How Do You Know When Someone Is Live on Facebook

Since its debut in 2016, live streaming video has exploded in popularity. In fact, 82% of people would adopt a live video over reading a social post. Information technology offers the opportunity to forge a more accurate and valuable connection with audiences.

Information technology's no secret that livestreaming has taken off in a major fashion. In fact, the full number of hours watched on major streaming platforms grew 99% from 2019 to 2020. Facebook users have eagerly been taking advantage of the popularity of alive streaming. Now, one in every five videos on Facebook is live.

In this mail, we'll walk through:

• How to circulate on Facebook Alive via your mobile device
• How to go alive on Facebook from a desktop
• How to analyze your live video's operation
• Tips and tricks for getting the well-nigh out of the platform

What is Facebook Alive?

Facebook Live is a Facebook feature used to broadcast real-fourth dimension video to Facebook. Live broadcasters can employ this content to appoint their audition during moments and events that are important to them. Going alive provides existent-fourth dimension appointment and tin can assistance increase exposure and build relationships with your audition.

Facebook Alive is a feature of Facebook that lets users livestream direct to the social network platform. Viewers can react, share, and comment during the stream. A recording of the video is as well published to the page or profile and so it can exist watched over again afterward.

Why are marketers getting so excited most Facebook Live? Considering it'due south a fun and fairly simple way for them to employ the power of video to communicate their make stories and build authentic relationships with fans and followers — in real-time.

Yet, for such a simple concept, Facebook Live has a lot of piddling nuances that marketers will need to learn if they desire to get the most out of the platform. This guide volition assistance yous learn the best tricks that can make a big departure in how many people come across your live broadcast, how they engage with it, and how it performs.

Facebook Alive started as a mobile-only broadcasting characteristic, but at present, Facebook Pages tin can broadcast from either mobile devices or desktop computers. Nosotros'll go over how to broadcast from mobile and desktop devices in the sections below.

How to Use Facebook Live

Facebook Live videos are public, so viewers tin can lookout man on any device where they accept admission to Facebook but don't need an business relationship. Users can go live on Facebook from a contour, a Page, a group, or an event. Starting a livestream from the app versus a spider web browser will be a little different, cheque out the instructions for each below.

How to Become Alive on Facebook From the Facebook App

Step 1: Go to the profile, Page, grouping, or upshot where y'all desire to become live.

Footstep 2: Click What's on your mind? if you lot're on a profile and Create a mail service if yous're on a folio. This should open the postal service options.

Step iii: Click Alive video in the postal service options.

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Stride 4: Tap where it says Tap to add a description to add information well-nigh the video.

Step 5: Employ the buttons on the lesser to configure the settings and whatever features or tools yous want to use during the stream.

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Step 6: Tap Start Live Video when y'all are ready.

How to Go Live on Facebook From a Spider web Browser

Step 1: On your Facebook homepage, you should come across a Live or Live Video option. If you are on a contour, it volition be under What'south on your mind? If y'all are on annihilation else, it will be under Create Post. The icon will look like i of these below.

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Step 2: Cull to but Go alive or to Create live video result.

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Step 3: And then, choose details for your video. These include a start time, a title and clarification, who to invite as a co-host, and various audio and video controls.

Step four: Click Go Live in the bottom left corner when you lot are set.

Facebook Alive Tools

Facebook offers a lot of features for you to further connect with your audience during your broadcast. Utilizing these tools will help boost engagement and create the all-time possible experience for your viewers. You can mix and match them to serve your stream in the best way for your business organisation.

• Live Polls: You tin create a live poll beforehand to share when you go live. So, you can encounter your audition'southward responses in real-fourth dimension during the stream.
• Featured Links: Adding ane or multiple featured links to the stream to promote your website or other sources.
• Live in Stories: These allow you to share your streams directly to Facebook Stories to accomplish more than of your audience.
• Alive Comment Moderation: Manage the conversation that happens in the comments of your livestream. You can limit who is immune to comment and how frequently with this feature. And, y'all can even choose a specific viewer to besides moderate comments on your behalf.
• Front Row: This feature allows you lot to highlight your top fans in a special section of your stream. You can give them a special shoutout to show appreciation for them while you're live.
• Badges: These are a measure of how much your fans are engaging with your content. Fans can earn badges by interacting with your content, whether it's sending "Stars" or tuning in to your Facebook Live videos.
• Donations: Qualified pages in sure locations can add together a "Donate" button to their live video. Nonprofits using Facebook's payment platform don't have to pay a fee, and then they go 100% of the donations.
• Live With: This is a co-broadcasting feature that allows you to host your Facebook Live video with multiple guests.
• Live Shopping: If you take products for sale on Facebook, this feature allows you lot to add together product listings to feature during your livestream.

