How to Use Facebook Live: The Ultimate Guide

It is no secret that dwell streaming took off in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.

It proved a worthwhile device for forging and sustaining human connections as I noticed personally internet hosting webinars and digital meetups at my final firm — and it hasn’t slowed down.

Market Research Future predicts that the live-streaming market in the USA will develop from about $90 billion in 2024 to just about $560 billion by 2032.

Fb Stay is the second most popular platform for dwell streaming in the USA.

Need to learn to livestream on Fb? On this submit, I’ll clarify how intimately and share worthwhile recommendations on tips on how to get essentially the most out of your movies.

Desk of Contents

As a marketer, one of many issues I like greatest about Fb Stay movies, is that they’re public. This implies viewers can watch on any system with entry to Fb, even with out an account.

However not everybody can stream. Customers with private profiles can go dwell on Fb from their timeline, a gaggle, or an occasion utilizing a pc or cellular system.

Nonetheless, I not too long ago found that Pages (in different phrases, companies and entrepreneurs) face extra pink tape.

As of June 2024, Fb Pages can only go live when they’ve been up for over 60 days, and they’ve not less than 100 followers.

Fb made this transformation to assist fight spam and be sure that these posting content material are official. So, if you have not already met this minimal, ensure to check out this guide that can assist you develop your small business web page following.

Why are entrepreneurs so enthusiastic about Fb Stay?

The Advantages of Fb Stay

Nicely, for one, Fb has the most important viewers of any social media platform, welcoming over 3 billion active users. This makes the potential attain of Fb Stay immense.

As well as, Fb is actually prioritizing video on the platform, which implies Fb Stay is extra more likely to be served within the newsfeed and in entrance of your viewers than different static mediums.

This implies elevated model consciousness and visibility.

Stay streaming can also be only a enjoyable, memorable method to talk your model tales and construct genuine relationships with followers and followers.

Entrepreneurs can go dwell on Fb to make firm bulletins, host interviews, discipline questions, run demonstrations or tutorials, broaden the attain of in-person occasions (like HubSpot did under), and, general, have interaction audiences in a extra private, human means.

Plus, it’s all freed from price.

Whereas a reasonably easy idea, Fb Stay has numerous little nuances entrepreneurs must study to get essentially the most out of the platform.

This information will enable you study the most effective tips for making a distinction in how many individuals see your dwell broadcast, how they have interaction with it, and the way it performs.

Easy methods to Livestream on Fb utilizing Fb Stay

Fb Stay began as a mobile-only broadcasting function, however now, it’s obtainable on cellular units and desktop computer systems as properly. Within the sections under, we’ll go over tips on how to go dwell on Fb throughout a number of units and apps.

(After you’ve met the standards we mentioned earlier, in fact.)

Notice: These directions had been made based mostly on the iOS cellular apps. The precise steps and person interface within the Android apps might range.

Easy methods to Go Stay on Fb by way of the Fb Cell App

Step 1: Go to the profile, Web page, group, or occasion the place you wish to go dwell.

Step 2: Click on “What’s in your thoughts?” to open submit choices.

Step 3: Click on “Stay video” within the submit choices.

Step 4: Faucet the place it says “Faucet so as to add an outline” so as to add details about the video. You can too tag pals or different pages, a location, or a sense/exercise.

Notice: By default, the video will go to the Fb Story, however this may be modified to a gaggle when appearing as a Web page.

Step 5: Faucet “Go Stay.” After you’re accomplished, faucet “End” to finish the dwell stream.

Easy methods to Go Stay on Fb by way of Meta Enterprise Suite Cell App

The Meta Enterprise Suite app is an alternative choice for going dwell from a Fb Web page. This app can not be used to broadcast on private profiles.

Step 1: Within the Meta Enterprise Suite app, choose the Web page you wish to go dwell on by clicking the brand/photograph subsequent to dwelling on the app dwelling display screen.

