Why Going Live is Good for Your Business

Going LIVE is great because your community can interact with you directly during the livestream and gain insight into you, your business, and your expertise. Livestreaming keeps your brand top of mind with your audience and you don’t always need third-party software to do it. Whether you chose to livestream from your desktop or mobile it helps build the know, like and trust factor with your community.

Before you Livestream

Choose Your Platform

When choosing where you will host the Livestream, today there are several options, here are some things to consider. For the purpose of this blog post, we are exploring Zoom, Facebook and Instagram.

• Zoom Live offers you the ability to control who can access the live.

• If your live is longer than 45 mins and you are using Zoom you will want to pay for Zoom premium

• Zoom offers both a meeting space and/or a webinar space (paid option) to host your live

• Going live in a Facebook group also gives you control over who will see the live if you are the admin and have curated who is in the group.

• A Facebook business page or personal page (I do not recommend using a personal page as Facebook recently has been cracking down on business if on a personal page) has the most potential reach, but you can’t control who is watching, same with Instagram live.

• Facebook and Instagram live can be recorded and downloaded to your device. You then can share it without having to host it somewhere else but as it lives on the platforms both have the option to delete your live recording without warning or reason.

Pick a Topic

Pick a topic you can talk about without concern or one that you’d like to learn more about. When it is a topic you, as well as your audience, is interested in your passion for the topic will show up on the live and make it more interesting for everyone.

Once you have chosen a topic, pick a day and time when your analytics say most of your audience is online. You will find these stats under Insights>Audience on most platforms. Let your audience know the day and time that you are going live, you can schedule a live using Facebook/Live/Producer (learn how to use it here) or by sharing the Zoom link with your community. You can also set up an Event on Facebook or use the Event sticker on Instagram Stories to help with reminders.

What to Talk About

Before you go live, one or two days before, post an ASK ME ANYTHING (regarding the topic) on your social media platforms. This is a great way to get your audience not only interested in what you have to say, and they have a reminder that you are going live.

If you do not receive any questions then sit down and write perspective questions that your followers may ask.

I use the ASK ME ANYTHING option on my social media platforms all the time on different topics (in Instagram Stories for example) and write down the questions that were asked for future use. I might use them for a live, a blog, a pre-recorded video or a post.

Also, listen to what people are saying on your posts, I like to ask a question when someone comments to see what they have to say about the content that day. Sometimes that gives me talking points for the live videos that I have done.

Have a list of talking points regarding your topic so that you don’t feel like you have nothing to say when you are in front of the camera. This also helps you feel more prepared and confident on-screen than if you just jump on live and wing it. I like to write 3 – 5 talking points for a live so that I can keep my audience engaged.

During the Livestream

Here are the steps I follow during every Livestream:

• Introduce yourself, you may think your audience knows you, but this may be the first time they are seeing you live

• Introduce your topic, give them a breakdown of what you’ll be talking about during the live

• Encourage them, if it is a public live to invite their friends who might be interested in the topic to join the live. There is a function on most social media platforms that they can click on to invite friends.

• Explain how the live will be run, will you check the chat after every talking point or as you are talking (I recommend the latter)? Do you have someone monitoring the chat for you so that you can keep going without interruption? However, you plan on running the live make sure your audience is aware.

• Encourage your audience to interact using the chat bar, ask them to comment, ask questions or use emojis to respond. I do this several times during my Livestream because people may have just joined partway through a live.

• Don’t say hello to everyone that is joining, maybe if it doesn’t distract from your talk thank people for joining once and a while but make it brief (I will only do this if I have had several people join in say a minute or two)

• In Facebook Live Producer you can pre-schedule a poll or questions that you want to ask during the live. You control when you bring them on screen.

• Do a recap if you have time

• You can bring a guest on with you. I personally enjoy chatting with a guest because it can make the Livestream more interesting and insightful (sometimes). I pre-screen my guests and always have a pre-Livestream chat to make sure we are on the same page about the conversation.

After the Livestream

Once you have gone live you will want to follow the prompts of your chosen platform. If you are using Facebook Live Producer you will have several options available to you, including making a clip of your Livestream. This option lets you clip a short segment from your live broadcast. Simply type in a title and click Create New Clip. Now you have a clip you can share on social media as a teaser video.

Pro Tip: Before posting the finished Livestream to your page for other viewers to watch later take a selfie with your phone and use that image as the thumbnail for the video. Facebook sometimes auto-generates the most embarrassing image as a thumbnail to share on your recorded live post.

Livestreaming for Business in a Nutshell

With Livestreaming, you can showcase your business and brand operations or expertise in a transparent and accountable way. Livestreaming can be rather unpredictable but can connect with your community in a way that other content just doesn’t. Unlike pre-recorded video Livestreaming offers a certain charm for your community because of how authentic and genuine it is. With more community trust, your business also gains more influence in your field. Your advice becomes more valuable.

Livestreaming also creates real engagement because it allows for real-time interaction, which creates an opportunity for you and your audience to ask each other questions and share opinions instantly. This connection builds a better relationship between you and your community.

Your first Livestream might be awkward and uncomfortable but the more lives you do the easy it becomes. (My first live was unplanned, with no notes and with bad Internet 🤦‍♀️).