How Eater.com approaches publishing video to Facebook

In recent months, Facebook video has grown to be a significant portion of Eater's overall video consumption. By listening to what the audience wants, reviewing analytics and data, and staying true to the Eater voice, the team knows that it will continue to grow their Facebook video presence in a huge way.

Eater fans share Facebook video at an incredible rate

After uploading around a dozen videos directly to Facebook's player, one thing was clear in the analytics: Eater fans shared Facebook video posts at a rate that was much higher than posts with links.

12 times as much in fact.

This caught the eye of the editorial staff who quickly made Facebook video uploads a central part of Eater's video distribution strategy. Specific content ideas and formats were created based on what the Facebook audience was responding to and what the data was telling the team.

Eater New York editor Greg Morabito said, "The most successful videos start with action right away, and need little or no explanation."

What Eater fans want on Facebook

Traditionally, Eater did not cover "food porn," recipes or how-tos. But after a number of experiments, these types of video content have been well received by the Eater Facebook audience.

Morabito said, "Eater is an aspirational lifestyle brand, and the most successful videos makes high-brow food culture accessible to everyone."

By staying true to the Eater voice, they were able to successfully pivot their video content towards what the Facebook audience was consuming.

Morabito also shared things that didn't work.

"Teasers, talking heads, and low-brow food. Audiences shared videos about chefs making incredible things. They also shared smart text-heavy videos about high-brow dining."

Facebook can be a home for evergreen content

Much of Eater's video content is not tied to a specific time or event, creating an opportunity to expose our audience to it multiple times. Chances are a significant number of Eater Facebook fans missed the first post of a video, which allows the Eater staff to review and tweak the message to better fit with what the audience is looking for.

Post time is key for video

As Eater continued to post more videos to Facebook, patterns emerged in the Facebook Insights data around certain content and the time and day it was popular.

Video of tasting menus and recipes? Most popular on the weekend.

That perfect cookie sandwich recipe? Shockingly, this video was popular with the late night crowd.

Through hundreds of posts and a lot of trial and error, the Eater.com team has been able to create an engaged and passionate Facebook audience for their videos.  Eater.com will continue to listen to the audience and review their data points to develop killer content that will continue to satisfy their audience's hunger for Eater.com video.