It’s no secret that live streaming saw a resurgence during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.
It proved to be a valuable tool for making and maintaining human connections when I hosted in-person webinars and virtual meetings at my last company—and it hasn’t slowed down.
Market Research Future Predicts that the live streaming market in the United States will grow from about $90 billion in 2024 to nearly $560 billion in 2032.
Facebook Live is the second most popular platform for live streaming in the United States.
Want to learn how to livestream on Facebook? In this article I will explain to you in detail how this works and give you valuable tips on how to get the most out of your videos.
Table of contents
What is Facebook Live?
Facebook Live is Facebook’s native feature for broadcasting real-time videos. Viewers can react, share and comment during the broadcast, and the streamer can react in real time. A video recording will also be published so that it can be viewed again later. Going live on Facebook provides the opportunity for personal interaction with your audience and can help increase awareness and build relationships.
As a marketer, my favorite thing about Facebook Live videos is that they are public. This means viewers can watch on any device with access to Facebook, even without an account.
But not all can stream. Users with personal profiles can go live on Facebook from their timeline, a group, or an event using a computer or mobile device.
However, I recently noticed that Pages (i.e. businesses and marketers) are faced with more bureaucracy.
As of: June 2024, Facebook pages can only go live when they have been active for over 60 days, And You have at least 100 followers.
Facebook made this change to combat spam and ensure those posting content are legitimate. So if you haven’t met this minimum yet, be sure to check out this guide to help you increase followers on your business pages.
Why are marketers so excited about Facebook Live?
The benefits of Facebook Live
Well, for one, Facebook has the largest audience of any social media platform over 3 billion active users. That does that potential reach of Facebook Live immensely.
Additionally, Facebook truly prioritizes video on the platform, meaning Facebook Live is more likely to appear in the news feed and in front of your audience than other static media.
That means increased Brand awareness and visibility.
Live streaming is also just one funny, unforgettable Ability to communicate your brand stories and Build authentic relationships with fans and followers.
Marketers can go live on Facebook to make company announcements, host interviews, ask on-site questions, conduct demonstrations or tutorials, expand the reach of in-person events (like HubSpot did below), and overall engage audiences in a more personal, human way way to address.
Besides, it’s everything free of charge.
Although it’s a fairly simple concept, Facebook Live has many little intricacies that marketers need to learn to get the most out of the platform.
This guide will help you learn the best tricks to make a difference in how many people see your live broadcast, how they interact with it, and how it performs.
How to stream live on Facebook using Facebook Live
Facebook Live was originally a mobile-only broadcast feature, but is now also available on mobile devices and desktop computers. In the following sections, you’ll learn how to go live on Facebook across multiple devices and apps.
(After meeting the previously discussed criteria, of course.)
Note: These instructions were created based on the iOS mobile apps. The exact steps and interface in the Android apps may vary.
How to go live on Facebook using the Facebook mobile app
Step 1: Go to the profile, page, group, or event where you want to go live.
Step 2: Click “What’s on your mind?” to open the post options.
Step 3: In the post options, click “Live Video.”
Step 4: Tap the “Tap to add description” spot to add information about the video. You can also tag friends or other pages, a place or a feeling/activity.
Note: By default the video will be moved to Facebook Story, but this can be changed to a group if it acts as a page.
Step 5: Tap “Go Live.” When you’re finished, tap Finish to end the live stream.
How to go live on Facebook with the Meta Business Suite Mobile App
The Meta Business Suite app is another way to go live from a Facebook page. This app can not be used to transfer to personal profiles.
Step 1: In the Meta Business Suite app, select the page you want to go live on by clicking the logo/photo next to “Home” on the app home screen.
Step 2: With this option selected, click the blue plus (+) button at the bottom of the screen to open your post options.
Step 3: Select Live.
Step 4: Add a description to your video. You can tag friends or other pages, location information, or a feeling/activity.
Step 5: Tap “Go Live.” When you’re finished, tap Finish to end your broadcast.
How to go live on Facebook from a web browser
You go live via a web browser using your computer’s built-in camera or an external camera and streaming software (also called an encoder). Restream).
Follow these steps:
Step 1: You should see a “Live” or “Live Video” option on your Facebook homepage. When you’re in a profile, you’ll find it under “What’s on your mind?” The icon is a red camera.
Step 2: Select “Go Live.” This page also allows you to “Create Live Video Event” for future use.