Step 2: With that chosen, click on the blue plus (+) signal button on the backside of the display screen to open your submit choices.

Step 3: Choose “Stay.”

Step 4: Add an outline to your video. You possibly can tag pals or different pages, location data, or a sense/exercise.

Step 5: Faucet “Go Stay.” Whenever you’re accomplished, faucet “end” to finish your broadcast.

Easy methods to Go Stay on Fb from a Net Browser

You go dwell from an internet browser utilizing your pc’s built-in digital camera or an exterior digital camera and streaming software program (additionally known as an encoder like Restream).

Comply with these steps:

Step 1: In your Fb homepage, you need to see a “Stay” or “Stay Video” possibility. In case you are on a profile, will probably be beneath “What’s in your thoughts?” The icon is a pink digital camera.

Step 2: Select to “Go dwell.” You can too “Create dwell video occasion” for the longer term on this web page.

Step 3: Fill out the main points on your video.

In case you’re utilizing your webcam, this contains what video and audio instruments you’ll use in addition to your video title and outline. It’s additionally the place you choose the place you need your video to be posted. You possibly can select from:

• Your timeline
• A Web page you handle
• A Group you’re in

If utilizing a streaming service, you’ll fill out your title, description, and site, however Fb will offer you a streaming key to make use of in your encoder. Take this key again to your streaming service and full the mandatory setup steps there utilizing it.

Step 4: Click on “Go Stay” within the backside left nook if you end up prepared.

Professional tip: Throughout your broadcast, you need to use the “dashboard” web page to create polls for viewers, view and reply to feedback, and general handle and improve your engagement.

Actual-time engagement like that is what makes dwell content material thrilling and completely different, so don’t shrug it off.

I do know that at any time when I’ve gone dwell on Fb, audiences have beloved listening to responses to their questions or feedback verbally on the printed. (And I can’t lie; I’ve beloved listening to them throughout broadcasts I’ve watched.)

Extra on the instruments Fb has obtainable to make your broadcast extra partaking in our subsequent part.

Fb Stay Instruments

Fb presents many options so that you can additional join together with your viewers throughout your broadcast.

Using these instruments will assist enhance engagement and create the very best expertise on your viewers. You possibly can combine and match them to serve your stream in one of the best ways for your small business.

• Stay Polls: You possibly can create a dwell ballot beforehand to share while you go dwell. Then, you’ll be able to see your viewers’s responses in actual time in the course of the stream and use outcomes to spark dwell dialogue.
• Featured Hyperlinks: Including one or a number of featured hyperlinks to the stream to advertise your web site or different sources.
• Stay in Tales: These let you share your streams on to Fb Tales to succeed in extra of your viewers.
• Stay Remark Moderation: Handle the dialog in your dwell stream’s feedback. With this function, you’ll be able to restrict who can remark and the way incessantly. You possibly can even select a selected viewer to average feedback in your behalf.
• Entrance Row: This function permits you to spotlight your high followers in a particular part of your stream. You can provide them a particular shoutout to point out appreciation for them when you’re dwell.
• Badges: These are a measure of how a lot your followers are partaking together with your content material. Followers can earn badges by interacting together with your content material, whether or not it is sending “Stars” or tuning in to your Fb Stay movies.
• Donations: Certified pages in sure places can add a “Donate” button to their dwell video. Nonprofits utilizing Fb’s fee platform don’t need to pay a price, in order that they get 100% of the donations.
• Stay With: This can be a co-broadcasting function that permits you to host your Fb Stay video with a number of company.
• Stay Purchasing: You probably have merchandise on the market on Fb, this function permits you to add product listings to function throughout your livestream.
• Messenger Rooms broadcast: You possibly can flip your Messenger Rooms into co-hosted Fb Lives with as much as 50 folks.
• In-stream Advertisements: In-stream adverts are routinely added to the streams you add as a method to monetize your content material.
• Subscriptions on Stay: Your audiences can subscribe to your content material and get unique advantages as a part of their subscription.

