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Canada was one of the first countries to fall head over heels for Facebook, and now, more Canadians log into Facebook every day than anywhere else in the world.

Facebook claims to average one billion video views every day, with two-thirds watched via mobile device. Organic video views, the content friends share, have been growing 50 per cent from May through July.

Part of the explosion in video counts can be attributed to Facebook's 'auto-play' feature, which sees videos play automatically on it's news feed. Facebook launched the auto-play feature last year and has slowly rolled it out to all of the social network's users.

Even the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge's success can largely be chalked up to auto-play. Think about what scrolling through Facebook has been like for the past few weeks: a video with a person dumping water over their head starts playing muted, which is a default feature. Your interest is piqued after seeing this once or twice, so you start playing the videos with sound to see what it's all about. Auto-play got your attention because it's hard to ignore, and starts without prompting. Because videos default to first play muted, users are forced to engage with the video to get the full meal deal. In essence, they are click bait – which is why marketers love auto-play videos.

Marketers also love analytics, which Facebook is excellent at providing. Facebook said last week that it is going to start displaying video view counts, will offer deeper video analytics for publishers and recommend additional videos to viewers; all tweaks to increase consumption by the public and make the prospect of video marketing more attractive to businesses.

As a small business owner, it's a real chance to expand your video content potential beyond video giant YouTube.

Even Beyonce agrees. Just last week, Queen Bey's Management Company said that Facebook has become their "primary platform" to communicate with fans. This comment comes on the heels of a new behind-the-scenes video released via both Facebook and YouTube.

Beyonce's Facebook videos earned 2.4 million views in a few hours on Facebook, while YouTube's views trickled in by comparison, earning just a few thousand.

Why is this? Fans spotted the video, watched it, liked it and shared it, boosting its exposure via Facebook news feeds.

Video on Facebook presents a great opportunity for small businesses. It's a terrific way to get a message across and provides a more immersive experience versus static status updates and pictures All of this could further convince businesses that love the video aspect of television and the social aspect of Facebook… their money may be better spent on creating social video – and Facebook might be a great place to start.

Lisa Ostrikoff is a TV journalist and anchor-turned-creator of BizBOXTV, a Canadian online video production, advertising and social media marketing agency. You can find her on Twitter and Facebook.

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