How to: Facebook Live

We’ve been doing online events for a while as the PledgeMe team, and in this changing world we thought it would be useful to share our 8 point process to run a good Live 🙂

1) Decide format: Solo or with speakers

Solo

This is easiest to do, as you can go direct through Facebook. You could just be on your own, or have 1-2 team members on your end. If you have other people with you, make sure to interact with them as well as the crowd. 

Speakers

It can be good to organise other speakers, so you can share out through their networks too. If this is the case, you’ll need to use a platform like Be-Live to bring additional people in: https://belive.tv/

If you’re organising speakers:

• Find 1-2 external people, and have someone to help moderate the questions on your end
• Send out a calendar invite to speakers with links to log-in
• Give them a basic brief, possibly even questions

Our first real foray into this was with the team at the Food Connect Shed over a year ago, when they wanted one of their friends to jump on the Live too.

2) Confirm your Channel

• Business page. Run the Facebook Live on your business page, and then share it to your personal page. If you have a team, they can share it too. 
• Other channels. You can also share the link to other channels (Twitter, LinkedIn, your newsletter etc). Don’t be scared to share it widely!

3) Prepare

• Get some bullet points down. This should cover what you want to cover and practice – we often do a full event brief like this one from our last Facebook Live.
• Practice. You can set up a practice on your personal page and make it so that only you can see it. 
• Introduce yourself. Have a bit of preamble at the beginning while people log in and then get to the reason.
• What’s the purpose? Make sure you have some calls-to-action prepared – what do you want people to do after? 
• Include your speakers. If you have speakers, share the questions with them too.
• Be yourself. Try and be human with the questions you’re preparing – people want to easily understand what you’re discussing, and why, and will switch off pretty quickly if it feels like a sale. 

4) Announce

• Try to announce ahead of time across a few different channels. You can use imagery to announce, or just do a background blurb. If it’s an image, make sure it doesn’t have too much text in the image so you can boost the post. If you use Be-Live, there will be a countdown video on your page as soon as you schedule the event through Be-Live. 
• Remind people. on the day, an hour before, and as it’s happening. 
• Get other people to share too . Your speakers, friends, workmates, partners. 

5) Check your set up

• The internet. Make sure you test your internet connection http://www.speedtest.net/ – you need to be faster than 9MB. If you’re on your computer, try to connect into the internet direct rather than wifi. 
• The space. Be in a quiet space, and test your sound before going live
• Your tools. If you do it on your phone, download the Facebook Pages App (more here) or the Be.Live App. If you are doing it on your phone get a tripod (otherwise it’ll be annoying).
• Your support. Have someone on hand to help point out questions to you as they come in that you should respond to
• Look down the barrel. If doing from your phone, make sure you know exactly where to look so you’re looking straight into camera so people feel like you’re looking them in the eye (i.e. don’t keep gazing at yourself on screen)

6) Day of the Event

• Share! Share posts across all social channels again – personal and professional.
• Confirm. Send confirmation to your guests (if any). Example below:

• Double-check the tech. It breaks, believe you me!
• Share again. Just before you go live share the event again with your networks. 

7) During

• Relax and smile. Don’t worry if you make a mistake, people won’t notice unless you point it out.
• Repeat the key messaging. Make sure you do it a few times throughout the Facebook Live, so late-comers know what is happening. Why are you on the live? Who is with you? 
• Keep on asking people if they have questions during the event. Try and answer all of the questions at the end (or during if you can break the flow)
• Respond to comments as they come through. As noted, it’s often easier having someone monitoring that specifically and sending questions to you direct on What’s App, Slack, or your preferred communication tool. 
• Make sure to shout people out by name. It makes them feel special (and more likely to ask questions / interact)
• Make sure to let everyone wrap up at the end if you have speakers. A few sentences to summarise what they want people to remember. 
• Make sure to have your Call-to-Action clear. For example pledge to our campaign, register your interest, buy our product. Only have one call to action (ok, two tops!). 

8) Post event

• Share or create content. You can share the Live once you’re done, and possibly even create a blog post around it to use the content. 
• Keep responding. People might continue to ask questions too, so make sure to duck back in a few times after the Live has closed to respond. 

Big thanks to Sian Simpson for her tips a few years ago on how to run a good Webinar. We’ve used some of those freely given tips here. If you ever need any Community Management support, she’s your person! Find out more about her here. 

You can also find more extensive Facebook Live tips in Hubspot’s Guide here: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/facebook-live-guide