For extra assist with going dwell on Fb, try our video:

Do not forget that a dwell stream recording can also be printed to the property the place you went dwell. That content material is nice as a result of you’ll be able to download and repurpose it for further use.

Easy methods to Analyze Your Fb Stay Video Efficiency

Fb Stay video insights enable you find out how folks work together together with your dwell streams so you’ll be able to optimize your dwell technique for max influence.

The efficiency analytics obtainable for Fb Stay movies are just like these of regular movies on Fb, with some neat additions.

• Video efficiency: An outline of your whole video views and engagements (likes, shares, feedback, and so on.), minutes seen, and web new followers. ;
• Benchmarking: A comparability of your Stay metrics to different creators and companies in the identical trade
• Viewers: An outline of viewers demographics (biographical data) and different stats like progress fee, variety of follower video views, and non-follower video views.
• Loyalty: These are stats on your variety of returning viewers, the movies that encourage folks to return to your web page, and the variety of engaged followers in your Stay.
• Retention: You will study the place your viewers are coming from, the visitors sources that drive essentially the most watch time, and the way lengthy folks watch (by 3-second, 15-second, and 1-minute views).
• Earnings: These stats present how a lot you earn throughout your movies from in-stream adverts, CPM, RPM, monetizable 1-minute views, and cash earned from Stars given by subscribers (if relevant).

Probably the most complete efficiency knowledge on your Fb Stay movies may be present in Meta Business Suite:

However I wouldn’t blame you if it will get somewhat overwhelming; there’s numerous data there.

For a fast pulse on how my content material is doing on Fb, I often click on the insights button under particular person posts.

Easy methods to Entry Video Analytics on a Fb Enterprise Web page

Step 1: Head to the left-hand column of your web page and choose Meta Enterprise Suite.

Step 2: Choose Insights from the left-hand aspect menu.

Step 3: Click on, “content material,” then set your media kind to “video”

Step 4: Dive deeper into your insights by deciding on filters and scrolling down the web page. (Notice: We didn‘t have any movies posted to the web page we used on this instance. In case you do have movies, you’ll see them seem right here.)

Step 5: To view insights for a selected video, click on on the video title in your content material listing. From right here you’ll be able to view metrics from when the printed was dwell in addition to over its complete lifetime.

Suggestions and Tips for Getting the Most Out of Fb Stay

Now that you just‘ve mastered tips on how to livestream on Fb, let’s talk about some suggestions and tips on making your dwell content material the most effective it may be.

The very last thing you need is to begin a dwell video and freeze up. Whenever you’re dwell, there are not any do-overs or possibilities to begin over. So, put together your self or your host as a lot as attainable.

Define what you wish to talk within the video, then observe the remainder of the ideas under.

Want some inspiration? Take a look at these great examples of Facebook Live videos to assist get your inventive juices stream.

1. Brush up on Fb Stay greatest practices.

Entrepreneurs have a lot alternative to succeed in a wider viewers on Fb Stay, so it is price committing to studying tips on how to run a Stay successfully.

In our detailed Marketer’s Guide to Facebook Live, we cowl important greatest practices on tips on how to plan, run, and analyze the outcomes of a business-run Fb Stay. Obtain our free eBook to brush up on these greatest practices.

2. Check out dwell video earlier than broadcasting dwell.

If you wish to experiment with dwell broadcasting with out sharing it with anybody else, you’ll be able to create a check broadcast by adjusting the viewers to be simply you or a colleague or good friend.

To do that, toggle Create a check broadcast earlier than going dwell into the on place after you begin the method of making a dwell video, outlined here in Step 2.

3. Don’t go dwell too incessantly.

The artwork of organic reach on Facebook has modified over time, nevertheless it does nonetheless exist. Stay video generally is a highly effective device in natural attain, as customers may be notified of the content material.

