10 Things to Consider When Going Live On Facebook
Let’s get right down to it…Over the past year, the DOYO Live platform has delivered 140+ videos, primarily on Facebook Live. This is of course by design. We have 2-formats of our live show.
The DOYO Live Daily consists typically of myself, guest contributors that are made up of breakout session leaders, committee members, sponsors and people that I personally know in marketing that are super talented and have something to say.
The #DOYOLiveDaily is a 5-minute tips and tricks on marketing strategy. Something like this blog, topics that include 5 ways to grow your Instagram audience. You get the point.
The second format of the show is The DOYO Live Marketing Show. This is the long format, generally 30–45-minutes.
We typically rotate the show around to coffee shops, restaurants, bars, you name it. There’s usually a guest, that I will interview.
We discuss their business, not bounded by time. They ask questions, we talk marketing, give and get advice. It’s on every Friday at 11AM on Facebook Live.
So in the course of the 140+ live videos, we saw massive gains across the board. While it didn’t happen overnight. We did see followers to our page double, 180K video views in a calendar year. That’s right 180,000.
Increase in traffic to our website, time spent on site and a 50% increase in attendance at DOYO Live in 2017.
We recently opened up The DOYO Live Show to our email list, subscribe today to get your invite to be on the show. In the meanwhile. In the video today and below, I share 10-things to consider when you go live on Facebook. Enjoy and please share these tips with a friend.
10 Things to Consider When Going Live on Facebook
Get a Strong Wi-Fi Connection
Wi-Fi — For whatever reason the connection to Facebook, when going live is somewhat spotty.
I’ve practically placed the Wi-Fi at my house directly under my chair.
Maybe a conversation with my ISP is in order (I digress). But if you don’t have a solid connection your feed will basically disconnect and tell you to move to a better Wi-Fi signal.
It will re-connect, give it a moment. But you run the risk of all those that are on the line dropping off. Therefore a strong internet connection is a must.
Why Do You Want to Go Live On Facebook?
This should probably be #1, even before you are looking for a solid Wi-Fi connection. However…Some people just might want to go live for engagement on their own personal profile.
Why do you want to go live? Is this a viable marketing opportunity for your business. Once you answer the why, you will get a more concise indication if this if for you.
Let People Know You Are Going Live — Schedule In Advance
Facebook video will allow you to schedule your video in advance. This will notify all your followers that you are planning to go live at a specific time. Giving you a chance to build your audience.
You can even get proactive and share this on other pages, in groups, on your timeline and of course in messenger.
Scheduling your live is actually pretty easy. This can all be managed from your Facebook Page. Later this month I’m going to do a webinar on this very topic, you should join us.
During that 45-minute session, I will actually walk you through a step-by-step guide of how you schedule in advance.
Subscribe to our email list to get your invite today to reserve your spot on The DOYO Live Marketing Webinar Series:
How to Use Facebook Live to Grow Your Business! — RESERVE YOUR SPOT SUBSCRIBE TODAY!
Engagement — Give Shout Outs
When people join your feed, welcome and acknowledge they are watching your show. Interact and engage. In your pre-invite, you can say, join me and I’ll give shout-outs to your business.
It’s just another layer of live interactive on social media that can provide additional engagement, people want to be a part of the show, not just a passive watcher.
Be sure to name drop as they drop by.
Announce What You Are Going to Talk About
It’s a good best practice that you announce when you come on what you are going to talk about.
This will give your audience an idea if they want to stick around. Once you’ve done that.
You can now introduce yourself and the name of the show.
But tell people what you are going to talk about first.
Creative
There’s no shortage of creativity in the content, delivery of the content and why…You can do interview style, solo, product reviews, announcements, weekly shows, guests, channel partners, public relations…
It’s literally all in play. You are your own TV station. I think the most important factor about the creative is like any social media strategy.
Be real and authentic.
Be transparent.
Be willing to bring value by providing valuable information on your area of subject matter expertise. Or with information. Bring value to your guests, your businesses on location and most importantly your audience.
Editorial Calendar
Develop an editorial calendar. Which means I map out the days of the week I am planning to go live.
The subject matter I plan to cover. Which I’ll typically reverse engineer topics that are FAQ’s in marketing.
I do leave it open for me to be spontaneous.
I also am very aware of things that are upcoming that I’d like to promote, like the webinar and/or call for speakers.
So I can work that natively into the conversation.
I use an Excel Spreadsheet and also my calendar.
There are third party tools you can download. There are templates on the web, we should probably just share ours.
If you’d like it…email me at dennis@doyolive.com — Put into the subject title: DOYO Live Editorial Calendar.
I will send you what I use.
Equipment
The DOYO Live set up is really overly simple. It’s my iPhone and my computer. I had a tripod, my dog literally ate it.
That’s not a joke.
I would consider investing in a tripod, light, and mic. Those can all be purchased for under $100 in one package and/or you can get the best of the best.
This is something I’m going to re-ante upon as we really get going over the next month into our content strategy.
It’s not a requirement but it will enhance the experience.
Go Live for Longer Than 2-minutes
The tendency for most is to go live on Facebook for a very short time, sub 2-minutes. Get in and get out. You will find the first time you go live that it’s more difficult than you think.
Don’t worry and don’t stop. We all have to start someplace.
The problem with going live for a short amount of time is that by the time you are out your audience is just getting notified that you are live.
Take your time hang out for a few, longer than 2-minutes and let the audience build.
2 to 5-minutes on a short format. I like to mix that with our long format show of 30–45-minutes.
Re-Purpose Content
Now that you went live you’ve got content. Don’t just let that content live on Facebook, set it free. First, you will want to hit the edit button on the video.
Revise the tags, title, and the thumbnail. You can even revise the heading to say, hey here’s the show notes.
Also, you can embed the video into your blog, just like we’ve done here. You can transcribe your spoken word into a blog, again we are own best example.
Download the video and upload onto YouTube.
Upload that same video now into LinkedIn (mobile device only). So ya, there’s a hack workaround but you will this to be a really great way to get a lot of mileage out of your content.
You also may not want to re-purpose all your content, in fact, you shouldn’t. While you can provide some pretty quick editing.
See how well it will perform on Facebook and then use that content to drive your behavior in re-purposing elsewhere.
Do You Want to Be Out There?
Consider this…Do you want to put yourself out there for public consumption?
It comes with the price of admission. People are going to view, like, share, and comment on your video.
They will form an opinion. Sometimes good and bad.
People are going to see your videos.
Bonus Tip — Camera Angle — Horizontal vs. Vertical
So there’s a lot of controversy in the marketing world as to whether or not you should hold the camera horizontal or vertical.
The reason being is that there’s more real estate to be used with horizontal. I have found when you are doing interviews you will need to be in horizontal.
That said vertical tends to deliver a better mobile experience.
Being that the majority of the world is on mobile while digesting Facebook content, you’ve got a better opportunity to engage with them.
I would say do both, evaluate your viewership. Look at your Google Analytics, along with Facebook.
How are your viewers engaging with your content? Desktop vs. mobile.
Desktop vs. mobile.
From there you can make some decisions how you want to deliver the content.
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We also provide in-person workshops for businesses and individuals on digital marketing, speaking engagements and of course, our annual conference, in which over 500 people have attended in the past 2-years. If you have any interest in being a breakout session leader at DOYO Live, we highly encourage you to submit!
