If your business hasn't tried live streaming yet, now's the time.
With Facebook Live — Facebook's live-streaming tool to rival Periscope and Snapchat — it's easier than ever for your business to test out the waters of this new social media option.
Facebook Live recently launched a ton of new updates, making the new tool much more enticing to your brand. Read on to learn why live streaming is worth testing and how to launch a Facebook Live video.
Live streaming is here to stay
Live-streaming video is one of the biggest, latest innovations in the social sphere. It's a whole new way to interact with your audience.
Your audience already loves videos and pictures as well as anything real-time. Live streaming is the best of both worlds — interactive, live videos. As with most trends, live streaming will take time to pick up steam.
But, live-streaming statistics show while this trend is still new, it's already incredibly popular.
- 10 million registered Periscope users: Just four months after launching, Periscope, the most popular live-streaming app, had more than 10 million registered users. To put that in perspective, it took Snapchat — the fastest growing social network — a full year to gain 10 million users.
- 40 years of watched video each day: About 2 million active daily users stream a staggering 350,000 hours of video per day.
- 100 million total broadcasts: The biggest problem with live streaming is that the majority of users like to watch, 97 percent. Yet only 3 percent of live-streaming users actually upload video.
- 15 percent of top brands are live-streaming: The brands with the largest amount of Twitter followers see the potential of live streaming. Your brand should as well.
Facebook Live allows users and brands to stream live video to their followers. (Image: Facebook)
How to use Facebook Live on brand pages
Brands and companies — no matter the size — who are one of the first on a new social platform reap the biggest benefits. You get to try a new marketing tactic that your audience is interested in. Plus, there's much less competition.
If your brand hasn't been on Periscope yet, no worries. Facebook is the place for you to test the live-streaming waters.
Video posts on Facebook already reach the most viewers on brand pages, found a 2015 Socialbakers study. And live streaming performs even better than regular videos. Facebook found people watch live videos three times longer than static videos.
So, go ahead. Try Facebook Live. Before you start recording, read these tips for a first successful live-stream:
- Go to your brand page. Click update status.
- Select the new live-stream option.
- Enter an enticing, descriptive title and summary of your live stream that includes SEO-driven keywords. Remember, this is what your fans will see in their post notifications. Plus, it's also how users can discover your live stream in the Discovery tab.
- Select "public" for the audience. To test, select "just me" to make sure you have high-quality audio and video. Even better, do a full run-through of your live stream before sharing it with the public.
- Hit "go live."
- Finally, edit your video on your wall. You can edit the category, tweak the title, choose a CTA, upload a URL, describe the page and select a thumbnail.
Facebook Live tracks various metrics for you to understand how your video performed. (Image: Facebook)