Step 3: Fill out the details for your video.
When you use your webcam, this also includes the video and audio tools you use, as well as the title and description of your video. Here you can also choose where you want your video to be posted. You can choose from:
- Your timeline
- A page that you manage
- A group that you are in
If you use a streaming service, you enter your title, description and location, but Facebook provides you with a streaming key that you can use in your encoder. Take this key back to your streaming service and complete the necessary setup steps there.
Step 4: Click “Go Live” at the bottom left when you’re ready.
Pro tip: During your broadcast, you can use the “Dashboard” page to create viewer polls, view and respond to comments, and manage and improve your overall engagement.
Real-time engagement like this makes live content exciting and different, so don’t ignore it.
I know that every time I’ve gone live on Facebook, viewers have loved hearing verbal answers to their questions or comments on the broadcast. (And I can’t lie; I loved hearing them during the shows I watched.)
For more information about the tools Facebook provides to make your broadcast more engaging, see our next section.
Facebook Live tools
Facebook offers many features to help you engage even more with your audience during your broadcast.
Using these tools will help increase engagement and create the best possible experience for your viewers. You can combine them to best deliver your stream for your business.
- Live polls: You can create a live poll in advance to share when you go live. You can then see your audience’s reactions in real time during the stream and use the results to spark a live discussion.
- Recommended Links: Adding one or more featured links to the stream to promote your website or other sources.
- Live in stories: This allows you to share your streams directly to Facebook Stories to reach more of your audience.
- Live comment moderation: Manage the conversation in the comments of your live stream. This feature allows you to limit who can comment and how often. You can even select a specific viewer to moderate comments on your behalf.
- First row: This feature allows you to highlight your top fans in a dedicated section of your stream. You can give them a special greeting during your performance to show them your appreciation.
- Badge: This is a measure of how strongly your fans are engaging with your content. Fans can earn badges by interacting with your content, whether by sending stars or watching your Facebook Live videos.
- Donate: Qualified Pages can add a Donate button to their live video in certain locations. Nonprofits that use Facebook’s payment platform do not have to pay a fee and therefore receive 100% of donations.
- Live with: This is a co-broadcasting feature that allows you to host your Facebook Live video with multiple guests.
- Live Shopping: If you have products for sale on Facebook, you can use this feature to add product listings to be featured during your live stream.
- Messenger Rooms transfer: You can turn your Messenger Rooms into co-hosted Facebook Lives with up to 50 people.
- In-stream ads: In-stream ads are automatically added to the streams you upload to monetize your content.
- Subscriptions to Live: Your audiences can subscribe to your content and receive exclusive benefits as part of their subscription.
For more help with going live on Facebook, watch our video:
Remember that a live stream recording will also be published on the website where you went live. This content is great because you can Download it and use it for further use.
How to analyze your Facebook Live video performance
Facebook Live video insights help you understand how people are engaging with your live streams so you can optimize your live strategy for maximum impact.
The performance analytics available for Facebook Live videos are similar to those of regular videos on Facebook, but with some nice additions.
- Video performance: An overview of your total video views and engagement (likes, shares, comments, etc.), minutes viewed, and number of new followers. ;
- Benchmarking: A comparison of your live metrics with other creators and companies in the same industry
- Audience: An overview of audience demographics (biographical information) and other statistics such as growth rate, number of video views from followers, and video views from non-followers.
- Loyalty: These are statistics about your number of returning viewers, the videos that inspire people to return to your Page, and the number of engaged followers on your Live.
- Retention: You’ll learn where your viewers come from, which traffic sources drive the most watch time, and how long people watch (by 3-second, 15-second, and 1-minute views).
- Earnings: These stats show how much you earn during your videos from in-stream ads, CPM, RPM, monetizable 1-minute views, and money you earn from stars awarded by subscribers (if applicable).
The most comprehensive performance data for your Facebook Live videos can be found in Meta Business Suite:
But I wouldn’t blame you if it gets a little overwhelming; There’s a lot of information there.
To quickly learn how my content is performing on Facebook, I usually click the “Insights” button underneath each post.
How to access video analytics on a Facebook business page
Step 1: Go to the left column of your page and select Meta Business Suite.
Step 2: Select “Insights” from the menu on the left.
Step 3: Click “Content” and then set your media type to “Video.”
Step 4: Dive deeper into your insights by selecting filters and scrolling down the page. (Note: There are no videos posted on the page we used in this example. If you have videos, they will appear here.)
