If you’re hosting or promoting an event soon, grab a pencil and listen up. These tips for using Facebook Live Video will help you run a cohesive and entertaining live feed from your event.
Not familiar with Facebook Live? It’s a new tool from Facebook that can share a live feed directly from your phone to all of your followers – instantly! How cool is that?
Today in the digital world, “going live” doesn’t only refer to the live music on stage, but also the ability to go backstage with an artist and share it with thousands or millions of fans with just the touch of a button. The future is HERE, and I, for one, am loving every minute of it!
So what is the best strategy for implementing Facebook Live into your event promotion?
1. Tell Your Fans in Advance When You Will Go Live
This helps you build anticipation and your audience will know when to “tune in” to the live stream. The online team with International Space Station are not only experts in air and space, but they’ve been on the forefront of using Facebook Live to reach out to those who are excited to learn about their field.
They’ve given a one, two punch in promoting their Facebook Live interviews by promoting the date and time before the interview, but have also created sharable graphics with the interview information so that when it is shared by their fans, more people will be exposed to the post from their timelines.
2. Do An Interview…
A Facebook Live interview can be pre-scheduled, as seen above with the International Space Station page, but it can also be impromptu if the Social Media Manager can score an opportunity to sit down and ask a few questions.
If appropriate, have the featured person in the video, whether that’s the musician, artist, entertainer of the event to block off 5-10 minutes to participate in a live interview. If the artist has a PR team or manager that you are familiar with, ask them if you can sit down for a few minutes – if needed, talk about the added exposure to their client that your live feed would accomplish.
Another alternative for a really compelling interview, is to chat with the Founder of the event or spokesperson who can give the audience an exclusive inside scoop that nobody else can.
A familiar face on fans’ timelines will create a surge of views, capitalize on the volume of viewers and entice fans into submitting their own questions by commenting on the video.
3. …And Give Shoutouts!
To create excitement during your interview, give shoutouts to the commenters by name. Or mention them with their questions like:
“Angela White wants to know, what’s your favorite part of touring?”
This establishes a bond and viewers will watch longer hoping that they are given a shoutout.
4. Add a Call-to-Action Button
If your event is several days long, such as a conference, (Comic-Con, I’m looking at you…) add a call to action button to “Learn More” or Buy Tickets directly from the Live video link.
Facebook is still rolling out this feature to profiles, so you may be unable to add a call-to-action button at this moment. If the feature is available to you, you can go in on desktop and edit your video to include a video description, title, and date.
New data shows that people comment 10x more on Facebook Live videos than native videos. Because of the Facebook algorithm, at this time, real-time videos are garnering many more views than their pre-recorded counterparts.
What can I say? Facebook Live and events go together like milk and cookies, eggs and bacon, David and Victoria Beckham. Use these tips to plan a successful Facebook Live campaign!