For more help with going live on Facebook, bank check out this video! And don't forget that a recording of the livestream is too published to the platform where you went live. Having that content is great considering you can download and repurpose it for further use.

How to Analyze Your Live Video's Performance

How to Access Video Analytics on a Facebook Business organization Page

Step one: To get started analyzing your Facebook Alive broadcasts, head to the Insights tab in the left-hand cavalcade of your make'south Facebook page:

Pace 2: Select the Videos section of your analytics.

Step iii: From there, scroll down to the Summit Videos section and cull a video from that menu to look into. (Note: We didn't have any videos posted to the page we used in this example. If you do take videos, y'all'll see them appear hither.)

Now, let's swoop into the nitty-gritty.

The performance analytics available for Facebook Live videos are similar to those of normal videos on Facebook, with some bang-up additions.

• For Pre-recorded videos: Facebook lets you clarify minutes viewed, unique viewers, video views, 10-second views, average % completion, and a breakdown of reactions, comments, and shares.
• For Facebook Live videos: Facebook lets you analyze all the metrics listed above, plus peak live viewers, total views, average watch fourth dimension, people reached, and the demographics of who watched your video.

In addition to all of these static numbers, you can click into each metric to see how it changed over time when the video was live. For example, if we click into Elevation Live Viewers, nosotros'll see this interactive graph of video viewers over time:

You can even meet who your typical viewer was during your broadcast, based on their Facebook profile information:

Now that you've got the steps down, let'south get into some tips and tricks.

The last thing you lot'd want is to starting time a live video then be lost. It'due south alive, so at that place are no do-overs or chances to get-go over. And so, gear up yourself or your host every bit much equally possible. Outline what the video volition entail and follow the rest of the tips below. Besides, check out these great examples of Facebook Alive videos from various companies.

In that location are a lot of little things you can do to squeeze the most out of your Facebook Live videos.

1. Brush up on Facebook Live best practices.

Marketers have and so much opportunity to reach a wider audience on Facebook Live, and so it'southward worth committing to learning how to run a Alive effectively.

In our detailed Marketer's Guide to Facebook Live, we cover essential best practices on how to plan, run, and clarify the results of a business-run Facebook Live. Download the ebook to brush up on these all-time practices.

two. Test out alive video using the "Merely me" privacy setting.

If y'all want to play around with live broadcasting without actually sharing information technology with anyone else, you tin can change the privacy setting so you're the only one who can run into it — just similar with whatsoever other Facebook post.

To switch to Only me, expect for the privacy settings. Then, you should see the options and exist able to select Only me from this list below.

three. Infinite out live videos with other Facebook posts.

The art of the organic reach on Facebook has inverse over time, but you lot can nonetheless accept advantage of it. A big manner to accomplish this is to maintain a mixture of regular Facebook posts and Facebook Alive videos. The live videos are the major pull, as they tend to garner more engagement. Then, spacing them out will maximize the organic reach of all of your posts.

4. Keep reintroducing yourself.

When y'all kickoff get-go the video, take a minute to introduce yourself and what the video's virtually. But proceed in listen that when y'all first start live streaming, you may have goose egg people watching. Even a few seconds in, you could only accept a handful of viewers. Every bit people observe your video on their News Feeds, they'll join in — but that means you'll desire to reintroduce yourself a 2nd, 3rd, and even a 4th fourth dimension to catch people upwardly.

5. Make the video visually engaging.

You have to be visually engaging — non just at the very beginning of your broadcast (although that'll be important for when folks view the video afterward), but throughout the video as more than and more people join in.

The more visually engaging you can exist, the more you can entice people to stick around. That means keeping the camera moving and non merely sitting in 1 place.

Not only volition you get more viewers this manner, merely y'all'll also become your broadcast ranked higher in other people's News Feeds. Facebook started monitoring signals of video engagement — like turning on the audio, switching to full-screen mode, or enabling high definition — interpreting that as users enjoying the video. As a event, they've tweaked the algorithm so videos that people appoint with in these ways will appear college up on the feed.

6. Make it spontaneous.

What makes a live video special? The spontaneous, interactive nature of it. People dear the ability to collaborate, and they honey the novelty of viewing someone in a alive moment when anything could happen. In many ways, it'south the new reality TV.

These moments are what make alive video special, and they're exactly what differentiates it from scripted, edited, or otherwise pre-recorded videos. Embrace the platform. Banter is always, e'er skillful.

