Hey there Internet fans, Ryan Perry here, Simple Biz Support. I read an article earlier today and it got me thinking about the difference between adding video to YouTube and Facebook. And essentially, the article was about, should I upload my content to YouTube or should I upload it to Facebook? And for me the reality is this, there really isn’t a cookie cutter scenario where you can say do this or do that, and it’s one of the areas I get frustrated when people that don’t really know when they’re learning about things like video marketing, how to SEO optimize content, they don’t know a lot of the nuances that go into it. They simply want things to be easy and these cookie cutter articles are great, but it really doesn’t truly answer the question of, should I post on Facebook or should I post on YouTube?

And the honest answer, which is going to be a little bit more difficult than the cookie cutter version, is you really should test. Now with that, I do recommend starting on YouTube. Why is that? Well, YouTube is owned by Google. It’s this world’s second largest search engine behind Google. And essentially if you want to be found, if you’re creating content because you want to be found, you want to generate visibility so people come to your website, then you want to play where Google is at, and YouTube is one of those powerful, powerful tools. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been able to use video to get people on the first page of Google where their website isn’t ranking. Couple of choice keywords, a nice quick short video and we can get things ranked in under two hours. I actually have a video that I was able to rank in less than 10 minutes. It actually showed up on the first page of Google. That’s how powerful YouTube can be for your channel. YouTube, for me, that’s an easy answer, you should always post content on YouTube. To me, it’s a no-brainer.

Now, do I also post that content on Facebook? This is where things get a little complicated, yet can really be easy if you understand what it is that you’re trying to accomplish. In the beginning, I highly recommend that you really try and develop your YouTube channel. Just like Google, if you’re trying to create blog content to get your website on the first page of Google, you need to create credibility and trust with Google before they’re going to rank you. That is the same thing with YouTube. If you have a channel with zero content, you’re not going to have the same trust and credibility as somebody else who’s a competitor. Again remember, Google’s always looking at your competitors. If you’re selling blue widgets, how well is your blue widget guy doing? If he has an excellent YouTube channel, it’s going to take a little bit more work. However in the long term, I always ask people, “How long are you going to be in business?”

If you plan on staying in business for a long time, then you need to invest in these marketing strategies and YouTube is definitely one of those strategies and channels that you need to invest in. You need to build a reputation on YouTube. Well, how do you do that? Well, first step is you have to upload content. The second step is you need to push that content out so that people will see it. The more views your YouTube channel has, and the more subscribers, and the more minutes that people watch, and the length that they watch your videos is all going to determine how much trust and credibility you have with YouTube.

As you build that trust and credibility with YouTube, your rankings will start going up. However, you need to start the trust and credibility. It’s like a relationship. I can’t just meet somebody and go, “Hey, lets get married”. Well, maybe if you met them in Vegas. But typically, when you meet somebody, you don’t just say, “Hey, let’s go get married,” and they go, “Okay, lets go do that”. It doesn’t work that way, you have to invest in that relationship. SEO, YouTube is the same thing. Initially, because we want to invest in YouTube, because long term strategy, YouTube is going to be beneficial to you, I would then push all of my resources towards promoting that YouTube channel and that includes Facebook. Initially, I would not upload content on my Facebook business page, but instead I would drop a link.
Now, the downside to that is you’re not going to get as much organic reach because YouTube is a competitor of Facebook, Facebook wants to play in the video market because they understand how powerful video is. In the next four to five years, Zuckerberg predicted that 50 or excuse me, 90% of all content on Facebook is going to be video related. That’s how powerful video is. But I don’t want you to put content on Facebook right away because we need to drive the YouTube channel, so we actually need to link the video to YouTube. Build that audience, build that credibility so that you gain… You have the upper hand against your other competitors that aren’t doing anything. The content should be posted on your website and blogs, other social media, you should be tweeting the link. Everything you want to do, you should be driving to your YouTube channel.

Lets say six months go by and you have created evergreen content, this is content that is ongoing, it doesn’t change, it doesn’t die, it doesn’t get old, it’s not stale, it’s still relevant. That evergreen content I would save, so don’t delete that video. And maybe five, six, nine months down the road, then you upload it to Facebook. Enough time’s gone by, people have forgotten about it, you’re constantly creating new content, why not re-use that content, you’ve invested a lot of time, money and energy into it. Take that content and then upload it to your Facebook channel. But that’s after you’ve promoted your YouTube. For me that’s the ideal way to go. The other thing that I am looking into as far as Facebook and video is live. In fact, I was going to do a live show on Facebook today, but Facebook wouldn’t let me connect. What are you going to do? Well, I’m going to fall back to the old standard which is record upload to YouTube.

If you have any questions, comments or thoughts, maybe I missed something, you’ve got another idea, we’d love to hear it, leave a comment below and I’ll get back to you.