Korean chef Seonkyoung Longest has seen amazing results since shifting her video strategy to include more long-form content.
Below, we’ll walk you through her approach to engaging her fans.
Results
568M+ Facebook video views over the past year, a 33%+ increase vs. the previous year*
1K+ Facebook videos over the past year that were 3+ minutes in length, a 250%+ increase vs. the previous year*
50% growth in revenue from in-stream ads on a per-month basis (comparing 2019 vs. 2020). 100% growth in revenue on a per-month basis comparing December 2018 to April 2020
Facebook accounted for 15% of total traffic to seonkyounglongest.com, more than any other third-party referral source (April 2019 — April 2020)
*CrowdTangle data comparing April 8, 2019 — April 8, 2020 vs. April 8, 2018 — April 8, 2019
Challenge
Seonkyoung Longest is a Korean chef who emigrated to the U.S. and has been based in California since 2014. A highly motivated learner, she took up cooking in the last ten years as a hobby, but quickly fell in love and wanted to share her passion with others. She began by filming food and cooking videos at her house, without larger career plans. But her energy and authenticity caught on, and before long, Seonkyoung’s website expanded into a social media empire with over three million followers on Facebook.
In the years since, Seonkyoung has gone beyond cooking to create other food-based shows around travel and recipes. To continue her growth, she looked to evolve her social content strategy to promote viewer retention, drive people to her website, and foster deeper engagement and a stronger relationship with her fans.
Strategy
Historically, Seonkyoung posted at least one video and two photos per day on Facebook, along with a weekly cooking show via Facebook Live and biweekly recipe videos on IGTV. But to better serve her audience, she increased posting over the past year to multiple videos per day, with an emphasis on 3+ minute uploads that cover the following topics:
Recipe videos
Cooking videos
Live cooking series
Travel food videos
“I lead in with the finished beauty shots, then scale the content down as much as possible without losing the recipe and/or purpose. People on Facebook also love my personality, which is why we have been doing the weekly Wednesday Facebook Live. This allows us to connect and build an audience across all platforms. We generally have between 3-4K watchers throughout the Live session and after they’re complete and posted to my Page, they tend to draw over 200K total views on average.”
Since the onset of “stay at home” measures to fight COVID-19, Seonkyoung has started filming daily Facebook Live videos to keep fans entertained during lockdown. These cooking shows allow her to “build a stronger bond and be here for my followers during this crazy time,” she added.
Seonkyoung’s increase in 3+ minute videos also boosted her success with in-stream ads revenue, as these videos comply with in-stream monetization policies. She started with in-stream ads towards the end of 2018, and tinkered with content themes throughout 2019 to figure out which videos worked best to drive revenue.
From the end of 2019 through April 2020, Seonkyoung has settled into a successful posting strategy, leading to steady growth — a roughly 50% revenue spike per month for 2020 vs. 2019.
