Videos posted to Facebook can now easily be embedded onto other websites, Facebook announced at its annual F8 conference last week in San Francisco. This new ability could offer an […]

Videos posted to Facebook can now easily be embedded onto other websites, Facebook announced at its annual F8 conference last week in San Francisco. This new ability could offer an easy alternative for brands to create a cross-channel video strategy.

There are several reasons why the option to embed Facebook videos could work in a brands’ favor:

  • It’ll be easy for other users to share your video if they come across one you’ve embedded from Facebook onto your website.

  • If you don’t currently have the integration necessary to host videos on your website, this offers an easy solution.

It’s surprising this feature hadn’t been implemented before, given the popularity of videos on the social network. Facebook’s manager of product marketing Deborah Liu said at the event that roughly 3 billion are viewed every day (we think this large figure might be in part because Facebook automatically plays them when users scroll by.)

The introduction of embedded Facebook videos across the web could be viewed as an increase in the competitive stakes the social network has on YouTube. Since YouTube surpassed Facebook in July 2014 as the most populous social network, Facebook has taken great strides to promote its video product offerings – and the latest development is sure to have significant impact on brands and publishers creating videos for multiple channels.

Now, for users to embed a video from Facebook, they simply can click the “Options” button located on the video they’re interested in, and find the embed code. From there, it can be shared on other social networks, blog posts and landing pages.

Embed Facebook Video

The pros of creating Facebook videos

Facebook brings traffic to your website: As Brafton previously reported, Facebook is the top social network for bringing in referral traffic to your website (roughly 58 percent of all referral traffic in Oct. 2014, according to this study). YouTube, on the other hand, is at the bottom of the list, with its share of referral traffic dropping a staggering 96 percent since 2011.

Videos boost engagement: Facebook is far and away the most popular choice for personal video distribution, but it’s an engagement booster for brands as well. Take a look at Cosmo. The magazine’s Facebook page saw a 200 percent year-over-year increase in engagement, and shares of videos were 53 percent higher than regular social media content.

Easier customization and timing: When you’re publishing video content on Facebook, you can customize publishing times based on when you know your audience is active. (Quick tip: 25 percent of all video content is viewed on one day of the week: Friday.)

Don’t rule out YouTube just yet

Facebook might be making a play to become the next video giant, but this shouldn’t discount your YouTube marketing efforts.

YouTube is the most successful network for driving conversions. It’s the top destination for Millennials to learn about products, and with Google in its corner, sharing videos on YouTube can be the most beneficial option from an SEO perspective. We reported in July that video rich snippets were disappearing from SERPs, but YouTube videos were more likely to stay. Per SEOlytics data, YouTube’s ownership of Google SERP rich snippet real estate grew from 46.7 percent to 74.8 percent that month.

At Brafton, we’ve seen firsthand results from revamping our YouTube campaign. Check out the results here.  

Where are you posting videos on social media: YouTube? Facebook? Let us know in the comments.

Molly Buccini is Brafton's community manager. She joined the team with a background in digital journalism and social media. She's a theatre nerd, pop culture junkie and lover of summertime.