Quick Tip: How and Why You Should Use Social Media to Livestream Your Business

- Give your customers compelling content
- Interact with them
- Be consistent and authentic
- 80% of consumers surveyed preferred watching a video from a brand rather than reading a blog post
- 82% prefer live video from a brand over social posts
- Viewers spend 8x longer with live video than on-demand
- Started in 2016
- Achieved 2 billion total monthly users in 2017
- 1 in 5 videos on Facebook were live in 2017
- Daily watch time grew 4x over the course of one year
- Live videos usually see 6x more interactions than other videos
Using Facebook Live
If you’ve never tried it before, here’s a step-by-step guide on how to set up Facebook Live on your mobile devices:- Open up your business Facebook account on your mobile device.
- Click on the camera icon to the left of the search bar, and go to “Live.”
- Give Facebook the necessary permissions, typically to access your device’s camera and microphone.
- Select your privacy and posting settings. (Note that you’ll probably have to switch the privacy setting from “Only Me” to “Public,” or if you’re targeting a certain group, select that option. If you want do a test drive, feel free to use the “Only Me” option to see how it turned out!)
- Add a compelling description to help viewers understand what the stream is about.
- Sprinkle in the details: tap the location icon to add where you’re shooting, the person icon to tag people in the video and the face icon to add an activity or mood. As a note, all of these are optional.
- Make sure your camera is facing the right direction.
- Tap “Start Live Video,” and you’ll see more options, such as adding drawings or filters.
- Interact with your viewers! With Facebook Live, you’ll be able to see how many are tuning into your video, names of friends who are watching and real-time comments, to which you can respond in your video!
How It Fits the Bill
So, you’ll see that livestreaming can be compelling content if it has a purpose. As an example, it would be a great tool for demos, sneak peeks and behind-the-scenes looks at your business. It also gives you a chance to interact with your customers and potential customers, answering their questions, responding to their concerns or even getting words of encouragement. Lastly, it can endear your business to said potential customers particularly if you appear authentic.Livestreaming Tips and Tricks
And now that you’ve learned how to go live, here are a few tips and tricks of capturing the perfect video from our Kinetic Business by Windstream team:1. Have a Strong Internet Connection
Remember that viewers are tuning into livestreamed videos because they’re compelling. And your videos won’t garner a lot of interest if your Internet connection is poor, giving you either a pixelated or a start-and-stop video.
You’ll want to focus on your upload speed, in particular, and how much you’ll need will depend on how high you want your video quality to be. Generally, we’d recommend having at least a 5 Mbps upload speed, but ideally, you’d want 10 Mbps. Not sure what you currently have? Talk to a Kinetic Business representative today to look into getting the speeds you need with Kinetic Internet.
2. Promote Your Livestreams Beforehand
Let your Facebook followers and others who may be interested know about your livestream before the actual event. That way you can ensure that you have the most eyes on your video. And, don’t use the one-and-done method. If you set a schedule of when to livestream — and promote those dates — those viewers will keep coming back!
3. Engage, Engage, Engage
Building your brand trust isn’t going to happen if you’re not actively engaging with your customers. When using Facebook Live, feel free to give viewers a shout out when they tune in, or even respond directly to questions.
Finding it difficult to livestream and read through comments or questions? Have an employee help manage responses through a desktop!
