With over 2.89 billion users on Facebook (2021), it’s impossible to ignore the channel as a means for building your brand. Facebook has been favoring video in the newsfeed and been giving preferential treatment to Live Streaming. It is also the case that live videos are watched three times longer than normal videos.

We interviewed one of our digital marketing partners, Anton Luhtala, CEO of Digisome, to share five tips for optimising your live stream performance.

1. Put effort on the title and the start of the video

First, create a title that describes well what you’re offering the viewer. The traditional approach is to then provide some advantages for your target audience at the start of your live stream and to use a hook to entice the viewer into continuing to listen. However, you may find it more effective to summarise all the key points at the beginning and then expand using examples – the competition of user's attention is fierce, and you need to able to convince the viewer in the first ten seconds.

Don’t underestimate the power of titles but don’t get drawn into ‘click bait’. You can still excite and intrigue without losing focus on your right kind of audience. A fizzy drink company promoting at a music festival should include their brand and purpose in the title, but can still use interest in the festival to engage the broader audience. This brings volume without losing brand integrity.

2. Interact with your viewers

Interacting with viewers whilst also delivering content can be demanding. An easy way around this is to make generic requests such as 'like if you agree' or 'share with someone who does this'. During longer broadcasts, reintroduce yourself regularly and summarise the key points for the benefit of new viewers. Make calls for questions, and if you have time, you can hold a Q&A session at the end.

Engagement with real fans is gold. If you can interact and engage with 1000 real fans and build a brand evangelist relationship, you’re in the fast lane to success! Facebook Live can be a tool for creating a more intimate relationship with your best fans.

3. Make it part of a series

Continuity is a key factor for increasing viewer engagement, so regular and scheduled videos will help build your audience and reach. Also, sticking within a particular genre of information helps you to create a community instead of one success story.

Consistency helps people get in the habit of following you. Be consistent both about when you’re doing a live broadcast as well as about letting people know in advance. Also, be consistent about the binding theme – a point valid also for blogs and other broadcasts but particularly for Facebook Live.

4. CTAs and ending your broadcast

It’s critical that you provide at least one CTA at the end of your live stream. This might just be a reminder about the next broadcast, but you could also ask for questions for a future Q&A or perhaps subscriptions to a YouTube channel. During your summary at the end, you might challenge your viewers to act on one of your suggestions.

You’re giving something valuable to your viewers so don’t hesitate to ask for something in return! You don’t have to be pushy, but as every salesman knows, you have to ask for a deal to make a deal.

5. Publish automatically to your website and repurpose

You can use Flockler to automatically publish your recent Facebook Live broadcasts and other Facebook Page content to your website, helping you to keep your site fresh, to increase the time spent on the site, and to reach an audience outside Facebook.

For inspiration, learn how to embed a Facebook Page feed on any website.

After the broadcast, edit out information that was only pertinent to the original live session and create a video to YouTube. Create a short clip and publish on Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), and Snapchat. The ways of repurposing the original video content are endless. When creating videos to social channels, remember to add subtitles – as much as 85% of video is viewed without sound.

Different channels need different styles, but the effort you put into one could be repurposed to use for others. Examples might be a ‘behind the scenes’ video for Instagram, a Vine or a bloopers post for YouTube. You could create a targeted clip of what happened yesterday, with when and how to follow in the future.