Facebook Live is one of Facebook’s newest tools, giving users the ability to livestream or broadcast in real time with their audience. Although it hasn’t been around that long yet, many businesses are already incorporating live video and Facebook Live into their marketing strategy. Of course, it’s not difficult to see why. In general, video is a highly visual and interactive medium and can be consumed on the go, resulting in greater engagement overall. But the intimacy of being able to connect with a real person allows businesses to build relationships and create trust much more rapidly that they could through other means. All of these reasons have a part to play in why 64 percent of people are more likely to make a purchase after watching a video.
Specific Benefits of Facebook Live For Business
If you have yet to use Facebook Live, bookmark this article for later. It will show you how to create your first livestream from beginning to end, step-by-step. This one will help you go live on the Facebook business page.
In short, live video and Facebook Live, in particular, have massive potential for businesses to build trust with their audience and ultimately increase their bottom line. That’s true for all businesses, big or small.
Facebook Live Content Ideas
- Respond to blog comments, Q&As and FAQs. The key to any livestreaming, regardless of what kind of content it is, is to make use of the description section. There are a couple of reasons for this. First of all, an interesting description entices users to tune in. Here are a few other tips for using Facebook Live you might want to take note of, courtesy of Facebook itself.
- Provide live customer service. Instead of answering general inquiries, you can specifically answer customer-service related questions, whether it’s a problem they’re encountering with your product or service or any other customer-related question. This approach takes your customer-service approach to the next level and really sets you apart from other businesses, making it yet again one of the best ideas for Facebook Live when it comes to business.
- Conduct interviews. Interviews are always a good choice of content, whether for a regular video or podcast. They make for interesting content, giving the audience the opportunity to hear insights from someone they might not have otherwise been able to hear from. In fact, according to a Facebook product management director, live videos receive 10 times the amount of comments that other types of videos do.
- Give them a behind-the-scenes look. First and foremost, people love content that they typically wouldn’t have access to. Right off the bat, giving your audience a behind-the-scenes look is instantly entertaining. Not only is a behind-the-scenes look entertaining, but it is also a great opportunity to provide your audience with educational information that they may actually find helpful. Here is a look at some of the best ways businesses have used Facebook Live.
- Highlight new products. Use Facebook Live to promote upcoming products that haven’t officially been released yet. Take advantage of the excitement by providing them with a link to take preorders.
- Host webinars. Webinars, also known as web conferences, are a very valuable business tool. Here’s a more in-depth look at why webinars make such effective marketing tools and the ways you can use them for promotional purposes to increase your brand awareness.
- Offer live online classes. Use Facebook Live to host a live online class, something that you would usually do over an extended period of time. Information is always a commodity and you will provide your audience with a lot of value by teaching them something that can benefit them in some way. You can also use a “series” or daily show format. This kind of format allows you to build a following more steadily.
- Create marketing campaigns and events. In order to be effective, marketing campaigns naturally have to be creative and capture attention in some way. Here’s a look at how businesses have already used Facebook Live for marketing purposes. Do you have an upcoming event? Facebook Live prioritizes live videos in its algorithms, meaning that more people may see your live stream than another type of post. Ensure that the link to your event is easy to remember (you can use Bitly to shorten the length of URLs, but you also want to include a link to the event in the comments section).
- Offer daily tips. People love quick tips – informative pieces of digestible content that don’t take up a lot of their time in order to benefit from. Daily tips are entertaining and informative. If you have not yet incorporated Facebook Live into your marketing strategy, doing a “daily tips” format is a great way to get started. Daily tips are meant to be quick, allowing you to get comfortable with being in front of a live audience.
As you can see, the benefits of Facebook Live for businesses are massive.
A version of this post originally appeared here.
