTube will allow you to figure out the overall duration your videos have been watched, Facebook Video makes this difficult to do accurately. They both use different billing schemes as well, and this can cause some frustration when it comes to doing an A/B analysis.

The general consensus is that while Facebook Video is cheaper and has its uses, YouTube probably gets people to watch your video for longer amounts of time. Paid promotions on YouTube can also be set up to only charge you when the content is watched in full, and this ends up giving you free marketing if a viewer stops watching your video before it ends.

Both Are Good 

The good news is that when you have good video content to share, it can be used for either YouTube or Facebook Video. Knowing how to create targeted demographics on Facebook for your paid promotions can help you to knock down the cost of marketing, so talking to our video marketing team is a good idea. Digital video production costs have come down a lot, but knowing how to create solid content is about a lot more than a using camera. Using both YouTube and Facebook as part of your video marketing strategy is a great idea, and working with JDR will enable you to get the most for your money.