Tips And Tricks For Optimal Posting To Social Media

2016 was an interesting year for how to reach a target audience with video. It is imperative for greatest audience reach to post video to social media sites in the native format for the site to ensure maximum engagement and reach.

This is being written by the same guy who has sworn by Youtube on several channels for a number of years! 2016 saw a shift in this thinking. It is still imperative to post to youtube, but for maximum reach, posting the same video in native format to a facebook page, a twitter account, and a shorter version to Instagram is a wise choice.

In addition, every post that is not a video, needs to have a picture posted with it for maximum engagement! This can’t be stressed enough.

Here are some tips and tricks:

1. If you need to ‘rip’ a youtube video for posting to other sites, a great free tool is en.savefrom.net Be sure to that you have the copyright rights to the video.

2. If you are posting a video to Instagram it must be 60 seconds or less. Good article on why Instagram changed video length from 15 seconds to 1 minute can be read in Forbes Magazine

3. To post video to Facebook Live you can either go live from a computer with a webcam or other camera, or a mobile device. Here is the Facebook guide on how to do Facebook Live. Some good tips for etiquette and style for Facebook Live are here

If you are going to use a computer with a webcam or another type of camera (webcam is easiest) you will need to use an encoder and post the stream key into the encoder for every video. The encoder that seems to work very well and is free is the Open Broadcast Project known as “OBS” To find the ‘stream key’ on your facebook page, click on ‘publishing tools’ followed on the left side of the page ‘videos’, then top right to the +live button. You will then get a Server URL and a stream key that you need to add to your OBS in the settings section. You will need to start OBS, as well as start the video in Facebook. Keep the Stream Key secret. Anyone can use them to stream video to your post. This stream key is valid for 7 days. Once you preview the video, you have up to 5 hours to go live. If you need more time, create a new stream key closer to the time.

3. If posting a pre-recorded video to Facebook, simple click on the photo button on the status update and upload a video. Be sure to title it properly and message it in the same way you would message a facebook post.

4. For twitter video the maximum length is 140 seconds (1min 20sec). You can do the videos live from your twitter, or you can upload a file from your computer or mobile device by clicking on the add photo/video button.

5. For posting photos to social media… one good photo works best. It is great to create a branded template and add several photos into one. A great free tool to use to make these images is CANVA If you are posting multiple photos, it is important to engage with the people in the photo with photo tags and a good written description of each photo that tell a story!

In conclusion, if you can make your video under 1 minute in length, you will have it in the format suitable for native format posting in Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Your reach will be significantly greater and all following your posts will view your social media skills as far superior than if sharing video across platforms!

Final tip for the road…. Posting a non-video post to social media without a photo is like using a bathroom without toilet paper! It is a job unfinished that stinks in the end!