Thea Partridge — January 11, 2017 On April 6th 2016, in a bid to ‘make it easier to create, share and discover live video,’ Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook Live to the masses. In one fell swoop he made it possible for anyone with a smart phone to broadcast their messages to anyone in the world!
For the Marketing and PR professional, this opened up a whole host of new opportunities to get our brand messages heard! With this free technology available at our fingertips, the potential beneficial broadcasting opportunities are endless, from interviews and events, through to seminars and product announcements. However, as with any form of PR, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail as there are many potential pitfalls with this type of promotional activity! So here are 9 key things you should consider before embarking on a Facebook Live promotion.
- Create a quality livestream experience. Your main objective should be to present your brand message in a positive light, so ensure that you create an experience your fans and potential customers will enjoy. To do this it’s important to consider who your brand representative/s will be and be sure that they are prepped and ready to ooze your brand ethos throughout the duration of the broadcast.
- Carefully consider your broadcast content and the angle you’ll be taking. If it’s a collaborative piece, then write a crib sheet in advance that states the key messages that you want people to include, any action you want to include and a proposed sequence of events/timings. Then, prior to going live, carry out a run through to ensure everyone is familiar with what they should be talking about and where they will be positioned etc.
- Maximise cross promotional opportunities. If possible, team up with one of your business partners and promote a shared message to benefit both companies. In doing so, you stand to gain some additional Facebook fans from your partners’ page, or vice versa, depending whose page you broadcast from.
- Promote your promotion. You should aim to make several announcements about your live broadcast prior to going live to ensure your followers are aware. If it’s a cross promotional broadcast, be sure that you and your partner align your advanced promotional messaging regarding the go-live time.
- Think in advance about your heading for the promotion. It must be compelling yet accurate enough to make people want to tune in! This is pretty important!
- Be ready for live engagement! People who ‘tune in’ to watch your broadcast can (and hopefully will) engage with you in real time, so maximise this opportunity and have someone prepped and ready to act as your brand community manager. This is an incredible forum in which to answer any questions your community may have and to get a real live feel for their brand affinity.
- Plan how you will reuse the content you create. When you finish the broadcast it will be published to your page, so anyone who missed it can view it there. However, if it was a successful piece of content, you may also wish to utilise it for other channels to maximise the outcomes of your efforts.
- Don’t fall victim to technical issues. You will need a stable Wi-Fi connection to avoid any embarrassing drops in broadcasting. Also make sure you have a smart phone with enough charge to last throughout the promotion – if in doubt take a portable charger. It’s also important to check the sound quality prior to go live and to minimise background noises.
- Go into it with your eyes open! As with any form of live PR, there’s an element of risk involved in running a Facebook Live promotion, it is after all live! Anyone could potentially say or do anything, so it’s important to have a team who you trust working with you.
Whilst there are things that could potentially go wrong, there are also massive benefits to be reaped, so as long as you have done your due diligence in your preparations, I’m sure you will create some fantastic new and engaging brand content! We’d love to hear how you get on!
For more insight into this exciting marketing communication channel, check out what Facebook themselves have to say here.
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