Today we are answering a listener question! The question comes from Jodie, and she’s asking about how to select your video strategy – both live and pre-recorded – for Facebook.
Here for the links referenced in the show notes?
Ask a Question: tashcorbin.com/question
Episode 253: Mapping your unique client attraction process: tashcorbin.com/253
$0 FB Marketing Plan free training: tashcorbin.com/zero
If you’ve been thinking you really need to uplevel the way that you use video to grow your audience and make sales on Facebook, this is going to be a particularly helpful episode for you.
Let’s dive on in!
Today’s Q&A question comes from Jodie Thornton. Jodie is a parenting coach and you can find out more about her at:
- jodiethornton.com
- @jodiethorntonparentcoach on Facebook
- @jodiethorntonparentcoach on Instagram
Jodie’s questions are:
“What do you recommend these days for pre-recorded videos and Facebook lives? How often? How long? What content and calls-to-action work best when you’re working on solidifying your business foundations?”
I’ve got a bunch of tips and hints for you, Jodie… I think this is a really powerful conversation for us to have!
1. Choose what’s easiest
When it comes to video strategy (particularly if you can’t decide between live or pre-recorded, short videos or long videos, whether they are edited or not edited), I want you to first and foremost do what’s easiest for you. Do something that you can maintain and keep doing consistently.
If right now, pre-recorded video seems far easier for you, then focus on prerecorded video.
If right now, live video is something you can do really easily, but when you try to pre-record something, you get yourself all mixed up and you’ve got no systems behind the scenes to help you make sure that that content gets shared, then don’t worry about it.
Just do what’s easiest first and build up that consistency.
I will give you some ideas of things that you can do and ways that you can do this, but I want to ensure that we don’t get you caught up in this cycle of waiting until you’ve got all your ducks in a row before you start using video on Facebook.
Video is a really fundamental part of your content plan. I want you to start doing videos sooner rather than later… and nail that consistency.
If that means you choose whatever is easiest for you right now and start with something that isn’t necessarily optimised or perfect, I would rather you start and maintain that consistency, then keep putting it off and putting it off until you can get it perfect.
2. One to two videos per week
This is a solid start to your video strategy on Facebook.
If you’re doing one video a week, you might like to alternate between doing a pre-recorded video one week, and a Facebook live the next.
Again, if pre-recorded’s easier for you, just do them all pre-recorded. If Facebook lives are easier for you and you don’t want to do anything pre-recorded, that is totally fine.
Just start with one to two pieces of video content per week.
Your video strategy for Facebook can include re-sharing old content.
Remember: You can reshare old video content by downloading it and re-uploading it or even just re-sharing the original post.
There are so many live videos that I’ve done over the years that would make amazing content for me to reshare onto my Facebook page.
Often the reason why that doesn’t happen consistently is because I’m just churning out more and more content when I don’t necessarily need to. It’s just the thing that comes easiest to me.
I am a content creating machine. I don’t necessarily reuse or repurpose old content as effectively as I could. (That’s definitely something I’m working on with my team to start being more savvy about how we reuse video content in particular so that I can improve my strategy on Facebook.)
Ultimately, if you can start getting one to two videos out on Facebook each week, you are going to be doing an amazing job of building up that consistency, nurturing your existing audience, attracting in new people, and also building an audience that you can retarget with paid advertising as you move through from the startup foundations of your business into the scaling stage of your business.
3. Earn your audience’s attention span
How long should the videos be? I’m going to answer this question with a question: How long of an attention span have you earned from your audience?
If you haven’t been doing videos at all consistently, I would start with very short video content.
If you’ve got a really warm audience who love watching your videos, who will sit and watch 30 minutes of you talking, who lap up everything that you do, then you’re going to get away with longer video content.
I would still do a mix of short-form and longer-form video content.
When you’re first starting out, I would recommend getting your video content to the five-to-seven-minute-mark maximum. Then you can start to build into some sporadic longer videos here and there as your audience tolerates it more.
If you haven’t earned the attention span of your audience, don’t do lots of long-form video content, because no one’s going to see it through to the end.
4. Give your videos a job
When it comes to getting those videos to be really effective, remember that different videos and Facebook lives have different jobs to do.
