Video structure: How to structure your Live videos for YouTube and Facebook (Make better videos)

I walk you through how to structure your live videos for YouTube or Facebook so you can have an easy to use framework. Don’t go live without a video structure (too stressful!). Quickly map out your video with my simple live video content framework.

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⏰Timestamps⏰
2:33 Countdown timer
4:03 Welcome audience
4:46 Introduction
5:14 Hook
5:55 Introduce yourself
6:24 Ask for the sub
7:57 Get into the content
8:50 Teach/Demo/Entertain
10:02 Take questions
11:01 Recap what you covered
12:41 Ask for engagement and the sub
13:00 Lead into your call to action
14:26 Thank your audience for their time
14:33 Close
14:37 Play outtro

Related videos: How to create your own countdown timer: https://youtu.be/Et2sxQouTl8

Video structure: How to structure your Live videos for YouTube and Facebook – Video Transcript

Hello, and welcome to the live stream. Whether you are live with me now, thanks for joining me, or if you’re catching us on the replay, I’m really glad that you could be here today.

Today I’m going to talk about how do you structure your videos, in particular, I’m not talking today, particularly your live stream videos, but you can kind of apply these to other videos anyway, and I’m going to give you a structure and I’m going to walk through what you need or what you can say in each of the parts and break it down for you.

And this really is a framework so that you can have something that you can plan out your live streams with. You can go live with ease and don’t feel so stressed because you don’t know what to say, and you have it already there. And you just tick through all of the sections of the structure.

Now, for those of you who don’t know me, my name is Sara Nguyen, and I help coaches, consultants and creative pros build their business using video with ease. And I live stream a lot about live streaming to help you live stream better.

Now, make sure that you check out the description because I’ll go back and put all of the timestamps there, as well as any resources that I mentioned in this video today. And there will be a lot of timestamps.

There are a lot of timestamps because there’s quite, there’s a lot to cover in this video structure today. I just want to start by saying that, although this is a video structure and video framework, I don’t want you to feel like this is gospel.

This is some, this is a framework that I use and that I tweak as well. And I’ve adapted it over probably the last few years. And I find this to be the easiest and most versatile framework.

Regardless of what you’re covering in your live stream videos, this will help you get through it. And it, and I also want to have a disclaimer before we jump into it to say that you don’t have to follow it exactly as it is.

This will give you an idea, particularly if you’ve never livestream before what you can incorporate into your live streams. And it’s, as I said, it’s a framework, it’s a structure so that you can, you know, have something to work from.

I’ve divided it into three sections, part one being the introduction, part two, being the content section and part three being the close. And I’m going to break it down for you now. Let’s get started in part one.

Don’t freak out, I know there are a lot of sections here, but I’m going to walk through each part and what I do and what I recommend that you do in each section. Just imagine it, like, if you’ve got a piece of paper, write down part one, write down a countdown timer.

The first thing that I have in my videos, if you’re live, if you watch the replay, I typically cut them out, but I’ll have a countdown timer. And I’ll have a countdown timer for two reasons.

The first reason is there’s typically a delay between when you push live and when Facebook or YouTube actually stop playing the actual video. I put a countdown timer, so a buffer because in the past I would go live and start talking and sometimes I’d be cut off for five seconds or 10 seconds.

And the other problem was sometimes because of the delay, I’d just be sitting around trying to fill that time. Instead of like trying to tell jokes and just sitting there awkwardly, I have a countdown timer so that helps that situation.

And the second reason is I try to allow a little bit of time. Five minutes is what I’m testing at the moment. Some people go longer. I’ve heard some people go 15 minutes or half an hour.

They’ll push it live and then just have the countdown timer play so that people know that they’ll be online in the next half hour or so. But five minutes is where I’m at. I’ve tried a minute, five minutes seems to be my sweet spot.

Test what works for you in terms of your countdown timer. I will put a link in the description, but a couple of days ago I did a tutorial on how to create your own countdown timer. You can do that really, really easily in Canva.

