6 Tactics To Help You Boost Your Facebook Video Views

By Maulik Patel

28 Feb 2020

Each day more than 4 billion videos are watched on Facebook. 500 million viewers are watching 100 million hours of videos daily. It goes without saying that you have already heard about Facebook video marketing. Whether you want to educate, create awareness, or share product-promoting content, you are heading in the right direction. After all, any social media marketing strategy is incomplete without videos, especially in 2020 and the upcoming years.

Now that you’ve decided to be part of your users’ daily Facebook video browsing ritual, it’s crucial to figure out how to stop users from scrolling past your videos and watching until the end. In short, you need a well-planned strategy to increase your Facebook video views.

That’s what we are here for.

No more blah blah.

Let’s kick things off with the top 6 tactics to boost your Facebook video views in 2020 and beyond.

1. Research the Competition

In March 2019, Facebook replaced the opaque metric relevance score – similar to Google’s quality score – with 3 new metrics.

The metric that affects your video views is quality ranking, which measures the quality of your ad compared to competitors targeting a similar audience.

If you score a high-quality ranking, Facebook rewards you in 2 ways:

It displays your ad more frequently than your competitors
You receive discounts on impressions and optimisation prices

To conclude, high-quality ads cost less than low-quality ones.

To create high-quality video ads and earn discounts, perform in-depth research on your competitors. Find their video ads, note down the pros and cons, and create something better while avoiding plagiarism.

2. Bring Users Back

While enjoying my cup of coffee, I remembered a video I watched yesterday on Facebook. Suddenly, I developed an urge to watch it again or subscribe to the channel to receive similar videos in my news feed.

This is the exact effect you need to have on your viewers.

In May 2019, Facebook announced another update for the video ranking algorithm that again included 3 key factors. One of them is viewers’ loyalty.

Here’s what they said:

‘Intent and repeat viewership are important factors we consider when surfacing videos to people in News Feed. Going forward, we will add more weight in ranking to videos that people seek out and return to week after week.’

This means Facebook measures the following metrics to identify the loyalty level of your viewers:

How regularly do viewers watch your videos
If users search for your content
How many like and share your videos

It’s obvious that the more loyal viewers you have, the better organic traffic your videos receive and the higher your video content ranks. Again, it results in more exposure. The cycle goes on if you keep creating videos that bring viewers back.

But how?

Fortunately, you only need to focus on 2 words if you want to earn user loyalty: offer value. If users watch your Facebook videos and gain something valuable, they are more likely to come back or even subscribe to your channel.

The next question is: how do you offer that value?

Let’s say you are marketing an institute or college. You can offer value with testimonials or the benefits current and previous students gained by attending your institute.

Another simple example is if you are promoting a bakery shop; sharing easy-peasy yet delicious recipes is a sure-fire way to gain a following.

Tip: Imagine the value your business is offering in general to your current clients. Transform that into a Facebook video.

3. Create Facebook-specific Content

In the same video ranking algorithm updates, Facebook prioritised the importance of original videos.

Today, marketers are simply repurposing their content to save time and money. Many are creating YouTube videos and recycling them for Facebook. If you are thinking of doing the same, be prepared to not get the same results across all platforms. This is because Facebook video viewers are interested in a different type of content than YouTube viewers. YouTube fans are solely interested in videos, but Facebook fans are scrollers and prefer shorter, more easily consumed videos.

To simplify: if you want to get more Facebook video views, you have to create fresh video content made just for Facebook that is compatible with Facebook’s new algorithm policy. It does require extra time and effort, but it’s worth it.

Apart from ranking, creating videos from scratch specifically for Facebook also relates to delivering on-demand content. And, if you want to know what kind of videos your Facebook audience would like to see, you can simply run a survey asking them to describe their choice in terms of video content. Or you can follow the most popular and relevant form of Facebook videos to get a basic idea.

4. Create Sound-Proof Videos

Do you know 85% of Facebook videos are viewed without sound? One reason is that Facebook mutes the sound by default. Another reason is Facebook videos are the go-to options for watching during commutes, in the library, or while waiting for an appointment. So, Facebook videos are the choice of users who want to watch without listening to the sound.

As fascinating as it sounds, it’s becoming another challenge for marketers as they have to create videos that users can understand by watching without the need for sound.

All in all, no matter whether you are sharing tips or promoting products if viewers are not having any problems with understanding your video without sound, you have a greater chance of making them stop scrolling to consume your content.

5. Experiment with User-like Videos

Besides creating sound-proof videos, one more challenge is waiting for you on Facebook. It is to make users believe your content is beyond promotion and that your products or services add value to users’ lives.

The problem in terms of Facebook videos is that content is turning too promotional these days. By just glancing at a video, viewers can recognise whether something is going to burn a hole in their pocket.

Don’t worry, there’s a bright side to this.

I don’t know about you, but I have come across many videos that start with an interesting story and unveil the product at the end. That looks genuine to me as a general Facebook viewer.

All you have to do is create content that is more about relating to your users than promoting a certain product or service. One unbeatable way to achieve this is to experiment with user-generated content.

Tell me, how many times have you come across videos created by your friends? Don’t you like to watch them? Taking it further, don’t you prefer videos created by someone simply sharing their story? This creates more of a personal relationship that reaches out to users’ emotions, allowing them to feel that your brand is interested in connecting with the people consuming your services and products.

Creating user-generated videos is budget-friendly as compared to videos created by professionals and not only looks genuine but also helps you stand out from the crowd.

6. Embrace Flexibility

What’s working today isn’t necessarily going to work tomorrow. With everything we’ve learned about the evolution of the digital world, we know that change is inevitable. The same rule applies to your Facebook videos. Today’s views are not going to guarantee tomorrow’s views. The longevity of your success relies on your ability to embrace change and measure the success of your videos.

Fortunately, Facebook offers a free platform named Creator Studio that allows you to upload and measure all your videos from one place. It gives you insights on a wide range of data including total minutes viewed, 3-second video views, one-minute video views, total engagement, number of followers, and so on. If you want to dig deeper, you’ll find the list of top and worst videos based on the metrics. Click further on each of your video posts to access the advanced analytics window, which is the only place to measure everything from average watching time to user retention.

Overall, Creator Studio helps you understand what’s working and what’s not to help you create more effective Facebook videos in the future.

Final Steps

Creating a foolproof strategy to launch a Facebook video marketing campaign is not simple. However, if you know who your audience is and are aware of their values, you can create video content that is engaging. Plus, A/B testing helps you generate great results on Facebook.