However don’t abuse this. Solely go dwell while you’re ready to supply true worth to viewers.

In case you go dwell too incessantly with nothing to point out, folks will start to tune you out or, worse, unfollow you.

4. Hold reintroducing your self.

Whenever you first begin the video, take a minute to introduce your self and what the video’s about, however don’t do it simply as soon as.

Whenever you first begin dwell streaming, you might have zero folks watching. Even a couple of seconds in, you might solely have a handful of viewers.

As folks discover your video on their newsfeeds or see the notification within the app, they‘ll take part steadily. So, to catch folks up, you’ll wish to reintroduce your self a second, third, and even fourth time.

Cosmetics model Benefit does a great job with this for the primary jiffy of its broadcast:

5. Lean into fashionable matters.

Undecided what to speak about it while you go dwell? In response to Statista the most well-liked forms of dwell streaming movies in the USA are these associated to breaking information.

As a enterprise, you’ll be able to monitor trade information and reply or add to the dialog on Fb Stay.

Different fashionable choices embrace humorous movies and how-to’s.

6. Make the video visually partaking.

You must be visually partaking — not simply on the very starting of your broadcast (though that’ll be essential for when people view the video later), however all through the video as increasingly folks take part.

It must be no shock that Martha Stewart is a grasp of that.

I like the colourful graphic she begins her video with (which additionally acts as its thumbnail) and the trendy set on which the printed takes place. She makes use of quite a lot of props and angles to maintain the video fascinating.

The extra visually partaking you may be, the extra you’ll be able to entice folks to stay round and actually focus.

Facebook started monitoring signals of video engagement — like turning on the audio, switching to full-screen mode, or enabling excessive definition — deciphering that as customers having fun with the video.

In case your video engagement is sweet, Fb is extra more likely to present it in additional newsfeeds.

7. Roll with the surprising.

What makes a dwell video particular? The spontaneous, interactive nature of it.

Folks love the flexibility to work together and even influence what occurs in a dwell broadcast.

These moments make dwell video particular and differentiate it from scripted, edited, or in any other case pre-recorded movies.

So, embrace the platform. Plan your principal speaking factors, however don’t run off a script and be able to pivot with the surprising.

That mentioned …

8. Don’t be concerned about errors or stutters.

Pay attention, we’re all human. When people and know-how combine, there can typically be technical difficulties.

Actually, that’s one of many positives I believe got here out of lockdown. With distant work and digital conferences from dwelling, all of us grew to become somewhat bit extra comfy with little interruptions or mishaps.

In case you‘re recording a dwell video, issues would possibly go mistaken — your tools might malfunction, you might lose your prepare of thought, or you might get photobombed by a random passerby.

If issues occur, you’ll be able to’t name “reduce” — it’s important to roll with them and maintain filming and speaking.

The excellent news? This stuff assist maintain your broadcast human and actual.

In case your telephone wobbles whereas filming, giggle and name it out. In case you overlook what you had been saying, make a joke.

The secret’s to maintain the printed like a enjoyable dialog, so if errors occur, maintain it mild and maintain the strains of communication open together with your viewers.

9. Encourage viewers to “Like” and “Share” the video on air.

One of many main methods Fb‘s algorithm ranks a submit is by how many individuals “Like” and “Share” it. The extra individuals who do, the extra it’ll present up in folks’s newsfeeds.

When persons are watching a video, they could be extra distracted from “liking” and “sharing” than they might be with a static submit.

That is truly one thing the folks at Facebook noticed about video content material early on, so don’t be afraid to say it verbally throughout your broadcast and even show the message on the display screen.

10. Interact with commenters and point out them by identify.

The variety of feedback in your broadcast is one other method to get Fb to give it a higher relevancy score — one other nice method to get into newsfeeds.

So, encourage your viewers to remark by asking questions like Tastemade does on this video:

Interact with people who find themselves commenting by answering their questions and calling them out by identify. Not solely will it get extra folks to remark, nevertheless it’s additionally a enjoyable method to embrace your viewers within the dwell expertise and make it extra memorable.