You don’t need any skills. The one that you saw on this live stream this morning that was created in Canva as well. The first thing that I do is I play the countdown timer. After I’ve played the countdown timer, then I welcome the audience.

You would have heard me say hello and welcome whether you are live with me now, or if you’re catching the replay, why do I mention the replay? Because most of the views will happen on the replay.

I definitely love and appreciate people who join me live and that’s fantastic because we can engage and you guys get the chance to ask questions, but it’s really hard to align everyone to be online at the same time. That’s why a lot of replays, a lot of the views will happen on the replay.

You need to acknowledge that audience. They don’t feel that the video isn’t relevant to them. I welcome them. It’s just a couple of, it’s just a couple of seconds, just a sentence to say, “hi, I’m here and appreciate your time.” and then I get into the topic I get right into the video and telling people what the video will be about.

You need to tell people what the video will be about so that they know that they’re in the right place. And it also keeps you accountable as well. You know? You need to, I’ve always said with your content, you need to be on point.

And so introducing a topic at the beginning, sets the tone, lets people know what it’s about and lets you know that you’ve got to get into business. After you’ve introduced the topic, people talk a lot about the hook, right?

And I talk a lot about, you know, you need to like hook your audience. I like to simplify this a little bit. After I’ve talked about the topic, I’ll tell people why they should stay and why it’s important, right?

And I’ll tell them what’s in it for them. Why should they listen to you talk about this topic. And sometimes I incorporate, you know, there are mistakes that people make that you may want to avoid, but mostly I’ll call out the benefits of, if you watch this video, then you’ll be able to do this or you’ll be able to get this.

It’s all about what’s in it for the actual audience. And then I introduce myself. I play around with the ordering of introducing myself. But I found that you know, ABCD, doesn’t take that long. And by then, I can introduce myself and tell people who I am and what I do.

And you would have seen that I played my little, let’s do it now, lower third. And then that just has my name and what I do. That’s what I do to introduce myself. And then I have my little, you know, elevated pitch.

And then what I do as you would have seen in this video as well is I’ll ask for people to check out the links in the description. Now, some people ask for people to subscribe at this point and I’ve done that in the past at the moment, I’m in the spot where I don’t ask for the subscription.

I feel it’s a little bit early personally for me. Do what works for you. Try it out. But here’s a chance for you to ask for a small ass. Don’t ask for like a big ass, don’t ask them to be buying from you.

Don’t ask them to be, you know, doing anything major, small commitments, like we’ve just met, you know, most people would have just met you. At this point, just ask for a small little commitment.

That’s why I say check out the links in the description because I’m also training you to check out the links in the description because that’s where I’ve got not only the timestamps, but I’ve got links to my actual call to action, which I’ll reference in the end as well.

This is how I structure the first part of my live stream, very deliberate, very intentional. It doesn’t take really long so as you see all of this doesn’t take 20 minutes. It probably takes all up maybe five minutes and this is it.

I’ve just broken it down bit by bit. You can see what happens in the introduction part. This is the first part of the actual video structure. Now that we’ve got the introduction out of the way, so these are all of the elements, we go into the second part, which is the content.

Now, what does this look like? I really have to emphasize that one of the biggest mistakes that I see people make is that on their live streams, they don’t get into the content. They start telling their life story.

They start, I don’t know, bantering, and they just kind of leave you hanging. And I see this a lot, particularly people who are new to live streaming, I think they feel like they need to start incorporating all of the, you know, copywriting and content techniques.

They start storytelling, they start engaging. But what people are really there for is the content and this structure will help you get through it.

Don’t delay in getting to your content. Don’t feel that, you know, you need to dance before getting into it. After you’ve done your introduction, launch into your content.

Part one start to get into it, whether you are teaching like I do for a lot of my videos, whether you are demoing something, if you’re doing a product review or whether you’re entertaining people go, like launch into it and get into the content.

