If you want to get started with Facebook live, but you’re a little bit overwhelmed by all of the tech, or if the idea of being on camera gives you heart palpitations, I’m here to help. In this guide I’ll show you in easy to follow, step-by-step instructions how to you get up and running and broadcasting easily and in no time. And I’ll also share some Facebook live marketing strategies to help you really leverage Facebook Live to build your business and make sales. Let’s get started.
Getting the gear. In order to use Facebook Live for business, there are some essentials that you need to have. Firstly, you need to have a Facebook page. This is the business offering for Facebook that is different to your Facebook profile. Whilst you can access Facebook live from your personal profile, you want to use the one that’s available from your Facebook page and let me tell you why. When you broadcast from your personal profile, you are unable to see any statistics, such as view time and engagement and reach from the video. You’re also unable to optimize your Facebook Live after you’ve broadcasted it or promot to your audience or an extended audience. There’s lots of post activity that you can do with your Facebook live that just isn’t available from your personal profile, so you want to use Facebook Live from your business page.
Secondly, you need to have a mobile device with a camera and with internet connection. If you’re still rocking a Nokia 5110, it’s not going to work. Facebook Live does work for Apple or Android smartphones or tablets.
On your mobile device you will need to have the Facebook Pages Manager installed, you can access the Facebook Pages Manager if you don’t already have it for free via the app store or Play Store on your device. Search for it and install it and you will need to login using your normal Facebook credentials. Pages Manager would then open up your Facebook Page from which you can begin to start broadcasting.
For Apple or iOS devices you’ll see “publish”, on Androids it will say “post”. So click on the little pencil icon and this will open up Facebook Live on your mobile device, type in a description of what this broadcast is going to be about. You can also add Emojis to add a bit more personality and flare if they’re relevant. And once you’re ready, click “Go Live” and this will begin broadcasting to your Facebook page followers immediately. You can choose to have the camera facing at you or you can turn it around to use the back camera and not face you.
To avoid the shakiness that occurs from holding your mobile device in your hand and recording, I recommend investing in either a tripod for your phone or a selfie stick (don’t be ashamed now) to mount your device to.
If you’re planning on recording outside where you have to deal with a lot of ambient noise, I recommend investing in a lavalier microphone such as the Smart Lav + to attach to your phone and improve the quality of the sound.
And lastly, you need to have a solid internet connection in order to broadcast on Facebook Live, otherwise Facebook live won’t start or it will pause when it loses connection during your broadcast – decreasing the quality of your Livestream.
Having a Facebook Page, the Pages App, a mobile device, an internet connection and the pages app on your mobile device, are the essential items that you need in order to broadcast with Facebook Live. The tripod and the microphone are really optional, but I suggest you get them if you want to enhance the quality of your video.
Now that you know the essential elements that you need in order to start a Facebook live broadcast. Let’s talk about the steps you need to take before the broadcast to help ensure that you have a smooth and successful Livestream.
When you’re Live one of the things that you don’t want to happen is for your phone to ring, this disrupts your broadcast. So to make sure that this doesn’t happen, I recommend that you turn airplane mode on.
If you turn airplane mode on and your Wi-Fi on, this blocks any incoming calls but still allows for you to have an internet connection in order to Livestream. You also want to sign out of any apps on your mobile device which may send a message or an alert such as Skype or WhatsApp, it’s happened to me during a live broadcast, so I’m telling you now so that you don’t make the same mistakes as me.
To then set up your broadcast, you want to click on the Pages Manager. It’s the one with an orange looking flag. Click on the “Pages app”, click on the “publish” icon if you have an Apple device, or the “post” icon if you’re on an Android.
Click on the little icon of a silhouette with two circles around it. This will open up your Facebook Live, so you can begin typing in the description of what your broadcast is going to be about.
Facebook Live won’t begin broadcasting until you click on the “Go Live” button, you can also add some emojis as I mentioned before to draw attention to your post. The text that you type here appears at the top of the Facebook Live broadcast.
Followers on your Facebook page are also notified about your Facebook Live broadcasts and the title of the broadcast comes up in that notification as well.
Just before you broadcast, you want to make sure that the lighting is good. Where possible you want to make sure that the light is in front of you so that it lights up your face nicely.
Once you have your description with some emojis and you have good light you’re ready to go live, press the “Go Live” button. Remember, you’ll start broadcasting immediately. So if you need a little bit more time to get ready, check the light, check yourself out, then definitely do this before you hit the “Go Live” button.
I’m going to hit the go live button on this test page so you can see what happens. When I click on the “Go Live” button there is a countdown and then you can see that I am streaming live.
Whilst I am live, I’ll be able to see viewers as they join below the video stream of myself and any comments that they leave in that section as well.
I’ll also be able to see any thumbs up, hearts or reactions that they send me during the broadcast. For some strange reason Facebook doesn’t allow the broadcasters to comment from the app, but if you want to comment to your viewers during your broadcast you can do this from your desktop.
So you can open up the Livestream from the Pages Manager on your desktop and comment with them there.
If you have any problems with trolls, click on the user who is causing problems, you can either delete there comment or you can block the user as you would block any user from your Facebook Fan Page.
They won’t be able to interact with your Live broadcast after you’ve blocked them.
