Watching videos on Internet has become synonymous with YouTube. As a video sharing platform, YouTube is mammoth in terms of video content that is shared globally every single second. While till date, YouTube was not challenged much, its rival, the social network behemoth Facebook has given high priority to video content and though still in early stages is shaping up to be a favorite for video content creators.
Why Facebook?
Facebook without any doubt is the largest social media platform today. It has a very powerful native tool in the form of News Feed. While music creators, artists, content creators exclusively released their video on YouTube till recently, they have now also started to upload their video content on Facebook.
The Facebook algorithm also favors natively uploaded video content. Facebook’s News Feed feature has disrupted the way in which video content is shared. The News Feed feature allows Facebook to decide on what content is shown on your timeline, instead of you searching for content. This gives a new meaning to marketers where a user enters the realm of Facebook with an open mind to absorb any type of video content rather than searching for a specific artist or content. The autoplay feature also helps in boosting the views of the video. Facebook thus can also engage a lot of users from the not-so-actively engaged audience.
Why YouTube?
YouTube is a very different platform compared to Facebook. The content id and monetization method is very advanced. Although Facebook manages to engage a lot of non-active users, YouTube is a hub for engaged users who if subscribed to the channel make it a very powerful and loyal audience base.
YouTube’s suggested videos which pop up as suggestions have been a boon to new content creators as it drives a lot of traffic. If videos are tagged correctly, then YouTube gives the highest form of traffic. Collaboration videos on YouTube generate massive traffic through crossover audiences. Here YouTube clearly has an edge over Facebook. On YouTube a user searches for content with a fixed idea and is suggested related videos from other channels.
So which one to choose?
Deciding which platform to opt for depends on certain goals of the content creator:
- If you are starting from scratch then Facebook is a good platform for engaging new users. It is also great because it offers paid promotion capabilities.
- If you are collaborating with an established YouTube artist then YouTube is a great platform since a lot of traffic will flow to your channel when people search for the artist.
- While Facebook will get the views pretty quickly, the engagement may not be as great as YouTube. YouTube will build up slowly, but creates a loyal and engaged audience.
- If only gaining audience is the goal then Facebook is the perfect choice. However considering ads and monetization availability for video content on Facebook is still in development stage, YouTube offers an established platform for monetization of videos and generating revenue from ads.
So we can conclude that the choice of the platform depends on the end goal of the content creator. The creator has to analyze the short term and long term goals before opting for one platform. But a good advice would be to engage both the platforms for maximum audience.
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