Learn how marketing expert Mari Smith is leading by example with Facebook videos.

The Goal

Walking the talk with social video

Mari Smith is a Facebook marketing expert and digital influencer based in San Diego, California. She engages her worldwide audience of active fans by publishing Facebook marketing advice for small businesses. As an early adopter and proponent of Facebook Live, and Facebook video in general, Mari knows that video is a must for businesses looking to stand out on the social network. Therefore, she strives to incorporate video into her own content as often as possible.

In July 2016, Facebook updated their algorithm to put more emphasis on video. Mari wanted to share the news—with video, naturally—and needed to do it very quickly, in order to engage with her followers while the news was still relevant.

The Solution

Creating same-day content

Mari was able to create a video, same day, to start a conversation online around Facebook’s algorithm update while people were buzzing about it. “Literally within minutes, I was able to create a gorgeous, professional video using images, screenshots, and video clips I already had, including my downloaded Facebook Live videos, and publish the videos to my social channels,” says Mari. “It’s all about creating video content that’s perfect for sound-off, autoplay consumption in the Facebook News Feed.”

Mari posted the video to her page and later boosted it with $300 using Facebook Ads Manager but only after seeing the post take off organically first. Mari recommends waiting until content starts gaining traction on its own before spending to advertise, to ensure that content is truly engaging.

The Results

Engaging fans with well-timed content

Because Mari was able to create a video quickly, she was able to post it to her Facebook page at just the right time to engage with her fans. As a result, the video saw a great deal of engagement, including 45,586 views, 499 likes, 450 shares, and 97 comments.

After the initial success, Mari created another Animoto video to promote a blog post she penned for the Animoto blog on her Facebook page. The post with video drove 157% more traffic to the blog post than a similar post that only included a link.

Key Takeaways

• Engage your audience with same-day content
• Use big text for sound-off viewing
• Stand out on social media