7. Don't worry about mistakes or stutters.

Spontaneity works — even if your Facebook Live doesn't become according to plan.

Permit'south face it, we're all homo. And when humans and technology mix, there can sometimes be technical difficulties.

If you're recording a live video, things might become wrong — your equipment could malfunction, you could lose your train of thought, or you could get photobombed by a random passerby. You tin can't call "cut" if things happen — you lot take to coil with them and keep filming and talking.

The good news? These things assistance keep your broadcast human and real. If y'all wobble your phone while filming, express mirth and telephone call it out. If you forget what you lot were proverb, brand a joke. The key is to keep the broadcast like a fun conversation, and so if mistakes happen, keep information technology low-cal and keep the lines of communication open with your viewers.

For instance, if you make a mistake during your Facebook Alive, ask viewers to write in the comments if they've made the same mistake, also.

eight. Encourage viewers to Like and share the video.

One of the main means Facebook's algorithm ranks a post is past how many people Like and share it. The more people who Like and share your live circulate, the more it'll show upwardly in people's News Feeds.

But when people are watching a video, they may be more distracted from Liking and sharing it than they would a text or photo postal service. (That'due south something the folks at Facebook noticed about video content early on, which is why they began monitoring other video engagement signals every bit well, like turning on the volume.)

9. Engage with commenters, and mention them by proper name.

The number of comments on your broadcast is another mode to get Facebook to give it a higher relevancy score, making information technology more probable to bear witness up on people'due south News Feeds. Then encourage your viewers to comment, and engage with people who are commenting by answering their questions and calling them out by proper noun. Not simply will it get more people to comment, only it's likewise a fun way to include your viewers in the live experience, which could make them stick around longer.

Plus, your audience volition be thrilled to hear you mention their proper name and respond their questions when you lot are alive.

ten. Have someone else watching and responding to comments from a desktop computer.

When you're the ane holding the camera for a Facebook Live video, it's really hard to run across the comments popping upwardly on the mobile screen. If the comments are coming in fast, it's especially easy to lose sight of them as they disappear below the fold. Plus, you're probably occupied by recording and entertaining viewers.

Because of this, it's always a skillful idea to accept an additional person logged into the chief business relationship to monitor the comments on a desktop estimator. That mode, they tin take care of responding so the person recording the video tin concentrate on creating a bully experience.

11. Subtitle your circulate in the comments section.

Your viewers may be tuning in and out to sentry your video during the piece of work solar day, or they might only be watching your video without audio. Either fashion, periodically subtitling the video in the comments section is a great way to proceed people engaged. This besides allows people who are tuning in late to take hold of upwards on what'southward going on.

12. Ask viewers to subscribe to Facebook Live notifications.

In addition to asking for Likes, shares, and comments, inquire viewers to subscribe to live notifications. To do that, all viewers accept to practise is click the small, downwardly-facing arrow in the top right-hand corner of the alive video post, and choose "Turn On Notifications."

Yous can likewise ask them to Like your brand on Facebook, which will make information technology more than likely that they'll be notified of your side by side alive circulate.

xiii. Broadcast for at least x minutes.

Every bit soon as y'all brainstorm recording your live video, you'll start slowly but surely showing up in people's News Feeds. The longer yous broadcast — specially as Likes, comments, and shares get-go coming in — the more than likely people are to find your video and share it with their friends.

Considering timing is such an important factor for engagement in these live videos, nosotros recommend that you go live for at least 10 minutes, although you lot can stay alive for up to xc minutes for a given video.

14. Say farewell before ending your video.

Before you terminate your alive circulate, be sure to finish with a closing line, similar "Thanks for watching" or "I'll exist going live again soon."

15. Add a link to the description subsequently.

Once you've finished the alive broadcast, you tin ever go back and edit the description, change the privacy settings, or delete the video, merely like yous would whatever other post.

You tin can add a trackable link to the description in the post, which can direct future viewers to your live video series folio, the site of whatever campaign y'all're using the video to promote, or somewhere else.

We hope this has been a helpful guide. We'll keep you lot posted with any new developments and tips for connecting with your audience in more than cool ways.

Use Facebook Live to Its Full Potential

Social media may have been invented for fun, but information technology's grown into an essential business tool. Facebook every bit a social network is peculiarly valuable for the ways it lets you connect to an audience, and Facebook Live is a nifty extension of that. Use it to the benefit of your business as a fashion to promote your product, build brand sensation, or grow your audience.

Editor's annotation: This post was originally published in May 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Originally published Dec 31, 2021 seven:00:00 AM, updated December 31 2021

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Source: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/facebook-live-guide