Also make sure during your live broadcast that you keep your eyes on the camera and you’re not looking at yourself.
So here’s a reminder of what it looks like when I’m looking into the camera and looking at you and engaging with you. Here’s what it looks like when I’m looking at myself, my eyes drop slightly and it’s not as engaging as when I’m looking up into the camera.
A little tip to help you remember where to keep your eyes whilst still broadcasting is to put a little gold star sticker next to the camera so you remember where to look and to remember that you are a star.
In terms of the length of time of your Facebook Live broadcast, I would aim for anywhere between 5 minutes to 15 minutes to 30 minutes. I found that the longer the broadcast, the more time that people have to get on the broadcast live or to engage with the actual video, but it really is about quality over quantity. So take the time that you need to deliver the messages and content that you need to in the broadcast.
Once you’ve finished delivering your message, click on the “finish” button and this will end your broadcast.
If you’re on an Apple device you also get the option to save your broadcast to the device. This is not available at this time for Android for some reason.
Now you know all the gear that you need to have in order to run a Facebook Live, what you need to do before a Facebook Live and how it looks like when you’re actually in the moment.
Let’s now talk about marketing strategies with Facebook Live to make sure that you actually make a profit and don’t just waste your time and efforts.
I found the content that performs better, tends to be content that immediately helps solve your audience’s problems.
So if you are a business coach, it could be tips for getting more clients.
If you are an interior designer, it could be tips for improving someone’s living room.
If you’re a life coach, it could be tips to help people improve their state, anything that typically moves your audience towards their goals or away from their pains.
Structure it in a way that it’s a short digestible piece of information. Setting that up as either three to five tips is a good way to do it.
Always keeping in mind what information would help serve your audience the best.
The second component to your Facebook Live marketing strategy is what are you going to drive your audience to do after that Facebook Live? What is the call to action? And this is where you make money with Facebook Live, because you’re driving your audience to take the next step.
I find that many people get really nervous on their Facebook Lives, they rush through all their content and then they say goodbye and disappear. They forget to tell their audience what the next step would be.
So they’ve gone to all of this effort to create content that is engaging, gets a lot of reach in the news feed, but there’s no flow through effect because they haven’t told people what to do next.
There really are only 3 call to actions I think that help you convert these Facebook Live pieces of content into actual sales.
The first call to action that you can test is specifically for coaches, consultants, designers, anyone who has the step in their sales process where they would talk to a client before they actually engage in the work and this call to action is to offer a free consultation.
So at the end of your Facebook Live after you’ve delivered your content you would invite people to contact you for a free consultation and then on your actual Facebook Live you would go in back to that post and put a link to either your contact form, your booking form or some page where you can capture people’s names and details, so that you can then do a follow-up and have that coaching call, or that strategy session, or that initial consultation that you would normally have in your sales process.
The second call to action to help you turn your viewers into clients and sales, is to get your viewers to sign up to your email list. Once again at the end of the broadcast you would invite your viewers to sign up to your email list. Typically you would offer them something in return for this, either a free report or a free audio file or something of value. And the idea here is to capture their names and emails and nurture a relationship with them over email.
I would encourage you to use this strategy, even if you offer free consultations as the call to action as well, because it’s a softer way of: 1, connecting with someone and 2, getting them to take that action with you.
There’s less commitment on their behalf to just sign up to your email list than it is for them to contact you for a consultation and if they’re on your email list they may not be ready to buy now, but with lots of nurturing and a series of marketing contact points, you can eventually convert them to buy from you.
And the final call to action that I would recommend you consider is asking people to buy directly from you. Now this really varies depending on the relationship that you already have with your audience on Facebook, the products that you sell and which niche you’re in.
I’ve seen that people in the makeup space tend to do quite well. So where it’s relatively smaller purchases tend to do quite well in terms of converting direct sales from their Facebook Lives, but it really really depends.
So test it out and see how it does work for you but I would recommend starting with a free consultation as the call to action or getting people to sign up to your email list first before you try out this one, unless you already have a really big following on Facebook.
And this brings us to the end of the Facebook Live fast start guide. I hope you enjoyed this video; it’s really a great guide to help you get set up and streaming with Facebook Live.
In this guide I showed what do you need to get, how to set up your Facebook Live broadcast, what to do while you’re Live and different marketing strategies to really help you know what you need to know so you can get started.
So now that you’ve been through this fast start guide, what’s next? If you really want to increase your credibility and connect with your audience so they want what you sell then check out my Facebook Live Success program.
In Facebook Live success you will learn how to leverage the power of Facebook Live with a strategic marketing plan, so that you can fast track you know, like and trust factor.
So you can create an instant connection with new audiences easily and authentically sell your services from Facebook without being salesy or sleazy, build your email list with qualified leads and prospects that work while you sleep and promote your products and services to an audience who want what you sell and buy it.
This is all possible through the power of Facebook Live and a strategic marketing strategy, and I want to show you how, so I click on the link to learn more about my Facebook Live success program now.
Get Facebook Live Success: http://saranguyenonline.teachable.com/p/fb-live-success
Equipment used in this video:
Microphone Rode Smart Lav+
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Webcam – Logitech c920
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USB microphone – Blue Yeti Pro
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This video edited with Screenflow 6 on a Mac
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