The different jobs of your videos and Facebook lives are:
- Grow your reach
- Nurture your existing audience and warm them up
- Generate leads and sales conversations
- Create conversion with your audience
You may recognise those four different jobs as being aligned with the first four stages of the client attraction process. (If you don’t know about the client attraction process, you can learn more about the five stages of a client attraction process here: Episode 253: Mapping your unique client attraction process.)
In essence, those different stages are different parts of the journey.
You need to be strategic about: What is the core job of this video?
Is this video’s job to reach cold audiences? If so, then that’s going to dictate the strategy around that video…
You want to make sure:
- It has captions
- It’s nice and short
- The first couple of sentences really get to the point quickly and capture people’s attention
- The call-to-action is a low-risk ask (and you might even not have a call-to-action on it at all)
When it comes to reach-based videos, you also want to make sure you’ve got a very sexy, very sleek and succinct summary in the written form, so that people can make a discerned informed decision about whether they want to watch that video or not.
There’s nothing worse than clicking on a video to watch it, not 100% knowing what it’s about, and then feeling like you’ve wasted your time watching the first few minutes still having no clue what it’s about.
Don’t waste people’s time.
Be succinct. Remember: Those first few seconds are going to be really critical for reach-based videos.
For videos that are going to be nurturing your existing audience, you can have them a little longer.
The call-to-action could be to:
- Engage in a conversation with you (either in the comments or via DM)
- See another piece of content on your website
- Grab a free resource
The job of that video is different to a reach-based video.
That will dictate the length of the video, what you’re focused on, and how you initially draw in your audience.
I don’t recommend that you have those sexy, succinct stats in nurture videos that are giving a big lofty promise… You want to actually have those videos really resonate with your warmest audiences.
In nurture videos, I’m more likely to do them live and develop that connection and relationship with my audience by greeting people as they join.
Whereas in a reach video, I would never do that because cold audiences see you faffing about and saying hello to everyone, and you haven’t earned that level of attention span from them yet, so they will not hang around any further.
Different videos have different jobs.
If you’re clear on what the job is, that will help you make decisions about what the strategy will be inside that video.
Mix up the jobs that you get different videos to do.
If you’re following along with the do one to two videos a week (toggling between a live and a pre-recorded), you can then toggle between those four jobs as well – reach, nurture, lead generation, and conversion. THAT’S how you nail your video strategy for Facebook.
5. Engaging calls-to-action
The final part of your question, Jodie, was: What content and calls-to-action work best when you’re working on solidifying your business foundations?
The things that work best are things that engage people.
Things that get people commenting, engaging, and responding. For example, asking questions…
A great call-to-action when you’re solidifying your foundation is to invite people to chat with you – whether that’s to chat with you in the comments, in your DM’s, book a free 15-minute conversation with you, fill in a survey, etc..
Those strategies are going to work really well when you’re building your foundations, because they’re going to build some connection but they’re also going to give you some really juicy insights into what your audience is looking for from you. You’re able to qualify what makes someone a potential lead for your work and what makes someone not a potential lead for your work.
Those are my 5 tips on selecting your video strategy for Facebook:
1. Choose what’s easiest
2. One to two videos per week
3. Earn your audience’s attention span
4. Give your videos a job
5. Engaging calls-to-action
Hopefully, that’s been really helpful for you and you’ve gained some clarity on your video strategy for Facebook.
Questions about video strategy for Facebook in business start-up
If you have a question you would like me to answer on the podcast, all you need to do is go to tashcorbin.com/question, submit your question with all your deets there, I’ll give you a shout out and hopefully I’ll be able to give you a thorough and well thought out answer to your question to help you make those decisions for your business.
If you’ve been reading along and you feel like you’re ready to nail your Facebook strategy, I have a free resource for you that I think you’ll find really helpful.
It’s called the $0 Facebook Marketing Plan.
This is my training on how to grow your audience and make sales on Facebook before you’re ready to invest in Facebook ads.
It’s my key organic strategy for growing an audience and making sales on Facebook, and it’s absolutely free to for you to access.
Check it out at tashcorbin.com/zero.
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
