Facebook Live – What’s All The Fuss About?

Facebook Live is all of 2 weeks old in Ireland, and I’m really excited about the possibilities it brings. Mainly because it brings video right into the realm of those who may not have had the budget for it. And also because Facebook are themselves busy promoting it, there’s an opportunity to get in newsfeeds without having to pay for it – for a limited time only!!

1. Find out do you have it

Initially Facebook Live was rolled out to celebrities and the like, now you can find out if you’ve got it by simply going to post on the mobile Facebook app. If you see the little red icon, when you click it, he button, you are prompted to describe your live video. Give a little thought to this – as with everything else on the web (Google side) the title is ultra important. It’s the thing that’s going to compel people to click.

Next choose your audience – the big wide public, or your friends.

Then press the “go live” button and away you go!!

What happens next? Well your video appears in fan’s news streams as autoplaying video content. Again the title of your video is important – stick to 10 words max. What doesn’t happen (as I had thought) is that your fans get a notification which is far more powerful, because what human can resist the urge to click the red notice to see who’s liked, commented, or shared your stuff?

2. How do you do it well?

Know that what you see on the screen is what your audience gets. It’s square. Comments will appear on the screen (like in Periscope) and the tricky bit is acknowledging them before they disappear, whilst keeping your train of thought!

3. How do you promote it?

The one downside of Facebook Live is that you can’t schedule in advance the way you can with Blab for example. But you can promote it in the regular way using an image and ads, ask people to put a time in their diaries to come and watch.

Once the video is live, it remains in your feed for 30 days and you can use the link in scheduled posts thereafter, re-use the content at different days and times.

And you can of course promote using Facebook ads in the usual way.

Fact: Facebook loves video!

Facebook is seriously pushing this product. I read how it has paid publishing giants Huffington Post, New York Times, etc. to use it.

The algorithm is so skewed towards video it’s unreal. And I’m not talking YouTube links here now you know. Facebook and Google don’t play well together, so Facebook leaves YouTube out of its game whenever it can.

On ads, on a very tricky market, I’m getting cost per views of 1-2 cent for a short video, and the same targeting (location, demographic etc) but different objective (website click) is costing in excess of €2!

I’ve found myself spouting to clients and prospects about how they can use Facebook Live and be among the first to try it because audiences can be a little forgiving, so production values don’t have to be BBC standard, especially in these early days at the beginning….

So what’s to stop you getting on board and giving it a whirl?

 

Source: smallbusinesscan.com