Step 5: To view insights for a specific video, click the video title in your content list. From here you can view metrics both at the time of the live broadcast and throughout its entire duration.
Tips and tricks to get the most out of Facebook Live
Now that you’ve mastered live streaming on Facebook, let’s discuss some tips and tricks on how to make the most of your live content.
The last thing you want is to start a live video and freeze it. When you’re live, there are no replays or the ability to start over. So prepare yourself or your host as best as possible.
Describe what you want to communicate in the video, then follow the rest of the tips below.
Do you need inspiration? Check these out Great examples of Facebook Live videos to get your creativity flowing.
Facebook Live Tips
- Brush up on Facebook Live best practices.
- Test live videos before broadcasting live.
- Don’t go live too frequently.
- Keep reintroducing yourself.
- Find out about popular topics
- Make the video visually appealing.
- Deal with the unexpected.
- Don’t worry about errors or stuttering.
- Encourage viewers to “like” and “share” the video being broadcast.
- Interact with commenters and mention them by name.
- Work with a moderator.
- Subtitle your broadcast in the comments section.
- Ask viewers to turn on Facebook Live notifications.
- Broadcast for at least 30 minutes.
- Finish with the next steps
- Add a link to the description later.
- Repurpose your live video content.
1. Learn about Facebook Live best practices.
Marketers have so many opportunities to reach a wider audience on Facebook Live, so it’s worth learning how to run a live effectively.
In our detailed In the Marketer’s Guide to Facebook Live, we cover key best practices for planning, executing, and analyzing the results of a business-run Facebook Live. Download our free eBook to brush up on these best practices.
2. Test live videos before broadcasting live.
If you want to experiment with live broadcasts without sharing them with others, you can create a test broadcast by setting the audience to include only yourself or a colleague or friend.
To do this, toggle “Create a test broadcast before going live” to “On” after you begin the process of creating a live video, described in Step 2 here.
3. Don’t go live to frequently.
The art of organic reach on Facebook has changed over time, but it still exists. Live video can be a powerful tool for organic reach because it allows users to be informed about the content.
But don’t abuse this. Only go live if you are ready to provide real value to viewers.
If you go live too often without showing anything, people will start to unfollow you or, worse, unfollow you.
4. Keep introducing yourself.
When you first start the video, take a minute to introduce yourself and the content of the video, but don’t just do it once.
When you first start live streaming, there may not be people watching. Even after a few seconds, you could only have a handful of viewers.
When people find your video in their news feeds or see the notification in the app, they will gradually follow along. So to get people up to speed, introduce yourself a second, third, and even fourth time.
Cosmetic brand Benefit does an excellent job with this for the first few minutes of its broadcast:
5. Cover popular topics.
Not sure what to talk about when you go live? According to Statista, the most popular types of live streaming videos in the US are those related to breaking news.
As a business, you can follow industry news and respond or join the conversation on Facebook Live.
Other popular options include humorous videos and tutorials.
6. Make the video visually appealing.
They need to be visually appealing – not just at the beginning of your broadcast (although that’s important as people watch the video later), but throughout the video as more people join in.
It should come as no surprise that Martha Stewart is a master at this.
I love the colorful graphic she begins her video with (which also serves as a thumbnail) and the stylish set on which the broadcast takes place. She uses different props and angles to keep the video interesting.
The more visually appealing you can be, the more you can entice people to stick around and really focus.
Facebook started monitoring video engagement signals – such as turning on the sound, switching to full screen mode, or enabling high definition – and interpret this as users enjoying the video.
If your video engagement is good, Facebook is more likely to show it in more news feeds.
7. Deal with the unexpected.
What makes a live video special? The spontaneous, interactive nature of it.
People love the opportunity to interact and even influence what is happening on a live broadcast.
These moments make live videos special and differentiate them from scripted, edited, or otherwise pre-recorded videos.
So, use the platform. Plan your key talking points, but don’t let a script hold you back and be prepared to embrace the unexpected.
That means …
8. Don’t worry about errors or stuttering.
Listen, we are all human. When humans and technology come together, technical difficulties can sometimes arise.
Honestly, I think this is one of the positive aspects of the lockdown. With remote work and virtual meetings from home, we’ve all become a little more comfortable with small interruptions or mishaps.
