Live videos are great means for businesses to engage their audiences, and thanks to social media platforms like Facebook, you really don’t need a lot of tools or technical know-how to get in front of your customers.
All you really need is a Facebook profile, a mobile device with a camera, and two clicks later you can be talking directly to your consumers and bringing them something great in real-time. But of course, there is an art to Facebook live video streaming, and if you want to reap the benefits, you need to first think about how to integrate it into your overall marketing strategy.
And the benefits are really worth it. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at Facebook live broadcasts and see what they can truly bring to the table.
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What Is Facebook Streaming and Why Is It Great?
For a while now, marketers have been focusing heavily on video content as a way of connecting with an audience, engaging them, and bringing them closer to a brand in order to increase brand loyalty and boost conversions. If a picture’s worth a thousand words, then video is truly priceless when it comes to social media marketing.
A step up from the regular video content is the video live stream, where a brand, influencer, or even regular person goes live in front of their social media audience. There are many different reasons why this is a good idea, and we’ll discuss all of them later in this article.
As for actual, tangible results, on average, Facebook live broadcasts can:
- Produce as much as 6 times more interactions than regular videos;
- Generate 10 times more comments;
- Encourage users to watch your video longer (3 times longer on average).
So if connecting with your audience is a priority right now for your business, then a Facebook live video may just be the way to go. But as with your other posts and content, just having a live stream every now and then won’t exactly bring you the results you want. Facebook live videos need to be planned and integrated into a wider strategy.
How Does It Work?
Let’s get a bit technical in the following part and see how you can go live in front of your audience. The good news is that Facebook allows you to go live in a matter of seconds by just tapping on a few items.
First, you need to go to your Facebook page where you want the live show to happen, and you’ll need to do this through one of your mobile devices using the Facebook app (the desktop version of Facebook doesn’t have this feature).
Go to the Create a post section, tap it, and you’ll see a lot of different posting options like photos, videos, polls, and live video. After you select that, you’ll need to give Facebook access to your camera and microphone to allow it to fully use the device for the live stream.
And technically that’s it, though you may want to use some other great features this service offers:
- Adding a description
- Tagging people or other pages
- Adding an activity/feeling, etc.
Once you’re live, your followers will start seeing the video on their news feed, and some may even get a notification if they are more engaged with your page. You can even start a live video on your personal profile page, which will be visible to your inner circle of friends if you want to test out the service first.
What Can You Use It for?
If you want to integrate a Facebook live video into your strategy but aren’t exactly sure if it would benefit your business, we’ve got you covered. Let’s look at some of the different opportunities Facebook live broadcasts bring to the table:
1. Connecting with the Audience
Live videos are amazing ways to get closer to your audience and show them the people behind the brand. The whole point of social media is to give a human dimension to brands and businesses and at some point that stops working if you only post links and cute photos.
With a Facebook live video, you can take people behind the scenes of your brand, present the amazing team that makes the magic happen, and even give them a sneak peek into your internal processes. For instance, let’s say you have a small business where you sell handmade leather wallets, personalised for each customer.
You can take people on a journey behind the veil and show them who’s working on the wallets, and let them present themselves and say 2-3 things about them. You can even film them in action, and teach your audience something about the entire process. This could be a 20-minute live video that manages to:
Keep people engaged
Educate them on something
Bring them closer to your brand as they can now associate it with actual people
Create the feeling that buying from you is a good decision because a potential customer knows exactly how you make your product.
2. Live Q&As
Your customers may have a lot of questions about your brand, a campaign, your product, and services, etc. In today’s landscape, people can send their queries directly to their favourite brands on social media, either through private messages or in the comment section.
But, a lot of your consumers may have the same questions, which is why it’s a good idea to organise a live Q&A and put these questions (and your answers) into the spotlight. This is a good strategy because if you tell people you’ll be doing a live Q&A, they will come to it with the explicit intent of either typing their queries in the comments, or actively listen to you to find out more. Even if you don’t have time to answer everything in the video, you can respond to comments later on in writing, as Facebook will save the live video and all its engagements.
And if it works out well, you can consider making it a recurring segment.
3. Make Important Announcements
The Facebook algorithm favours live videos, so it will be more likely delivered in more news feeds than other types of posts. This is actually very good news because it means you can generate more buzz around important announcements, such as launching a new product, adding special services, or whatever else you want to put out there about your brand.
4. Organise Events
Or show events that some members of your audience can’t attend. If you’re putting together a seminar with limited seats available, which may be very likely in the context of a global pandemic and whatnot, you can offer some audience members the option of tuning in via their Facebook app.
This is like killing two birds with one stone. You already have all the preparation done for the live event, so all you need to do is place a camera somewhere and go live, letting the event run its course as needed.
What to Consider Before Going Live
Live broadcasters know the secret to success if having a live stream that seems organic, natural, and maybe even improvised, but the key to creating this lies in the preparation. If you look at a live video, you don’t see all the work that goes into it behind the scenes, so let’s consider some key areas of diving into this form of content.
1. It Starts with Your Internet Connection
Live videos are fully dependent on your internet connection. If your connection keeps dropping, or you don’t have a strong signal, that can really affect the quality of the live stream as well as the user experience.
A dropping internet connection is a recipe for disaster, as your video will keep disconnecting from the audience, while a poor signal may mean your users will look at a screen full of pixels as opposed to what you actually intended to show them. It’s best to do the video somewhere where there’s a strong internet connection to prevent that from happening.
2. Prepare What You’ll Say
Even if you want the video to seem spur of the moment, you should still prepare something beforehand, even if it’s just 2-3 key points you want to address. Not everyone is a natural host and can keep an audience engaged and entertained through their stream of consciousness.
Think of:
- Why are you going live?
- What will you say?
- When is the best time to go live?
- What should you prepare? Maybe you can have a guest on, or do a collaboration with other Facebook pages and combine multiple audiences.
- Are you great at public speaking? If not, prepare a script to read when you go live, and rehearse it before. Now, you shouldn’t be too concerned about stumbles or pronouncing a word wrong. As long as you can follow a good flow for the video, live viewers won’t care much about small hiccups. It’s part of the charm of live videos, to be less polished or robotic as classic ones!
3. Bring Value
Even if you’re doing a live stream to reap benefits for your business, you should think about what your audience would find interesting or valuable. That’s really the key to connecting with your audience. Going on a Facebook live broadcast just for the heck of it won’t necessarily work out in your favour if the content of this video is not considered of value by your customers.
But what does “of value” mean? Well, the context should be:
- Relevant for your audience members
- Educational or informative
- Entertaining
- Engaging
If you manage to create a live video that fits as many of these criteria as possible, then you’ll likely be very pleased with the results. The easiest way to ensure this is to consider your overall content strategy on social media and integrate live streaming into it to bring another dimension to the strategy.
Do You Need to Talk to a Facebook Expert?
Facebook marketing can bring many amazing results, but you need to know how to leverage the platform to actually see it. We can help with that. Australian Internet Advertising is the Facebook expert you need to truly take your marketing strategy to the next level, and engage your audience the right way through live videos and other posts.
Schedule a free 30-minute strategy session with our Facebook Marketing Agency experts now and let’s see what you can do to improve your Facebook marketing efforts to boost results.
