Tips on Hosting a Facebook Live Video
Facebook Live is quickly becoming an engaging way to bring your audience to your events, discussions and activities from their own device.
Like all social media platforms, Facebook Live has best practices which can help enhance the potential for your live video to reach a larger audience. Here are 5 helpful tips to help you plan your next successful live stream.
1. Announce your upcoming live stream
Announcing your upcoming Facebook Live will build excitement and anticipation whether you’re hosting a ministry event, campus meeting or live discussion. If you go through all the trouble to create and host the video, you want people to see it and engage with it!
Facebook is pushing Live videos to your audience, but if you don’t advertise well your Live event will still be just one of the many video notifications your audience will receive that day. Marketing your upcoming video, whether organically or through paid ads, will ensure that a wider audience witnesses your ministry event.
2. Plan ahead
Improvising on a Live video likely will come off amateurish and will push away your audience before you can even get to the meat of what your video is about. On the other side of that, reciting a script word-for-word is also not likely to draw a crowd as it can come across as dry and staged.
The key to a successful Facebook Live video is finding the balance between “prepared” and “spontaneous”. Write out an outline of what your video should entail from questions to be answered to the different scenes you would like to have displayed so that you have direction for your live stream while still allowing for creative freedom.
3. Test it out before broadcasting
As simple as Facebook Live may appear, doing a dry-run will alleviate any potential problems. Test your video and make it private ahead of your Live video event.
Pro-tip: While you can use the regular Facebook app to stream Facebook Live from your personal account, you’ll need to download the Facebook Pages Manager app to stream from your brand’s account. Download Facebook Pages Manager for iOS and Android.
4. Make sure you have the right equipment
During your test run, check the environment you will be streaming from to make sure you are able to have the highest quality video possible. If the setting isn’t well lit, consider bringing in more lights. Instead of relying on a shaky hand, attach the smart phone to a tripod. If your surroundings are too noisy, consider using a small microphone. Testing out your video in a similar environment the day before will assist you in determining what equipment you’ll need.
5. Use a moderator for comments.
Facebook Live isn’t a one-person operation. Have someone moderate during your event to answer questions from your audience and choosing which questions should be given to the host of the event who is on camera. While some questions should be answered live by the host, having a moderator type out answers will ensure that nobody in your audience gets ignored.