When you’re recording live video, something can go wrong – your equipment could malfunction, you could lose track, or you could be photobombed by a random passerby.
When something happens, you can’t call it “edited” – you have to go along with it and keep filming and talking.
The good news? These things help keep your show human and real.
If your phone shakes while you’re filming, laugh and say it out loud. If you forget what you said, make a joke.
The key is to make the broadcast like an entertaining conversation. So when mistakes happen, take it easy and keep communication open with your viewers.
9. Encourage viewers to “like” and “share” the broadcast video.
One of the main ways the Facebook algorithm ranks a post is by how many people like and share it. The more people do this, the more it will show up in people’s news feeds.
When people watch a video, they may be more distracted by liking and sharing than a static post.
This is actually something The people at Facebook noticed Learn about video content early, so don’t be afraid to mention it verbally during your broadcast or even display the message on screen.
10. Interact with commenters and mention them by name.
The number of comments on your show is another way to get Facebook to give it a higher relevancy score – another great way to get into news feeds.
So encourage your viewers to comment by asking questions like Tastemade does in this video:
Interact with commenters by answering their questions and calling them by name. Not only will this encourage more people to comment, but it’s also a fun way to involve your viewers in the live experience and make it more memorable.
11. Work with a moderator.
When you’re on camera for a Facebook Live video, it’s really hard to pay attention to all the comments that pop up on the screen.
When comments come in quickly, it’s particularly easy to lose sight of them because they disappear under the fold. Plus, you’re probably busy recording and entertaining viewers.
For this reason, it’s always a good idea to have an additional person logged into the primary account to monitor comments on a desktop computer.
This way they can take care of the reaction so the person recording the video can focus on creating a great experience.
12. Subtitle your broadcast in the comments section.
Your viewers may tune in and out to watch your video throughout the workday, or they may simply watch your video with no sound. Some people may even experience hearing impairments.
Whatever the reason, regularly captioning your Facebook Live video in the comments section is a great way to grab people’s attention and make your content more accessible.
This also allows people who tune in late to keep up with what’s happening.
Tools like Verbit can help.
13. Ask viewers to turn on Facebook Live notifications.
In addition to likes, shares, and comments, ask viewers to subscribe to live notifications. You can also ask them to “like” your brand on Facebook if they haven’t already.
This increases the likelihood that they will be notified of your next live broadcast.
14. Send for at least 30 minutes.
Once you start recording your live video, you will slowly but surely start showing up in people’s news feeds.
The longer you broadcast – especially if likes, comments and shares come in – the more likely people are to discover your video and share it with their friends.
Since timing is such an important factor in engagement in these live videos, Facebook suggests go live for at least 30 minutes. However, you can stay live up to 4 hours with the Facebook mobile app and 8 hours with a desktop.
Bloomberg Business regularly goes live on Facebook for hours:
15. Finish with the next steps
Before you end your live broadcast, be sure to end it with a closing line, such as: E.g. “Thanks for watching” or “I’ll be going live again soon”. This keeps your live video friendly and conversational.
Meanwhile, provide the viewer with instructions for the next step. What should they do with the information they just learned from your video? Do you want them to sign up? Make a purchase? Now is the time to share this call to action.
16. Add a link to the description later.
Once you’ve finished broadcasting live, you can always go back and edit the description, change privacy settings, or delete the video, just like you would with any other post.
You can add a trackable link to the description in the post that can direct future viewers to your live video series page, the website of the campaign you’re promoting the video for, or elsewhere.
We hope this was a helpful guide. We’ll keep you updated on any new developments and tips on how to connect with your audience in other cool ways.
17. Repurpose your live video content.
To maximize the reach of your streams, you can save your videos and then upload them to your profile. You can also use the videos for other purposes by sharing clips as profile highlights and creating short videos to share on other channels like Instagram Stories or even TikTok videos.
Pro tip: Do you have little time? AI can help you repurpose. For example, OpusClip can help convert any video into bite-sized clips for social media. Or you can transcribe with ChatGPT and then use HubSpot’s Content Remix to create social media posts and blog articles, among other things.
Take full advantage of Facebook Live.
Social media may have been invented for fun, but it has become an essential business tool. Facebook as a social network is particularly valuable because it offers the opportunity to engage with an audience, and Facebook Live is a great extension of that.
Use it to your business’s advantage to promote your product, increase brand awareness, or grow your audience.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in May 2020 and has been updated for completeness.
