Video content is slowly but surely taking over as the content of choice for entrepreneur, creators and marketers. With apps such as Periscope and Snapchat gaining traction over the last few years, it was only a matter of time before social media giants like Google and Facebook adopted the live video feature. Now, Facebook Live allows its users to broadcast in real-time, defeating the need to create elaborate videos and spend additional time and resources editing them.
With that said, here are five different ways your startup can use Facebook Live to create an engaging, and more importantly, profitable experience for your customers.
Give audiences insight into your brand
Conveying how your store looks and feels using text and images is rather difficult, especially for businesses that have brick-and-mortar stores. Using Facebook Live, store owners now have the opportunity to give potential customers tours of their stores or a behind-the-scenes look at how their business operates. Even if you don’t own a physical store, you can livestream a demonstration of a particular product or even host livestream that shows potential shoppers what a typical day in the store looks like.
Related: 10 Ways to Make Facebook Live an Effective Marketing Tool
Host webinars and similar events
The majority of successful small business owners know the potential of a properly planned and well-executed webinar. However, it takes a lot of time and effort to create and host a webinar, and many of today’s webinar platforms are expensive. With Facebook Live, organizing and running a webinar becomes simple. Besides webinars, you can host all kinds of events, as well as stream an event you’re attending on behalf of your organization.
Another great example is if you’ve set up a booth at a local trade show. You can use Facebook live to not only stream the event from inside the booth and give viewers a never before seen point of view but also to invite the people watching the stream to come and visit you in person. The best course of action when inviting people is to offer some kind of incentive and make sure you monitor the feed at all times and engage your audience.
Host Q&A sessions
Facebook Live is an excellent tool you can use for Q&A sessions or interviews. As the session is happening in real time, people are more likely to pay closer attention than they would if it were an ordinary clip. Not to mention, there is little to no space for scripted sentences, which adds another level of authenticity to your brand.
Additionally, hosting a live Q&A allows you to engage your viewers directly and answer their questions instantly, which only brings them further into your brand and results in more honest feedback.
Conduct a product launch stream
While new product launches are considered to be pretty exciting, most of them are rather exclusive. Oftentimes this includes only a select few, like the members of the press, who get an invite for this type of event. Over the last few years, brands have started to realize that livestreaming product launches brings in a lot of traffic, and in turn, a lot of potential customers. Additionally, viewers get to experience a behind-the-scenes look, which is normally reserved only for VIP attendees and press members. Showcase your startup’s new product, tell people every little detail and as a bonus, you can even host a short Q&A after the launch.
Promote upcoming events
Facebook Live can also be used for event promotion proposes. First, create a post about the event, with more information coming soon. Later, you can start a livestream and share all the details specific to your event. The best course of action is to use a URL which is easily remembered and encourage viewers to invite their friends and all those who might be interested in the event. You can even stream the event itself and share some additional details that don’t get covered by the media and press.
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Final words on Facebook Live
Although the concept of livestreaming isn’t anything new, Facebook has brought the concept into the mainstream and making it less intimidating for entrepreneurs to test the waters. This is excellent news for brands and businesses that can incorporate livestreaming technology into their marketing campaigns, products launches, customer support and more.
Keep in mind that a smartphone camera and microphone are far from perfect, and depending on the size of your business and the budget set out for marketing purposes, you might want to invest in more professional audio and video recording tools in the future. This will greatly improve the quality of your audio and video, and grab your viewers’ attention more easily.
