This is the first episode of something I’m calling Matt’s Marketing Tips. No idea whether there’ll be an episode two, but I like how it sounds, so we’re rolling with it.
Today: how I’ve been getting a lot more views, comments, likes and shares on Facebook, and more importantly, more bookings.
The Problem
Facebook has been majorly cracking down on the visibility of posts shared by business pages. So if you have a wedding film company and you’re trying to share your films, not many people are seeing them. That sucks.
The way I did it for years, and the way most wedding filmmakers still do it, is: render the video, it looks awesome, upload it to your business page, tag the couple and every vendor you worked with, then message as many of them as you can asking them to please share it.
Because the hope is that more people see the film, and an engaged couple watches it. And when I say engaged I don’t mean user engagement, I mean actually proposed to and getting married. They see it, they think, that’s an awesome video, I should hire that person. You get more bookings and you don’t have to live out of your car. Which, hey, sounds great.
The trouble is that with business page reach cut so hard, even when your couple and your vendors do share it, far fewer of their friends actually see it.
What Photographers Do Instead
Here’s the workaround, and I took the idea straight from photographers.
When a photographer posts about a wedding, they don’t upload all 500 photos to their own page and start tagging everybody, because that’s a nightmare. They send the couple the photos, and the couple uploads them to their personal profiles.
And how many times have you been sitting there and suddenly you’re tagged in thirty photos from a wedding, and you think, oh my gosh, this is ridiculous, and then you look at every single one anyway? Because you want to know how embarrassing you look.
That’s the mechanic. Facebook cut business page reach and replaced it with personal page reach. Personal posts are now significantly more visible than business posts.
So Here’s What I Do Now
When I send the email saying the wedding film is finished, I include the YouTube link to stream it, and I ask the couple not to share that YouTube link on Facebook.
Instead, the same email has a download link to a Facebook-optimised version of their film, ready to upload, along with simple instructions for uploading it, so nobody gets confused, and an offer to answer any questions.
Then I ask them to post it on their personal Facebook profile, tag their friends, and tag my wedding film company. That last part matters, because if a friend watches and wonders who filmed it, they can scroll up and my company is right there in the description.
And this tricks Facebook. The platform is now so heavily optimised toward video and photos shared from personal profiles that when the couple uploads their wedding film, Facebook goes, oh, this is a personal video they made, share it, show everybody. Suddenly far more people see it.
I’ve had a lot of emails from couples saying they saw so-and-so’s wedding video and would love me to film theirs. I’m getting more bookings because of it.
You Still Get To Post It Yourself
Doing it this way doesn’t stop you sharing the film on your own business page. It just changes the order.
Later, maybe a week or a month after the sharing frenzy from the couple’s post dies down, upload it to your own page, tag everybody again and share it. By then, people who already watched it get to see it again, and people who missed it entirely get a second chance. That can bring in bookings too.
If you heard “Facebook-optimised version” and thought, right, how do I make one of those, I’ve made a whole playlist on export settings covering Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo and Instagram.
And if you want more on the booking side generally, that’s what my free guide is for.