Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

When Helen Havlak, engagement editor at The Verge, looks to the future, she sees video — and Facebook. Last year, the Verge’s video views overtook its pageviews. This year, she expects the tech site to more than double the number of videos it produces this year. “Video right now is the only way to build a Facebook page,” she said. “The audience there is huge.”

Publishers are all trying to become video producers, tantalized by the prospect of lucrative video ad rates and exposure on Facebook, where publishers have a better chance of getting their content seen by posting video than they do photos and text links. Media companies uploaded 931,000 social videos to Facebook in the first quarter of 2017, an increase of 109 percent year over year, according to Tubular Labs (measuring across 2,000 media companies).

But producing video is time-consuming and expensive, which is why, for better or for worse, they’re turning to various hacks. Here’s a guide to some of the most common tactics. We’ll let you decide if they’re brilliant or despicable....