How To Use Facebook Live To Build an Audience
There are just over 1.68 billion active monthly Facebook users. It is by far the most popular social networking website in the world despite all the controversy that surrounds its policies, but perhaps the controversy is part of the big plan !
There are many different features that make Facebook such an amazing site, the main one being that it is extremely user-friendly, meaning that literally, anyone can use it (As long as they are over 13!). One of the newer and extremely popular features on Facebook is Facebook Live.
What is Facebook Live and how can you use Facebook live to build an audience?
Facebook Live is a newish feature on Facebook that allows people to record themselves whilst talking live to a group of people from all over the world. . Obviously, you can control what group of people are able to see this live stream. If a lot of people use it to just have a chat with their friends on Facebook or to show something that is happening at the current time that may capture a few people’s attention, Facebook live are best used professionally to speak about your project, your products, your offer and generally communicate with your audience.
The feature is becoming more and more popular because Facebook naturally favors lives on their platform, however, and have used and continue to use Facebook Live to promote themselves and grow an audience. Some people use it to showcase their skills, such as singing or sports related content.
Other people use it to showcase funny events but this too can be part of a concerted , well built sequence to connect with your audience and make them come back over andover again as soon as you are on .
Can anyone use Facebook live to build an audience?
Yes! That is the great thing about this feature, you don’t need anything to excel at using this.
Of course having certain things makes it a whole lot easier, such as already having a large audience or having equipment that is useful when it comes to videoing things. It should be noted that it is relatively difficult to grow an audience, it takes a lot of perseverance, but if you are willing to put in the hard work it can be extremely rewarding.
Below are several tips to help you build a Facebook Live audience.
1. Be Consistent
This is perhaps the most important aspect of Facebook Live. Try to create a schedule that you follow week in and week out. Having a schedule that others can see helps you out a lot simply it shows that you are a regular. If you are a regular and someone happens to see what you are doing and enjoys watching it, they will see they you do this consistently and they may, in fact, become a regular member of the audience. If you have a schedule you have to commit to following it.
Unless you have a very good reason, it isn’t wise to not follow this schedule. This shows that you aren’t as professional as you are portraying yourself to be which can be detrimental to the entire building of your audience. Be consistently online and you will give yourself the best opportunity to shine and grow. It also helps to be consistent with your planning and what you are doing.
Say you are putting on a show or streaming a game or something like that, no one really wants to watch the same content every single time.
Try your best to offer something new and fresh every time you live stream. Obviously, there is bound to be moments where it is inevitable that you’ll repeat content, but just try and make sure there is as little as possible. Repeated content gets stake really quick.
2. Be Genuine
The great thing about a live stream is that it gives you the opportunity to interact with people. In my opinion, this is much more valuable than any pre-made video could be.
Being able to interact with the audience just gives you more chances to impress them, which gives you more opportunities to turn them into regular viewers. A live stream lacks the polish of an edited video.
Perhaps this is a negative thing but it is also a good thing. The rawness of a live stream gives the audience a chance to see you in a genuine way. Obviously, it gives you a higher chance to mess things up, as long as you don’t do anything super weird and you aren’t boring and interact with your crowd, you are bound to capture a few regulars every single time you stream. People love genuine people. Be one.
3. Practice
It is no secret, live streams are extremely scary. You give people the opportunity to see you without all the fake theatrics that a video offers you. This is why the first few times you live stream on Facebook you’ll likely be really nervous and won’t be as comfortable with the crowd as you could be.
This is natural, simply because it is something that is a new feeling, just like skydiving and climbing high things. If you don’t do something consistently you are going to feel fear. As long as you keep on focusing on the long term and trying to improve every chance that you get, it will gradually get easier and easier, and you’ll become more comfortable with the crowd, which in turn gives you the opportunity to put on a better show for the audience.
I can’t stress enough how important practice is, even when it comes to things such as this. Practising getting better at live streaming also helps you in other aspects of life as well. The confidence you’ll gain from getting better and better at doing this is exponential.
4. Plan every Live Stream
It is sad how often people fail to plan.
If you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail.
It is so much to live stream when you have a plan and an idea of what you want to accomplish from the stream because you use Facebook Live to build an audience!
Of course, there can be some circumstances where you may be able to just completely wing it, but you’d either have to be extremely comfortable with your live streaming skills or be intoxicated. Hopefully, if this does ever happen it’s because of the first reason. Planning the stream and what you are going to do just offers a better experience for everyone. If you are first starting out with streaming, it is essential that you plan.
