Church, Business Leaders, and Communicators,
During these times we’ve all jumped on the video bandwagon on social media. Many of us have no clue what we are doing, and yet that shouldn’t hold us back either. But that’s not what this writing is all about.
Today, I wanted to talk to you about your audience, more specifically, the audience that Facebook or Youtube tell you you have. When looking at the insights for your videos, each has their way of telling you some numbers. And come on, be honest, the bigger the number the happier we are, right? But, what good is a number if it doesn’t speak the truth to you? Zero. So, real quick I wanted to use Facebook as an example, using my own more “popular” videos I’ve posted recently on my own church page.
The bottom line here is you need to understand the metrics on your FB and YT message performance. If you don’t understand them, then you can’t truly grade how well your message is connecting. The numbers can mislead you easily.
So, these numbers below are from MY two best “performing” videos on our church FB page:
Reach – 373 and 643
3 Sec Views – 217 and 358
Ave Time Watched – 17-sec and 13-sec! 😭
The same goes for the “Ads” you paid for. I created one that ran for 7 days (Very targeted less than 2 miles and specific demographics):
Reach – 1,770
Impressions – 3,238 (means it simply showed up in the feed)
3 Sec Views – 451
Ave Time Watched – 2-secs! (of a 15 second video of still images).
In Innovate Church’s case, we have a whole 92-person page audience to begin with, so I don’t expect big numbers on anything. But, if I were to quickly glance and think nothing about the Facebook is giving me, I’d be thinking a lot more highly about our recent videos than reality leads me to…hence continuing to under perform my hopes and goals for posting.
So, while we have a captive audience at home right now, and we all have the internet, it doesn’t mean we are getting our message to them just because Facebook or YouTube give you some numbers that appease your ego. There is more to those numbers up front that you have to dig in to.
On a positive note, keep working on what you are putting out there and keep posting. The audience will build but you need to keep your eye on the real metrics to build upon. Getting started at anything is usually a slow process.
Gerald Faulkner 