The rise and rise of Facebook Live

Stagnancy is not what the social media giant believes in. Persistently molding the way brands absorbs the process of advertising, Facebook has been the unbeaten revolutionary portal behind digital marketing.

Consistently capitalizing on the current trends of video consumption on various social platforms, Facebook is now aping its fellow competitors Periscope and Meerkat by exercising its Live feature actively.

Revamping digital video consumption through Facebook Live

Borrowing some from social apps in the vicinity like Snapchat and Periscope, Facebook established its Live video streaming feature to enhance the way video is consumed. These live streamed videos on Facebook have addition video filters, the ability to doodle on them or invite a friend to a live video, reactions, and comments.

The social media giant also funneled a place to watch live videos which also showcases a world map that notifies where the live public broadcasts are coming from.  The beauty of the Facebook Live feature is that it’s absolutely imperfect with raw, unedited content put up for display, thus marking a sense of intimacy and making interaction a bit more personal.

The Live Reactions during a live broadcast gives the liberty to viewers to express in real time which also disappears immediately thus allowing broadcasters and other viewers to witness how people are feeling at different stages of the Live video.

Very well aware that social media is a gold mind in the age of communication, but taking a step ahead with this feature, it allows broadcasters to engage with their audience take up their comments and get them answered in real time.

According to the Facebook blog data, users comment over 10 times more on Facebook Live videos as compared to the regular videos.

Facebook Live in comparison to competition

Though aping the existing offerings from apps like Twitter-owned Periscope, Snapchat or Meerkat, Facebook still stands on the higher side as it has the global audience of over 1.5 billion and is offered to people in over 60 countries which in return magnets brands, organizations, and personalities.

In contrast to Periscope or Meerkat, Facebook already has an established audience which saves up resources instead of opening a new account and building the audience from scratch. Meerkat contains transitory video which tends to disappear instantly after the broadcast while in the case of Periscope, similar to Snapchat the video has a life of 24 hours whereas Facebook Live videos are alive until the users’ wishes to get rid of it.

The live comment section is another supportive string of the feature which pushes comments on the screen during the video streaming at a steady pace allowing users to converse in real time.

The inclination of diverse genres towards Facebook Live

With the television budget making a move in the digital world, the Live feature has abundant to offer considering its real-time, raw and interactive content sharing.

Initially, when Facebook Live was launched, you had to be Kim Kardashian, President Obama or maybe The Rock to access this feature as Facebook had verified this only to public figures with the attempt to establish higher video standards.

Eventually, as this became open to all, brands began to hop on the bandwagon leisurely. General Motors became the first to debut this feature as they shared their company’s largest digital investments. The 25-minute video clip received 24,500 views.

The social media giant’s algorithm focuses on live streaming, thus grabbing the attention of broadcasters to draw a wide audience. News organizations are absorbing the most out of it as around the globe publishers like BBC World News, The Verge, Quint, India Today, Buzzfeed, and many more have already plugged on to this feature to hold a strong foot on the digital medium.

Similar to publishing houses, movie marketing is also embracing this feature with movie director Bryan Singer announced a special DVD cut of the X-men film Days of the Future Past through live-streaming. This gave the fans a glimpse of the movie set and the crew scurrying around.

This feature could not escape the eyes of advertisers who pounced on the feature eventually to produce creative content giving insights of their brand through the digital medium. Benefit cosmetic brand runs a weekly live stream every Thursday called ‘Tipsy Tricks with Benefit!’ which discusses beauty topics while sipping on some wine and answers viewer questions. The first two live streams received 42,000 and then 59,000 live viewers.

Dunkin’ Donuts became another brand to utilize the Live feature where it streamed a construction of a donut wedding cake.

This is turning out to be a portal which highlights bloggers and offbeat talents from various fields. Liz Cook, a tattoo artist having over a million followers holds live tattoo sessions with her videos bringing in over 10k views each time. Identifying Brian Barcyzyk from Discovery Channel’s show Venom Hunter runs live streaming once a week where he takes his viewers behind the scenes of his work of finding, capturing and extracting venom out of snakes.  Becoming a bloggers hub, Kara Andretta a baker goes live on her Kara’s Couture Cakes taking viewers through recipes and tutorials.

Turns out Facebook is giving a tight competition to YouTube by shifting the bloggers on its portal, moreover records suggest Facebook video is four times more shareable than YouTube content.

In India with the continual cricket season going on in the first half of 2016, McDowell’s No. 1 Soda outlined a campaign focusing entirely on the Facebook Live feature where they live streamed celebrity Rannvijay and his companions watching the entire India-Australia match.

Talking about sports, back in 2015 the Indian Super League (ISL) also took some support from the feature through the season by displaying some behind the scene access to players and talents live.

Recently Zee TV took up Facebook Live to promote their show  Sa Re Ga Ma Pa to create a first ever real time jam session where 4 of the 12 top contestants from the show got together and took song requests from the fans and jammed on Zee TV’s official handle.

A stream which was divided in two parts gained over 80k views and 1700 comments out of which 80% were real time responses with more than 200 shares.

Future of marketers?

With the world settled in the social-verse of Facebook, the Live feature is here to stay running faster than its competitors and providing the right and diverse audience to brands. The social media giant’s addition 360 degree video viewing feature is only going to spark the marketer-Facebook relationship further.

This is yet another feature which will bloom business on this portal giving them another flick to experiment with their content  and of course make communication between them and their audience crisper and smoother.