Buffer: “Video Is Largely Underutilized” on Facebook

Earlier this month, the social media management tool Buffer released some interesting research in a blog post by Ash Read, 3 Unusual Lessons We Learned by Studying Over 16 million Posts (And 100,000 Brands) on Social Media.

Buffer’s research takes a look at how brands have been using Buffer to share to social media over the past year. The findings are super useful and we highly recommend reading the entire post on the Buffer blog, which includes a glimpse into how often brands post, what types of content are getting the most engagement, and more. For the purposes of this article, we’ll be sharing some of Buffer’s findings around our favorite type of content — video.

Video gets the most engagement on Facebook… by far.

As part of their study, Buffer took a look at the number of engagements (defined as clicks, likes, and shares) that different types of posts received, on average, across Facebook on Twitter. As you can see from the chart below, video is blowing photos, links, and plain text posts out of the water on Facebook.

It’s important to note that when we talk about video on Facebook we talk about videos natively uploaded to Facebook, rather than links shared from other platforms, like YouTube or Vimeo. Find out more about sharing native video to Facebook from Animoto on our blog.

“Video is largely underutilized.”

In his blog post about the study, Ash Read lists three key social media lessons and the first is all about video. Read says, “Despite all the excitement surrounding social video, the data shows that video is still underutilized by many brands.”

As the data above illustrates, video is the clear winner for engagement on Facebook. With that being said, Buffer reports that, “In the 7 posts that brands share on Facebook per week, far less than 1% are videos. Of the remaining 99%, 80% are links and 19% are photos.” If you were still looking for a reason to start incorporating video into your marketing strategy, especially on Facebook, this should convince you!

We’re excited to see how you’re embracing video on social media. What types of videos are you sharing and how often? If you aren’t using video on Facebook yet, are you planning to start? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below or reach out to us on Facebook or Twitter.

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