11. Work with a moderator.

Whenever you‘re the one on digital camera for a Fb Stay video, it’s actually laborious to concentrate to all of the feedback popping up on the display screen.

If the feedback are coming in quick, it‘s particularly straightforward to lose sight of them as they disappear under the fold. Plus, you’re in all probability occupied by recording and entertaining viewers.

Due to this, it is at all times a good suggestion to have a further individual logged into the first account to watch the feedback on a desktop pc.

That means, they will handle responding so the individual recording the video can focus on creating an ideal expertise.

12. Subtitle your broadcast within the feedback part.

Your viewers could also be tuning out and in to observe your video in the course of the work day, or they may merely be watching your video with out sound. Some folks might even have listening to limitations.

Regardless of the purpose, periodically subtitling your Fb Stay video within the feedback part is a good way to maintain folks engaged and make your content material extra accessible.

This additionally permits people who find themselves tuning in late to atone for what is going on on.

Instruments like Verbit will help.

13. Ask viewers to activate Fb Stay notifications.

Along with asking for likes, shares, and feedback, ask viewers to subscribe to dwell notifications. You can too ask them to “like” your model on Fb in the event that they haven’t already accomplished so.

This will increase the probability of their being notified of your subsequent dwell broadcast.

14. Broadcast for not less than half-hour.

As quickly as you start recording your dwell video, you‘ll slowly however certainly present up in folks’s newsfeeds.

The longer you broadcast — particularly as likes, feedback, and shares begin coming in — the extra seemingly persons are to find your video and share it with their pals.

As a result of timing is such an essential issue for engagement in these dwell movies, Facebook suggests going dwell for not less than half-hour. Nonetheless, you’ll be able to keep dwell for as much as 4 hours utilizing the Fb cellular app and eight hours utilizing a desktop.

Bloomberg Enterprise recurrently goes dwell on Fb for hours at a time:

15. Finish with subsequent steps

Earlier than you finish your dwell broadcast, make sure to end with a closing line, like “Thanks for watching” or “I will be going dwell once more quickly.” This retains your dwell video pleasant and conversational.

When you’re at it, give the viewer steerage on their subsequent step. What ought to they do with the data they only bought out of your video? Would you like them to subscribe? Make a purchase order? Now’s the time to share that decision to motion.

16. Add a hyperlink to the outline later.

As soon as you have completed the dwell broadcast, you’ll be able to at all times return and edit the outline, change the privateness settings, or delete the video, similar to you’d every other submit.

You possibly can add a trackable hyperlink to the outline within the submit, which may direct future viewers to your dwell video sequence web page, the positioning of no matter marketing campaign you are utilizing the video to advertise, or someplace else.

We hope this has been a useful information. We’ll maintain you posted with any new developments and suggestions for connecting together with your viewers in different cool methods.

17. Repurpose your dwell video content material.

To maximise the attain of your streams, it can save you your movies after which add them to your profile. You can too repurpose the movies by sharing clips as profile highlights and creating brief movies to share on different channels like Instagram Tales and even TikTok movies.

Professional tip: Quick on time? AI will help you repurpose. For instance, OpusClip will help throughout any video into bite-sized clips for social media. Or you’ll be able to transcribe utilizing ChatGPT then use HubSpot’s Content Remix to create social media posts and weblog articles amongst different issues.

Use Fb Stay to its full potential.

Social media might have been invented for enjoyable, nevertheless it’s grown into a vital enterprise device. Fb as a social community is particularly worthwhile for the methods it allows you to hook up with an viewers, and Fb Stay is a superb extension of that.

Use it to the advantage of your small business as a method to promote your product, construct model consciousness, or develop your viewers.

Editor’s word: This submit was initially printed in Might 2020 and has been up to date for comprehensiveness.