Facebook Live has been fully available worldwide for almost 12 months, yet it seems many business are still ‘on the fence’ in terms of its usefulness.
Some find technology a bit challenging e.g using your mobile or iPad the correct way, responding to questions, keeping up with the feed etc and for others, I expect it is either a confidence issue, or they are just not sure that their customers are actually on Facebook.
So how can using Facebook Live actually boost your business engagement?
Businesses are finding it harder and harder to reach people organically on Facebook, after all it is a business too and its goal is to make a profit through business advertising. That said, the following extract, taken from a Facebook newsroom article shows that using Facebook Live could help boost your reach in people’s news feed.
“we are making a small update to News Feed so that Facebook Live videos are more likely to appear higher in News Feed when those videos are actually live, compared to after they are no longer live. People spend more than 3x more time watching a Facebook Live video on average compared to a video that’s no longer live.”
There are numerous ways businesses can use Facebook Live. Only last week (23rd January) American businessman Tony Robbins ran a 2 1/4 hour live broadcast featuring a panel discussion with the business leaders behind today’s fastest growing companies. To date, this broadcast (including replays) has been viewed over 767,000 times.
Here are a few more suggestions for live broadcasts your business could do:
- FAQs / Question & Answer Session
- Product Demonstrations
- Customer Testimonials
- Guest Speakers
- Behind The Scenes
- Respond To Blog Post Questions
- Event Promotion
- Weekly Tip / Advice
And using the technology just got a whole lot easier…
I recently stumbled across an *online software tool which not only lets you ‘Go Live’ via your PC screen, but also lets you highlight questions / responses on screen AND host a split screen ‘interview’ style live broadcast, with the 2 individuals in different locations! You can also choose to show your names on the screen.
Until now, interview style broadcasts have been handled by people getting together in the same room, setting up your phone / tablet on a tri-pod (or have a some hold it) so you can fit everyone in the picture, having a colleague monitor comments via a separate device and pass them on, usually verbally – all very timing consuming and complicated to set up. This tool simplifies it all.
Having run a couple of split screen style interview broadcast one of the key things I noticed was how much more relaxed both my colleague and I were. It is far easier to broadcast when you are actually having a conversation with someone as opposed to just hoping someone comes online that you can interact with. So maybe this will help counteract the ‘confidence’ issue I mentioned earlier.
The ‘contributor / question’ highlighting feature is excellent as it helps you engage more with your audience. For example, if someone makes a comment / asks a question and you are in the process of responding to it, highlighting it on screen keeps everyone else fully aware of the subject matter being discussed, so you don’t have to repeat yourself.
Another feature of the software is the ability to ‘share your screen’ which opens up presentation style broadcasts – great for people who do not want to have their face on show the whole time.
Whilst Facebook announced the ‘broadcast with a friend update’ back in June 2016 at VidCon, as is typical with these updates (as they are released to verified pages first, followed by US users etc) to my knowledge, this feature has not yet been fully rolled out in the UK. So it is great that this online software tool bridges the gap AND lets you use your PC.
There was another feature announcement at VidCon I am looking forward to reaching the UK, the introduction of ‘Waiting rooms / pre-scheduled broadcasts’. This will allow you to build your audience BEFORE you go Live, taking away that initial awkward period when you are waiting for people to join your session.
So what are you waiting for? It’s time to embrace this technology and get your business LIVE on Facebook.
[bctt tweet=”Boost your organic reach using Facebook Live for product demos, Q&As, interviews and more” username=”yellbusiness”]
