Oh how I love a title with alliteration and this one won’t disappoint.
I’ve been telling everyone to get busy with Facebook Live all year:
The single biggest giveaway on Facebook in a long time!
And naturally, I practised what I preached. Let’s take a look at how things have improved …
From this (February 2017)
To this (Last Friday, December 2017)
First let’s look at the headline stats
Overall, I’m getting more people to watch and stay on for longer, with more engagement to boot!
Engagement is up (from 5 to 34)
And that is because I’m talking directly to the audience in the most recent one. I’m asking for likes and comments throughout, and on occasion I invite viewers to follow the page.
Normally we’d get bigger numbers than this because we run the Facebook Live, then put a small bit of ad spend on it to drive the message out to a wider (cold) audience than just our Page.
I didn’t do that on Friday’s one because I wanted to compare like with like. In February we weren’t boosting or promoting the live – probably because I felt they weren’t good enough.
I’m More Interested In Views
And that’s because I use Facebook Lives at the top of the funnel; as a way to get my content out to a broad audience. If they watch a % of it, people reveal an interest in my stuff. Then they are eligible to be targeted at mid funnel with deeper content.
So what changed in 2017?
My Top 5 Tips For Facebook Live (having lived and learned)
- I work with an amazingly, calm, knowledgable and organised right hand man (Joe) who does the set up of our Lives. He is a God send because I can focus on what I’m going to say without worrying about lighting and camera angles. If you are starting off doing Facebook Live, and you want to do a B2B style professional presentation (as opposed to a fun hand=held mobile performance) then you too need a Joe!
- We spend a good 30 – 40 minutes setting up and you should too. See how much better the second one looks because we pay careful consideration to the background, the light, and the positioning of me on screen?
- My performance has changed dramatically! When I reviewed February, my over-riding thought was “depressed in Dublin”. I wasn’t feeling that way at the time, but boy did I come across that way due to low energy, dark lighting, lack of smiles and dodgy background.
Around April, I had the pleasure of working with Lottie Hearn who gave me some great pointers on how to stand, how to elevate my voice, showing the camera lurve (yes! that’s a thing) and generally being much more of a high energy performer.
4. Engage the audience from the start. Be aware that they are there, and include them as you go. Don’t be self conscious. As you can see, in the most recent Facebook Live, I wasn’t even aware that it had started, but that didn’t put me off once I discovered that. (And no, that wasn’t staged!)
5. Every time you do a live, do one little thing better. That has been our mantra throughout 2017, and will continue for 2018. This means you can give yourself a break and not be too harsh. If you know that you prepared your thoughts better this time, great. Next time you might focus on being more engaging with your audience. After that, you could focus on getting lighting right. And so on.
Facebook Live is a great gateway drug into the world of video!
You don’t need a big fancy studio. Nor do you require a big budget. The minimum you require is your mobile phone, an idea, and a smile!
We’ve got some great posts on how to get started with livestreaming for business:
The Ultimate Guide for live streaming for business
How to do Facebook Live using OBS (this is how we did last Friday’s).
