Are you wondering how you can improve your social media presence to better engage with your customers?
Well, look no further. Live streaming to Facebook is just what you need. 
It all started back In 2015. With the social media boom, a lot of apps like Snapchat started launching new interactive features. One of the features that got super popular was live video streaming. 
Every social media app integrated the live streaming feature. This gave brands and businesses the opportunity to hop on live streams and engage with their fans. And we’re not just talking about small businesses here. Even giants like Nestle started live streaming. 
Then along came Facebook. Although a bit late to the party, Initially, it only allowed only Facebook users to use the live video streaming feature. Brands and businesses weren’t that lucky.
All that has changed since then. 
Fast forward to now, it has become literally the biggest live video streaming platform out there. Just in 2018, the number of Facebook Live broadcasts reached 3.5 billion.
With such a wide reach, you may be wondering how you can use Facebook Live for your own business. 
While Facebook Live allows businesses to engage with their audiences in real-time, you may be overwhelmed with questions like:

  • How will I use Facebook Live for my business?
  • Is Facebook Live a good marketing tactic for my business?
  • How will I know if I’m using Facebook Live the right way?  

All these questions are normal. We understand that getting started with Facebook Live can be overwhelming for some. Keeping that in mind, we have made an in-depth guide for you. We’ll tell you exactly how you can start using Facebook Live to benefit your business.
As an added bonus, we’ll also share with you best practices when streaming live, tell you all the common mistakes that you should avoid, and share examples as well. 
So without any further ado, let’s get started. 

How To Effectively Use Facebook Live Videos For Your Business

When starting with Facebook Live for the first time, it is easy to get distracted. You may be enticed to try out new things while losing focus on practices that can help drive quick results.
To help you steer clear of all the distractions, we have listed down some of the key factors that you should keep in mind in order to effectively market your business on Facebook Live.

  • Treat Facebook Live videos as engaging content
  • Use Facebook live to conduct quick Q&A sessions
  • Take your audience behind the scenes
  • Talk about trending topics to engage with your audience
  • Host a live talk show with an influencer
  • Run a Facebook Live poll to gain insights

While the pointers mentioned above are pretty self-explanatory, let’s go over each of them in detail to really understand how you can leverage them in your marketing strategy.

Treat Facebook Live videos as engaging content

So what do we mean by using Facebook Live video as engaging content? 
Well, just like blog posts, guides, or video tutorials, you can use Facebook Live videos as part of your content marketing strategy.
It’s not always about marketing your product. It is also important to build credibility. One way to do that is by helping your community. If you provide value to your audience for free, people will stick around. People will happily join your Live video streams and hear what you have to say.
For example, if you love talking about NFT, you can teach people about it. You can hop on to live stream and teach people how to purchase and trade NFTs.
If you don’t wanna do the hard work, you can just take one of your old content pieces that performed well on your website and convert it into a video which you then live stream on Facebook. 
The possibilities are truly endless. 
It is important that whatever you share on Facebook Live is relevant to your business. This will allow you to subtly market your product and services.

Use Facebook live to conduct quick Q&A sessions

Want direct interaction with your audience? Well, why not host a live Q&A session with your audience. 
If you want your audience to learn more about your business, there is no better way to hop on a live stream and take questions from your audience in real-time.
When running a Q&A session, it is important to get personal. It is important to connect with your audience. You can really provide a personalized experience if you call your audience on your live stream by their names.
Also, don’t be afraid to ask questions yourself. People love it when businesses talk directly to their audience to understand their point of view. It is an awesome strategy to get user feedback and insights.

Take your audience behind the scenes

Who doesn’t love exclusive access? Anyone would be ecstatic if they got a chance to go backstage and meet their favorite artist.
People love exclusivity and that’s a fact. Using Facebook Live, it is a great idea to show your audience what goes behind the scenes. 
Say you run a food business. You can take your audience with you to your kitchen and show how you prepare food. 
You can introduce your audience to the people who work for you, like your employees. It gives you the perfect opportunity to showcase your work and what your business stands for.

