Do you want to stand out in the saturated Facebook news feeds of your target audience? Then you need to start using video - and fast. This is the year of video on Facebook, and if your brand is not using video on Facebook yet, it will in the future. It must, in order to keep up with the competition.

Facebook says that it’s users interact with video posts more than any other type of post - links, text, or photo - which is why they are investing in making video more native to the platform.

Here’s what you need to know about how video on Facebook works, and how to use them to send traffic to your website.

First, you need to know how video on Facebook is displayed. 

When your customers are browsing their news feed and they scroll across your video, it will look like a photo at first and then start playing on mute.

Your customer can then choose to continue scrolling past it until it’s off the screen, or they can stop to watch it play silently.

If they think the video looks interesting, they can click on it to watch it full screen with the sound on.

There are three key decision points you must plan for when creating and posting a video on Facebook:  

1) Get the viewer to stop scrolling through their news feed and start watching the video. Remember that when they are watching the video in their news feed, there is no sound. So make sure that the first 1-2 seconds can capture the attention of a viewer without sound.

Choose the intro/teaser text that goes along with the post wisely. Don’t make it too long and wordy. It must leave a question in the minds of the reader that is answered by the video.

If you fail to capture the attention of the viewer within the first couple of seconds, they will not stop scrolling to watch.

2) Convince the viewer to click on the video to go full screen and enable sound.

Keep in mind that at this point, they still cannot hear the video. So for the first 10 seconds of your video, you need to be able to communicate with or without sound. We’re going back to the days of silent movies here.

This first 10 seconds is critical. If you can’t hook the viewer to click on the video within the first 10 seconds without using sound, you probably won’t hook them at all. Use action, movement, text…whatever elements you can use that will start to tell a story without audio.

3) Give the viewer an action to take after watching the video. If the viewer is still around after 10 seconds, chances are they have clicked the video and are watching with the sound in full screen mode. So now your goal with the rest of the video is to prime them to take action after they finish watching.

Keep your video brief (think 90 seconds) to make sure viewers stay until the end, and use the Facebook video call to action feature to link the video to your website. [Read: How To Add a Facebook Video Call To Action]

Once you have worked with a video production company to structure your video to perform within Facebook, use Facebook video ads to broaden your audience and get your message out to the right person at the right time.