Marketing experts advise that video is going to very big in the marketing world this year, so expect to see lots of companies trying to compete with video masters YouTube and Facebook to make the most of the opportunity that this brings.
More and more businesses of all sizes will be able to use video to promote their services and products. Gone are the days where you would have to pay a video production company thousands of pounds to produce a video for you to upload onto your website. Of course, these are still good options for high quality video production and still well used by corporate businesses, but if you are a small business with a small budget, the door to video creation has now been opened wide.
Facebook Live has taken the social media world by storm. Launched in August 2015, it was initially made available only to celebrities. Once the potential had been realized, it was rolled out to everyday users in early 2016.
So what exactly is Facebook Live?
It is basically a live video stream that you play to your Facebook friends. If you are recording through your mobile, simply go to your news feed and click on the ‘Live’ button at the top. Alternatively, go to your profile and click on the status button that allows you to type a status and press the Live Video option. You can then start recording and anyone that you are friends with on Facebook will be able to view the real-time video.
If you want to share it with more people, then you should update your privacy settings to make it public. If you want to practice creating a live video, you can set the privacy settings to allow only yourself to view it.
There are a few important factors to think about if you are planning to use Facebook Live for your marketing strategy. Obviously, you will use other marketing channels such as email marketing and website content to create as well, so getting the balance of how much resource to set out for each one is key. You can get statistics from sites such as Statista.com that can help you decide which channels will help you get the highest ROI.
Another important consideration is the planning of your live stream. You don’t want to broadcast yourself delivering an unpracticed, completely unplanned video that makes you look like you haven’t a clue what you’re doing. If its just for fun, then ad hoc live streaming works but unless you’re a trained TV presenter, don’t expect an unrehearsed video of ad lib content to go well and don’t expect it to enhance your brand. It could easily do the very opposite.
So it is important to plan your content, give your video a mapped out content structure for you to use as guidance throughout your video. This will ensure that you cover everything that you need to without going off at a complete tangent. And practice! Don’t just jump in at the deep end.