There are lots of ways you can deliver your content. And this will obviously depend on, you know, you as a creator and your business and how you want to present it. I do a range of face to camera. I do a range of tutorials where I share my screen a lot of the time.

I do product reviews where I showcase products and talk to the product, but whatever it is, get to your content. I typically break it up into three to five points to help me and then I’ll go through it that way.

You’ll see on the screen right now, there’s an overlay. I use the overlay as prompts to get through my content, as opposed to just talking straight and I have these overlays as a visual for you as a viewer, but also for me as a prompt of what I’m actually going to talk about.

I don’t have to memorize any of this stuff. This is the important part, get into the content. After you’ve delivered your content, if I’m on a live stream and there are people who have asked questions during the live stream, I take them at the end.

I’ve avoided taking questions during the teaching or the content part of the video because I find it extremely distracting ’cause I’m trying to get through all of these teaching points. And if I stop and answer a question that I find it throws me and then I find it also makes the video a little bit disjointed.

I typically answer questions at the end, unless I’m seeing them through the comments and I feel that it would be relevant to bring in. But for the most part, I find it really distracting and I leave it to the end.

You can obviously incorporate it during your content, during your teaching, if you feel that’s appropriate. But personally, for me, I find it really distracting. I have a really small attention span, so I get distracted very easily.

It doesn’t work for me but obviously do what works for you. After you’ve gotten into your content, after you have taken questions, the next part is to recap what you actually covered.

This is a good old content technique where you recap just in summary, what you actually covered. If you covered the five biggest mistakes that people make while dieting, you would literally list them out really quickly.

Mistake number one is, mistake number two is, mistake number three, four, five, and go through them. And the purpose of that is to kind of just reiterate everything that you addressed in your content. And if people have joined the live stream late, they can kind of see that there was this other content that they can go back and listen to.

This is what you would do to recap now. That’s pretty much it, I’m not spending a lot of time in this section, but that doesn’t mean that this section isn’t the most important part of the entire structure.

Getting into the content teaching is should be the bulk of your entire live stream. Not the other two parts, but that’s the part that people seem to spend the most time on. This is the second part of the video structure that I use and that I recommend. Now let’s launch into part three.

In part one, it was all about the introduction getting started, addressing your topic, welcoming your audience. Part two was all about getting into the content and how you approach that and take questions and recap it.

Part three is the close. After you’ve delivered all of your content, what you would do is you would pivot and it’s now at this point that you’ve delivered value that I feel personally, and I’ve seen that now that you have spent some time to give people a little bit, you can ask for engagement and the sub.

It’s at this point where I would ask for people to subscribe again. And then I would, the most important part, ask people to take a step into my sales mechanism. Ask people to take a call to action for me.

You’ll see on my videos, I’m asking people to either sign up for my Social Media Checklist, my Facebook Live Cheat Sheets, and I’ve got a new master class that they can sign up to.

Those are my three call to actions and I add them at the end of the video. And I incorporate it as appropriate or I, you know, have the appropriate call to action depending on the video that I have.

I try to have it a little bit relevant to the video. What’s your call to action? It really depends on what you have to sell and what your sales mechanism is.

You need to think about as a business, how are you getting people into your business? Are they contacting you via a phone? If you’re a consultant, do they have to contact you via that form to make an inquiry?

Or do you sell products? And you have people on an email list that you gather that you then have an email sequence that sells to them. That’s what I do.

Or do you have physical products? Like, it really depends on your business model with what your call to action is. But my advice here is to leverage this opportunity to take people to the top of your sales funnel and only you can answer what the top of your sales funnel actually is.

After I’ve launched into my call to action, I’ll thank the audience for their time. Then I’ll close the live stream, I’ll say, ‘bye for now’. And then I will play the outtro. This is the close, right? I’ve broken it up into three parts.

This is very important, but you don’t want to spend too much time here. You want to be concise and you want to be really clear on particularly B what that is. I’m going to show you and this, I feel this is a lot of, a lot of inception.

