Facebook Live and Your Business

Facebook Live is relatively new as it has only been around since 2015, but has recently become one of the best ways to engage with clients and a target audience. There are many ways to utilize this amazing marketing tool. You can encourage people to get involved in the community and come together, show them how to do something, offer clients a questions and answers session, give the audience a unique perspective behind the scenes and create an engaging series. When I think of Facebook Live and the first person that comes to mind is 5News Erika Thomas. She is great at engaging her audience in interactive Facebook Live videos. For example, one of her recent Facebook Live videos was the behind the scenes look at Saving the Moffet Kitty. This video allowed viewers an up close and personal experience of Garret Lewis, Luke Patrick (5 News Chief Photographer) and the UAFS students flying their drones to drop food and ice to the Moffet Kitty stranded on top of the stockyard roofs due to the recent devastating flooding. Check out the video here. By live streaming this event, it allowed her and 5 News the opportunity to engage a different crowd that might not otherwise have watched the news that night. They were able to instantly tell the story and entice viewers to watch the full story at the 10:00 pm newscast. Additionally, this was also a bit refreshing to see after watching weeks of devastating flooding in our area and it brought the community as well as people all over the country together to root for a cat in Moffet, Oklahoma. Just a couple of days after the famous food drop, the video was shared over 82,000 times! You don’t have to be a news personality to bring your community together to get involved. Find something near and dear to your heart, tell people about it on Facebook Live and do something about it allowing your viewers an opportunity to help out as well. Business owners can use Facebook Live to teach their clients how to do something. Do you have a special skill or service? Teach your clients a little something about it. A florist can show their audience how to make a simple bouquet of flowers for their dinner table. This not only provides a client with an opportunity to learn how to do something, but it also establishes you as an expert in your field. Offering clients a questions and answers session is a good way to interact with them. Bobby Swofford, Sports Director for 5 News just did a Q&A Facebook Live video about the Razorback baseball team. Fans were able to ask him about his thoughts on the upcoming games and he was able to interact with them answering their questions immediately.

Photo by KAL VISUALS on Unsplash

Giving your clients a unique behind the scenes perspective is always fun, just as Erika Thomas does. Again, you don’t have to be a TV personality to do this. Going back to the florist example, a florist could give their viewers a unique behind the scenes look at how wedding flowers are created. A builder can also give his or her viewers a behind-the-scenes look at what goes into building a home from the ground up. Just think about your business and what you would like your viewers to see that they wouldn’t otherwise get to see. Creating an engaging series is a great way to gain loyal viewers by offering information on a regular basis. For example, a builder could easily do this when constructing a new home. The first video could be of the footings and rough-ins such as plumbing and electrical, the second would be of the pad being poured, the third of framing, and so on going all the way through to the final completed home. Another great aspect of Facebook Live marketing is the analytical portion of it. After the video is recorded, you can go back and look to see specifically which portion had the most interactions allowing you to see what piqued your viewers’ interests. You can see how many times it has been shared, the number of views and how many people it reached. If you are not taking advantage of the many marketing opportunities that Facebook Live has to offer, it is possible you could be upstaged by one of your competitors that does. Many of our clients at CyberSpyder are a little camera-shy. The best advice we can offer is to get comfortable in front of the camera. The only way to do this is just like anything else—practice, practice, practice. CyberSpyder can help develop a strategy to incorporate Facebook Live into your marketing plan. We can even help coach you in being your best on camera. Contact CyberSpyder today to learn how to get your Facebook Live working for you.