Talk about trending topics to engage with your audience

Riding the trend wave will always help you gain more followers. If you talk about whatever that’s trending, people would want to hear what you have to say simply because there is hype around it.
Take for example NFT. You’ll hear influencers talk about it all the time. Even when they’re not experts related to the topic, you’ll still see them talk about it. They’ll often mould the information to make it more relatable to their business.
This strategy is great when you want to engage with your audience.  
Speaking of molding the information, you can take whatever that is trending and incorporate it in your Live video session. Keep in mind that you must make it relatable to your own business. For example, if you own a digital marketing agency, you can talk about how people can market, buy and sell NFTs. 
Makes sense, right?
Cool! Let’s move on…

Host a live talk show with an influencer

Wanna drive community engagement? Well, why not host a talk show through Facebook Live. You can collaborate with a relevant influencer and ask them to appear on your talk show.
You must make sure whoever you bring on board has expert knowledge about whatever topic you will discuss on your Live stream.
To keep your audience really engaged, you can announce what the next Live stream will be about and who is going to show up to create hype. 
You can host Live talk shows each week with a new topic. If you manage to consistently host Live talk shows and make engaging content, you’ll be able to build a strong fan following in no time.

Run a Facebook Live poll to gain audience insights

What better way to gain audience insights than running live polls. So how do you go about running a live poll?
Well, one easy way to run a poll is on your own website. This strategy will also help drive traffic to your website. Your live stream audience will visit your website and fill up the poll there. You can then announce the results on your Live stream.
Another option is to run Facebook’s own live poll. Facebook allows you to create polls with two to four answer choices. You can run as many polls as you like in a single broadcast.
You should run simple polls to drive maximum engagement. You should ask simple love it or hate it questions to see what your audience likes or hates.
For example, if you own a clothing business, you can ask your audience if they’d like to see a limited edition of some shoe or jacket. A simple yes or no poll will allow you to know what your customers want. 
The tone of your Live video should be casual. You’ll be commentating on everything to sustain user engagement. 
One last thing that we should tell is to comply with Facebook Live Policies to avoid getting banned. 
And that is it. This is how you can use Facebook Live to market your business. You should now be informed and comfortable enough to start your own Live streaming session to drive sales and audience engagement.
Do you still have cold feet? 
Well, don’t worry. We won’t leave you hanging. Why don’t we go through some of the best practices for Facebook Live to really make it worthwhile for your business.
 Sounds good? 
Let’s get started…

Best Practices For Using Facebook Live Effectively

Just to give you that extra push and persuade you to go give Facebook Live a try, we’ve listed some best practices that you should follow when going live on Facebook.

Things to keep in mind before going live

1. When going live, you’d want as many people to join as possible. So, instead of going live unannounced, it is smart to announce it beforehand. Letting people know when you’ll go live will build up anticipation. The best thing is, you can make the announcement right on Facebook. No extra effort is needed. Simply update the status on your Facebook page.
2. Once you’ve made the announcement, before going live, test your internet connection. You can afford interruptions. Running a quick speed test can prove helpful. If your internet connection is not stable, Facebook will not allow you to go Live. In fact, the button to go live will gray out.
3. Next up, make sure the location where you’re shooting your live video is appropriate. Make sure there is good lighting and not a lot of background noise. Make sure your camera equipment is stable and pointed at you or the product that you will showcase. 
4. Lastly, make sure you give your Live stream a catchy name and description. It should be concise, yet it should let the viewer know what it’s about and why they should be interested.