I’m talking about what I do like while I’m doing it. Okay, well, in terms of my call to action, you’ll see that, oh, it’s on the wrong side. This is my Facebook Live Cheat Sheets, and I have an overlay and a link in the description.

I also have at the moment, my Facebook Live Masterclass, that’s an image of it at the end of the video. After the YouTube video has processed, I’ll add an end card and I’ll add the link to the masterclass. It’s on the screen, but it will also be a link in the description as well.

That’s how I do my call to actions, the most important part, right? The most important part and the whole purpose that you’re actually doing videos is to drive people, to take action and to drive traffic to your actual call to action.

That’s how I do that. Now a big questioned that I get asked about how do I remember like all of these things. There are all these parts here. There are all these parts in part two, there are all these parts in part three.

And my answer is I don’t. I use my overlays. You know, my lower thirds, I use the, you know, core to the link in description overlay as prompts so that I don’t have to remember exactly what I have to say.

I’ve got all of the, you know, scenes or all of the overlays set up in the right order. I just go through the scenes and then I play them. And that’s my prompt. Pardon me?

And I can remember what I need to say because I’ve got the prompts there. That’s how I, that’s my little secret.
I don’t remember much. I don’t remember. I don’t memorize the entire video structure. I used the overlays and I set up the overlays so that I can talk to the content and have the visuals there to prompt me.

That makes it less stressful for me. I also write notes, you know, so I have notes that I have on my screen and I’ll talk as I’m, you know, presenting as I’m delivering my live stream, I’ll reference the notes.

And I’ll literally have on the notes in each section things I need to remember. Just in bullet points. That wraps that part up. Another question that I also get asked is, do you script, or do you write bullet points?

And for my live streams at the moment, I don’t script, but I do write bullet points. I use this framework to plan out the live stream and I write down what I’m going to say in each section so that I don’t rock up on the live stream and to stand here and think about what I’m going to say.

I already know what I’m going to say before I go live. And you should too because you should know exactly what you’ll be delivering. You can be on point and you can be concise.

That’s how I get through my video script. You don’t have to incorporate everything, but I find this is a really good structure that has all of the elements of a good YouTube or Facebook video.

And then it also allows you to incorporate in all of the actions you want people to take, to subscribe, to engage with it, to take the next step with your call to action. That basically wraps up my, ‘how to structure your video’ video.

And it really is kind of like this cheat sheet or this guide, and you don’t have to follow to the T, but it would definitely help you get started. Why do I have a framework? Because if you’re creating a lot of videos, the last thing you want to do is to have to think too much.

With a framework, it takes out the thinking for you ’cause you can just fill in the sections and then know that this structure will work, right. It really takes out the stress of video and then you can pump more out, more videos out faster. That essentially wraps us up.

Thank you so much for joining me today. I’m just checking everything looks like everything’s all good. Now, if you found this video useful, give me a thumbs up and don’t forget to subscribe to my channel where I do lots of tutorials on social media.

I do lots of live streaming to help you live stream better. And I have a lot of fun. See, that was that little ask for the sub and see, that was right there.

That’s my overlay as well. And if you are looking for more ways to grow your business and you want to take your live streams to the next level, check out my Facebook Live Master Class, it’s free to sign up and you can learn all about how to convert your Facebook live viewers into buyers.

I cover that in the masterclass. It’s free. I’m really excited about that content. Check out the link in the description to sign up for a class at a time that works for you. And that essentially wraps us up.

Thanks everyone for joining me live. This was one of my favourites, they’re all my favourite. I feel like my content, my live stream content is like a little child where I’m like, you’re my favourite. You’re my favourite.

No, you’re my favourite. Anyway, thanks so much for joining me today, had an absolute blast. I hope you found this video structure useful and that you can just stop pumping it out and start pumping out your videos.

I will see you in the next live stream. And bye for now.