Facebook is competing with YouTube for primacy in the online video platform market.
Yet they are two completely different platforms with different purposes that require different approaches of us when we want to publish videos on either platform.
To illustrate this, here is my video, London Between Meetings, published on YouTube:
and on Facebook:
Dedicated to my friend Joolia who loved this city.
Posted by Max Alter on Thursday, 18 October 2018
There are two main differences:
Open captions are necessary on Facebook and also on LinkedIn because on these platforms videos mostly start playing automatically and are muted by default. If people don’t know what your video is about, they won’t watch it. We, therefore, have to show them.
Given the way people watch videos on Facebook, the video format ought to be adjusted, too. Square is best if the original is (like mine) full HD. Beware of portrait format (vertical) videos. They can be annoying for a host of reasons.
If you want to know more about optimising your videos for YouTube, check out my article here.
A word about LinkedIn
Native video on LinkedIn is an afterthought not an organic component of this platform.
For instance, it is not possible to embed square Facebook videos on a LinkedIn page. While YouTube videos embed properly, LinkedIn automatically cuts a square video in half and only displays the upper part in 16:9 format. For videos natively uploaded to LinkedIn, this means that open (permanent) captions have to be added in the editing process.
Is it worth generating yet another version of your videos just for LinkedIn? This will be the topic of another article.
For help, support and discussion of this and similar topics, join us in my Facebook group – Videos for Professional Services.
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