Top 10 Facebook Live ideas for your business (examples included)
Launched only 2 years ago, Facebook Live is becoming an increasingly popular marketing tool. If you haven’t tried Facebook Live for your brand yet, this article is here to get you inspired and prompt to finally start broadcasting. In this post, I gathered top 10 ideas of how brands of all shapes and sizes can use Facebook Live for their business. To make this post more illustrative, I added examples of how big brands have successfully used these tactics within their marketing strategies.
Without further ado, let’s move on to these ideas.
1. Run a contest
Contests are an old marketing tactic that still works and probably will always work. With the rise of social media, contests became a go-to strategy for social media marketing. If you regularly run contests on Facebook, try Live contests. The main advantage of the real-time format is that the deal is time-limited by the length of your video so that you can increase your involvement rate. Ask your followers to comment to have a chance to get some prize. Use a randomizer software to choose the winner. Or you can ask them to answer a question and award the one whose comment you like the most.
The Downtown radio went live from an amusement park and all people who joined and commented on the live stream had a chance to win a family ticket to this park. The special thing about this live stream is that the host announced the new winner every 30 seconds, so there was a good chance of winning.
2. Real-time game
This is another great way to entertain and engage your followers. Go live with interactive games and ask your followers to participate by answering brand-related questions or searching for some words hidden. The simplest way to do it is to use a special tool that provides ready-to-use game templates. One of them is LiveReacting, it offers lots of templates like a trivia game, word search quiz, and 4 pics one word game.
Combine game and contest formats for the maximum benefit. This combination is an easy and effective way to entertain your followers and get lots of comments. Here is a great example of how Jurassic Quest went live with a trivia game offering their followers to test their Dinosaur knowledge. 4 winners got free family pack tickets to the dinosaur event.
3. Q&A sessions
A great way to use Facebook Live to interact with your audience is a live Q&A session. You can make a post in advance asking your followers to comment with the questions they are interested in. So that you’ll be able to get prepared and answer these questions when going Live.
Another scenario is when you answer the questions your followers ask you in the real time. The crucial point here is to promote your upcoming live stream well as if you don’t have enough people watching and commenting it, there won’t be any sense in this video. If you are not sure that you’ll have enough questions to answer during your stream, you can combine these two strategies and make a post in several days before the stream and ask people to share the questions they already have. So in case you face a gap during your Q&A session, you’ll be able to answer the questions from the list.
Within the Spider Man Homecoming campaign, the official film’s Facebook page invited Tom Holland who starred in the movie to answer the questions of the fans.
Another great example of this strategy is a beauty brand Sephora that hosted a live Q&A session answering the questions from their followers.
4. Webinars, DIYs or any other educational material
Teach your followers to do something new and interesting. If you are running a marketing agency, you can stream a webinar on some best email marketing strategies. Or if you are managing a cooking page, go live with a regular show sharing different recipes. As you see, this format will work for almost any business, the main task here is to figure out how to adjust it to yours. If you want to trigger more comments for the video, you can ask your viewers to share the questions and answer them at the end of the video. Or ask them to write the ideas for the next video streams in comments, therefore, you’ll both increase video engagement and get some ideas for your content plan.
Here’s a great example of this format by Wilton Cake Decorating, they went live showing how to make a Halloween Cat Cake for the upcoming Halloween.
5. Behind the scenes
Another way to use Facebook Live video is taking your followers to the place they have no chance to get. Go live showing the behind the scenes of your business. Conduct a live tour of your office, introduce your team, make your followers a part of your working routine. Or you can show the behind-the-scenes details of some event; people like exclusive content!
Here’s a great example of how MyProtein team were live celebrating the birthday of their brand. They gave a tour to their office and hosted a quick interview with the team members. Moreover, they even included a prize draw into this video by asking their followers to comment.
6. Events
If you are hosting some offline event, you can stream it via Facebook Live to engage people who don’t have a chance to participate. This is a great way to take your followers all over the world to take part in all events you organize. Coca Cola successfully used this tactic and broadcasted live from its Christmas Truck Tour in London, so that their followers all around the United Kingdom had a chance to join this event via Facebook Live.
Another great example is a live stream by VANS. They were live from the Vans Skatepark in Canada for the 2018 Vans Pool Party.
7. Experiment
People love experiments and there’s no way better to engage and entertain audience than broadcasting experiments in the real time. When it’s a pre-recorded video, a user can simply skip to the end and see the results; while running experiments in the real time makes your audience a part of your experiment. You can make a pause in your experiment and interact with the viewers by asking them to comment on what they think will happen next, and then check the theories. Create your own MythBusters online show and skyrocket your page’s engagement.
BuzzFeedFood broadcasted a live experiment trying to make a wheel from Pringles chips. This video got more than 2,4 million views and was comment more than 20 thousand times!
8. Show how to use your product
It’s always a good idea to show your page’s followers a new way to use your product. Applying this tactic you can both inspire those who already use it to do it in a new way as well as draw those who are on the consideration stage of the funnel.
If you’re a makeup brand, show how to do a makeup using your best sellers. Or if you are a SaaS service, stream a live webinar to show the best practices of using your service to meet some goal. You can even create a regular show and invite special guests to take part in it.
MAC went live with a master class of how to use its cosmetics to make a bridal makeup.
Or here’s another great case, Barilla invited a celebrity chef David Rocco to share a great Barilla pasta recipe.
9. Boost your sales by going live with your special deals
Facebook Live may also serve as a place to promote your special deals. There are different formats you can use according to your needs. You can invite a host and demonstrate your deal products covering their benefits. Or you can do without a host and broadcast a digest of best deals showing them one-by-one. Another way is to simply go live with a countdown clock with a link to a landing page where all deal products are listed.
Ebay used the third tactic and ran a great live campaign offering to get particular items with a great discount within one hour.
Or here is another example by Booking, they streamed a pre-recorded video with all their hot deals so that users can see what’s available and visit the website for details if they like any deal.
10. Promote your goods in a not obvious way
Like a previous variant, this one is all about sales. But if the previous strategy considers direct sales within a short time, this one is about indirect sales. One of the brightest examples of using this tactic is Ikea’s Christmas show. The idea of the show was to see whether it’s possible to do 100 holiday tips in 100 minutes. During the show, actors demonstrated lots of Ikea holiday goods, but it wasn’t a selling video, hosts didn’t mention the prices of goods. It looked like a common holiday show, but with the usage of Ikea products.
And what Facebook Live strategies have you already tried? What are your favorite ones used by brands? Share your thoughts in comments!
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