Things to keep in mind when you actually go live

So you’ve finally gone live. What do you do next? 
1. Well, start with an introduction. Introduce yourself. Talk about what you’re going to cover in the live stream. Tell your audience that you’re open to Q&A. This is really important to host an engaging live stream. You’d want people to ask questions, give you feedback and engage with you. 
2. As we mentioned earlier, you must go personal with your audience. Don’t be shy to give people shout-outs. Call their names to address them directly. Appreciate their feedback. Don’t skip comments. In case you do miss any, you can always go back to your live stream even after it has ended and get back to any unanswered comments. 
3. Speaking of comments. It is very important to keep answering questions during the live stream. Use two screens instead of one to make sure you don’t miss any. For live streams to be engaging, you must encourage your audience to interact. Keep the conversation going. Don’t let things die down.

Things to keep in mind when ending your live stream

1. Before you end your awesome Live stream, make sure you get your audience to subscribe to your Live stream. If you plan on hosting a series of live events, this can be a great opportunity to notify the people who previously subscribed when you go live the next time.
2. Ask your audience to visit your website or follow you on other social media platforms to stay in touch. Don’t let your audience go easily. 
3. Lastly, thank your audience for joining your live stream. Also, let them know when your next live stream will take place and what it’s going to be about. 
What about now? 
Are you ready to take the leap?
Well, how about we show you how to go Live on Facebook as an added bonus.
Sounds cool? Let’s get started…

How To Go Live On Facebook?

To go live on Facebook, you can use your mobile device or your computer. Here’s how you can get started:

1. Access Facebook’s camera

To access Facebook Live’s camera, on your smartphone or tablet, look for the Live icon in the top left-hand corner of the Facebook app. The process is the same for laptops and desktops. 

2. Allow Facebook to access your camera & microphone

When you click on the Live Video option, you will be asked to give Facebook your microphone and camera access. Once you give Facebook permission to access your camera and microphone, you’re all set to start filming.

3. Make sure to only target relevant audience

  • Before going live, do some fine-tuning. Make sure you make your stream public so that everyone can watch your live stream instead of just your friends. 
  • Decide whether you want to make your live stream available as a story or post once your live stream ends.
  • Make sure you provide a description to your live stream to let people know what it’s about. Your description should be enticing but short. Use the “Tap to add a description” option to do this.
  • If you want your stream to reach specific brands or influencers, you should use the “Tap to add a description” option. Say if you’re talking about Gucci, you’d want to add their hashtag. Using tags makes it easier for people to find your live streams.
  • Focus on visuals. Use cool graphics. An appealing thumbnail image will have a high CTR (clickthrough rate). You must entice visitors to click on your live stream. Clickbait always works – use it in moderation.

4. Choose an appropriate location

Find a decent place to shoot your live video. Adjust the camera properly. Make sure you’re in the frame. Make sure there’s no background noise. Position your phone on a tripod to prevent jerks when you tap on the screen to switch between the front and back cameras.

5. Go live and keep an eye on the comments

To begin, click or tap on the “Start Live Video” option. Now you’ll see a countdown to let you know that you’re about to go live. Once the countdown ends, you’ll be live.
Once live, make sure to keep an eye on the comments. You’d want to acknowledge all of them. This is important to keep your audience engaged. This will be tough, however, if you go personal and talk to your audience on an individual level, your audience will feel valued.

6. End your live stream

Finally, end your live stream. To do that, simply click or tap on the “Finish” button. A good practice is to also post and save your video. Posting it will allow your audience to watch your live video even after it ends. And saving it will allow you to reuse it as a post some other time.

Final thoughts

So there you have it. Isn’t it easy to go Live on Facebook and promote your business?
Since Facebook has roughly 2.89 billion monthly active users, it is the perfect place to market your business.
But don’t think of Facebook Live as the only medium to market your business. There are plenty of other Facebook marketing ideas that you should explore. 
We will encourage you to go through these Facebook marketing guides as well:

Facebook Live should be considered an essential part of your marketing strategy, but you should also explore other promotion ideas to really take advantage of this social media platform.
And if you think all this is too much to handle on your own, you can always reach out to us. We at Orion offer a professional Facebook Advertising Service. 
Think Orion knows the art and science of Facebook advertising dating back to the days before social media even became a marketing channel.