You don’t have any experience with streaming, so you need to have a plan and a backup plan so you always have an idea of what to do and what to fall back on. Don’t feel silly or dumb for creating a plan. In fact every professional has at least an outline of what they want to present during the facebook live
5. Invest in Equipment
This isn’t an essential thing to do, but it is always nice to have good equipment to work with. Of course, the majority of people will just use their smartphones or computers to do this, which is perfectly fine, but if you are dead serious about building your audience, you’ll do whatever you can to gain a great advantage.
This is one of those things that will just give you that extra layer of quality to the rest of your live stream. Having a stream that is crystal clear is much more appealing than a stream that has low-quality video and sound. It may cost a tad more than what you’d like to spend, but if you continue to build this audience of yours and commit to Facebook Live, then the pay off can be amazing.
6. Advertise
There is nothing wrong with a little bit of advertisement to make sure that your live streams are getting as much exposure as possible. This is one of those other small things that could make a big difference. You want to get to the point where a high amount of the people that stumble upon you and watch your stream get hooked and want to watch the rest of the things that you create.
The tough thing should be trying to get people to visit that Facebook Live stream of yours. Advertisement helps this a lot. There are many different ways that you can advertise. Perhaps make a teaser video that gives the audience a small glimpse of what’s coming up. Perhaps even just choose a photo that does the same thing as the video. The possibilities are endless. Good advertisement goes a long way these days. People watch what they want to, make sure you are what they want to watch.
7. Experiment
Although you may have a specific genre or type of theme you enjoy live streaming, don’t be afraid to try new things out and see what can happen. For an example, if you like to stream videos of you singing RnB songs and you only ever really sing these type of songs, try singing a song that is completely different, but put your own type of twist on it.
At the worst people will say that they prefer you to just sing what you normally do, and at the best, the majority love it and viola, you are able to comfortably sing this new type of genre, and you can also try out other genres too!
Don’t limit yourself to just one type of thing, this is how you become bland. You need to try and change things up every now and again. It’ll also help you with your confidence quite a lot as well, simply because you would’ve done something you’ve never done before, how crazy is that!
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Mini course Use Facebook Live to create a dedicated Audience
8. Analyze
One of the great aspects of Facebook Live is that you can look at the stats after every single live stream. You are able to see many different things such as how many views you had when you had the most views and all that type of good stuff. From this type of information, you can actually tell what type of things people liked and what they didn’t.
Say a lot of people leave when you do something, in particular, it shows you that quite a lot of people didn’t like what you did, so you can re-look at what that was and change it or even just try not to do anything like it in future live streams. Reviewing is one of the more important things in life, make sure that you review your live streams as often as you can, you’ll be surprised how much you actually learn.
9. Collaborate
Don’t be afraid to seek out other people who enjoy doing live streams too! This is a great idea because it gives each person exposure to the other person’s fan base, and who knows, the two parties may actually feel like they make great content together and decide to work together a lot more in the future.
This can be daunting, but it is a really effective way to get your name out there as a struggling artist who is trying to gain as much exposure as possible. It is important to note that you should be careful who you collaborate with. More often than not you will people that don’t really care what they can do for you, only what you can do for them. Don’t just offer your services to anyone. If you try hard enough, you will be able to find a gem amongst all of the stones.
The great things about Facebook Live streaming is that finding a great person to collaborate with isn’t hard because they all have so much content available to look at, you’ll be able to dig around and find someone you think you’ll work well with. The possibilities are there.
10. Work Smart and consistently
At the end of the day, nothing else matters if you don’t dedicate yourself and work hard. So many people these days swear that they are extremely hard workers, but more often than not they are all talk. Make sure that you aren’t all talk. There are so many opportunities out there, especially from Facebook Live. People can appreciate a genuine, hard working person as well. So make that something that people see you as. Someone who works hard and is relentless about what they do. Trust me, there is no better compliment than someone telling you that you are a very hard worker. It makes you feel really great.
These ten tips can help you create and build your Facebook Live audience.
It is definitely going to a hard thing to do, but as long as you follow these tips and become relentless, there is no doubt that you will gain many different people who enjoy watching your content and will continue to watch everything that you decide to release.
Work hard, stay focused and make sure that you never ever think about giving up. It takes time to build audiences but this way is one of the fastest possible
