Could Facebook supplant YouTube for law firm video?

Law firms using video for marketing and business development have traditionally turned to YouTube for storing and distribution. But with the recent explosion of video on Facebook, it’s possible some law firms may soon choose Facebook over YouYube.

From The Next Web’s Owen Williams (@ow) this week:

Facebook video, which is relatively young in comparison to YouTube which launched in 2005, is now delivering 4 billion daily viewers. That’s up from 3 billion views every day, which was announced in January 2015. Facebook has had the ability to upload video for a number of years, but didn’t get serious about it until 2014 when it adjusted its algorithms to weight video more heavily.

By contrast, YouTube reached the 4 billion video views daily mark in 2012, about eight months after it had reached the 3 billion mark and seven years after it launched.

I agree with Williams that posting video directly to Facebook has its advantages.

… [I]t gives you almost guaranteed exposure right now. Add a video to a public post and the Newsfeed algorithm will shine in your favor and show it to a significant amount more people than any other type of post (like a photo or text-only update).

…..

Facebook’s social graph is a potent advantage over YouTube. Videos come straight to the users, in their Newsfeed, where they’re already spending most of their time on the service. They don’t have to leave Facebook’s walled garden to find content.

We’re not talking just personal video on Facebook. Small and medium sized busineses are taking advantage of posting video to Facebook.

As reported by Business Insider’s Lara O’Reilly (@larakiara), Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, shared in their earnings call this week just how valuable Facebook video is to businesses.

I think all marketers have the opportunity to do video, and that’s pretty exciting, including SMBs [small-to-medium businesses] who would never be able to hire a film crew and buy a TV ad. We’re seeing those put video in. Over 1 million SMBs have posted videos and done really small ad buys around them. And that’s pretty cool because I don’t think there are probably 1 million advertisers who have bought TV ads in that same period of time.

As I blogged earlier this year, taking video and posting it to Facebook can be as easy as shooting a quick video with your iPhone and uploading it to Facebook with a description just as you would post a picture. I have done this without any editing of the video, taking all together, with the interview and uploading it, about five or six minutes.

I tag the subject of the video in Facebook and share the video on Twitter with a link to my Facebook post. Both ways the person I videoed sees the video and appreciates the exposure. A lot of good will generated.

You can still use YouTube so your video is available for search and so that you can embed the video on your blog or website.  Facebook is just faster to start with and gives you the ready distribution YouTube does not.

For those lawyers and law firms who appreciate the power of Facebook for relationship and reputation building, Facebook video could be a nice fit.

 Image courtesy of Flickr by KamrenB Photography