Facebooks Auto Play And Why You Need Subtitles

Whether you've spent big on a production company, or made the video yourself, there's nothing more disappointing than finding out that no ones watching your video. All that hard work and hard earned cash gone to waste. Not entirely, what people don't realise is there's a lot more to getting your video seen than just hitting publish.

You want, no, NEED to make your videos, as easy as possible for people to view. We're all time poor and yet we're all still addicted to our Facebook feeds. One great little feature that makes Facebook a great video platform is it's Autoplay video function. This means when someones scrolling through their facebook feed and they come across a video it will automatically start playing.

To enable this functionality though your video MUST be uploaded directly to Facebook. If you upload your video to YouTube or Vimeo and then share the link, instead of the Auto Play feature your video will sit in a static video player, which needs to be clicked to watch. As crazy as it sounds that one click could mean the difference between someone stopping to watch your video or keep scrolling past.

Great, so we now know we have to upload our video directly to Facebook so we can make use of that cool Autoplay function. Done right? Wrong. Here's a fun fact, up to 85% of videos watched on Facebook are watched without sound. That means if you don't have subtitles, you've video won't make sense. It will just be a bunch of images flashing by. If it doesn't make sense people aren't going to waste their time watching it.

All you have to do is look around at people on their phones. It doesn't matter whether you're on a train, waiting for a bus stop, waiting in a line, hell even your partner in bed will be watching videos on Facebook and 9 times out of 10 they'll be watching them without sound. 

So just to recap.

1. Upload your video directly to Facebook to make the most of it's Autoplay function; and

2. 85% of videos watched on Facebook are watched without sound. If you're posting a video to Facebook, make sure it has subtitles. 

Making an impactful videos goes beyond the content and hitting the publish button. Over the coming months we'll be posting more blogs with tips on how to make the most of your video content.