Tips to Master Facebook Live
As Facebook continues to become a more ‘pay to play’ platform, you’ll need a considerable chunk of your marketing budget saved for promoting your posts on Facebook. Hence, it’s getting harder for businesses, especially, to get their posts seen in Facebook’s news feed. So, what’s the trick to get around Facebook without necessarily paying for it?
Facebook Live!
Facebook has evolved at the forefront of live streaming services with innovative features such as sending out automated notifications to your followers even after the end of your live broadcast. Similarly, Facebook Live video gets priority in the news feed, and people tend to watch live videos 10–20 times longer than on-demand videos. Hence, making live streaming a powerful way to deliver interactive content over Facebook.
Here’s a set of interesting tips for going live on Facebook and best practices for Facebook Live to master the art of live streaming on Facebook.
1. Plan Your Content
Before hitting the Go Live button, you must be well-prepared with the purpose and content of your broadcast. You might want to give people a sneak-peak of your video content with behind-the-scene (BTS) videos, or show off new products, make announcements, conduct interviews, and panel discussions, or try out a live Q&A session. Whatever you wish to do, decide your focus, create a list of topics that you want to cover, and also prepare tentative questions that your audience might ask.
2. Chose/ Set-Up Broadcasting Location
The presenter’s background plays a vital role in grabbing the audience’s attention. You might want to go live sitting at your store, or in your office, or with an event happening in the background. Make sure your location is bright and well-lit and not noisy so that your audience can see and hear you clearly.
3. Promote your Facebook Live Broadcast
Make sure you announce to your audience when you’ll be going live well ahead of time. You can use social media posts or email marketing for this so that your followers can anticipate your broadcast and tune in on time. You must specifically include a graphic image that contains the information regarding your session’s date, time, and topic.
4. Engage with your Audience
As much as it’s important to share relevant content, it is equally important to interact with them. Make sure you make them feel a part of your broadcast. Facebook Live allows you to monitor the number of people who’re watching your stream, but it doesn’t show their names. So, you must encourage them to speak to you, and you must respond to them in real-time. Once they start commenting, you’ll see their names, so greet people by the names to personalize your message. You might want to do some icebreaker questions like, “What do you think are we going to talk about today?”
5. Keep Reintroducing Yourself
Take a minute or two to introduce yourself and what’s the video about at the start of the live broadcast. But bear in mind that there might only be a handful of people watching when you first start your stream. There’ll be more joining your broadcast every few minutes as they find your video on their News Feeds. So make sure you reintroduce yourself for a second, third, and even fourth time every few minutes to catch people up.
6. Don’t Worry About Mistakes
Since it’s live, you need not worry about mistakes or stutters. Let’s face it; we’re all humans, and technologies are always prone to glitches and difficulties. Your equipment might malfunction, you might lose your train of thought, or somebody might photobomb your stream. But don’t worry, spontaneity works wonders for live streaming. Such things keep your broadcast human and natural. Every time you make a mistake on Facebook Live, laugh it out or make a joke. Keep your broadcast like a fun conversation.
7. Encourage the Viewers to Like and Share your Video
Be mindful of the Facebook Live algorithm; it ranks posts by how many people like and share them. The more people like and share your live broadcast, the more people will see it in their news feeds. So, encourage your viewers constantly to give you thumbs up and reshare the video to increase your broadcasts’ outreach.
8. Ask Viewers to Subscribe to Facebook Live Notifications
In addition to likes and shares, you must encourage your viewers to subscribe to Facebook Live notifications as well so that they’re notified automatically every time you go live on Facebook. All they have to do is click on the small, downward-facing arrow in the top-right corner of the live video and hit “Turn On Notifications.”
9. Have a Dedicated Team Mate to Respond to Comments
It might be challenging to see and respond to the comments popping up on the screen when you’re the one holding the camera for Facebook Live. Or it might be hard toggling between screens while going live. And if there’s a massive influx of comments, there are chances you might miss out on a few. So, it’s always a good idea to have a teammate logged into your account from a desktop to keep a constant check on the incoming comments. So the presenter himself can focus on creating a great streaming experience instead of taking care of the comments.
10. Add Subtitles
Make sure you don’t miss out on any of the potential audiences. There might be people watching your broadcast without a sound in their office or people who might be tuning in and out to watch your video during work. Subtitling the video is an excellent way for people to catch up on what they might have missed.
You Can Do This!
With so many Facebook Live tips and tricks discussed above, it might appear daunting at first to go live on Facebook. Worry less; these tips will give you an easy head start.
Create your first Facebook Live broadcast today with OneStream Live and grow your audience to new horizons.
OneStream Live is a cloud-based solution to live stream across 40+ Social Media Platforms simultaneously. For queries and feedback, Live Chat with our team or write to us at care@onestream.live
