7 Facebook Live tactics to boost your video marketing strategy

Social Samosa lists 7 Facebook Live tactics for brands to explore and connect with their respective target audience.

Since, its launch in 2016, Facebook Live has seen an incredible growth. It has opened a huge scope for publishers, media companies, celebrities, influencers, and brands to share interesting content with their target audience.

According to Google Trends, 'Facebook Live Stream' search popularity has risen over 330 percent since Facebook Live's rollout. As per Facebook, users watch Facebook Live videos 3x longer than videos that aren’t live. It further states that, 1 in every 5 Facebook videos is a Live broadcast. The engagement rate for Facebook Live is immensely huge, it includes users comment on Facebook Live videos, which is 10x the rate of regular videos.

Social Samosa lists 7 Facebook Live tactics for brands to explore and connect with their respective target audience.

1. Inform your network before hand

If you have an awesome Live session planned, then make sure to inform your network about it, to build appointment viewing. Do proper promotion, giving out details about the profile of the special guest, the topic of the session, with exact date and time when the audience needs to login.

Social Samosa does frequent Facebook Live sessions for their property #SamosaTalks, where they invite industry leaders to share their views on a given topic. Active promotion is done before the session.

.@advitsahdev of @infibeam will be speaking about Redefining marketing in a digital-first world for #SamosaTalks at 3PM IST on Facebook! pic.twitter.com/ZVK6owkFQc

— Social Samosa (@Social_Samosa) August 29, 2017

2. Roll out new product

Facebook Live is a great platform to roll out new product. It is a great strategy to interact and excite the super fans, whom you can please by sharing exclusive feeds.

Chevrolet, introduced the electric 2017 Bolt EV, at the CES 2016 trade show. The video was live and people could see the car.

3. Do fun and quirky stuffs

Fun and quirky sessions can also go viral and have huge chance of increasing engagement. BuzzFeed filmed two employees trying to make a watermelon explode with rubber bands. The 45-minute long video has amassed more than 11-million views till now.

4. Live streaming event

Facebook Live is a great platform to live stream your event to attract people, who can't be present physically. Disney partnered with Airbnb to create a Treehouse to host the premiere of The Jungle Book. They then live-streamed from the red carpet, where fans watched the cast and crew got interviewed.

The partnership between Airbnb and Disney was something, which was not seen before. The approach of taking fans behind the scenes of the movie so they can see how it was made, as well as increasing their curiosity, by showing them short clips from the movie worked really well. In spite of the video being 1 hour and 23 minutes long, it managed to create huge engagement.

5. Behind-the scenes

Users are always interested to get a sneak peak about their favourite brands. It is a great strategy and brands can use this during their Facebook Live sessions.

Dunkin's Donuts provided fans with a behind-the-scenes look into their kitchen for Valentine’s Day, featuring their culinary team preparing a cake made from heart-shaped donuts, and introduced a special February Dunkin’ Hearts Love contest, offering engaged couples a chance to win $10,000 for sharing their story of how their sweetheart proposed.

6. Use Facebook Live for direct second screen engagement

Ellen DeGeneres subjects guests to Facebook Live videos, where they take questions from the Facebook Live audience. Brands in the media and broadcast space can surely explore it and use it to increase their followers and engagement on the platform.

7. Promote movies

Facebook Live is a great platform for promotional purposes. It gives huge scope to create buzz before the release of the film. It has become a very popular marketing strategy with films these days and gives immense scope for films to not only talk about their project, but a chance for fans to connect with their favourite celebrities.

Baahubali 2 did a Facebook Live session just before the release of the movie and it had garnered immense viewership and engagement.

While Facebook Live works great in most cases, you need to be prepared for realtime questions and solutions. Any technical snag is not in your hand, but you can always check things before hand, to avoid any kind of mishap that can tarnish your brand.