What are the Benefits of Using Facebook Live for your Business
Businesses all over the world are experiencing good results with video marketing. Surveys suggest that businesses that use videos to promote their brand and their products and services experience nearly 50% higher revenues than those that do not use video. One survey revealed that nearly 60% of their participants stated that video marketing provided them with the best return of all content marketing types. In the same survey, 78% of the participants said that they preferred live video as it enabled a deeper connection with their audience.
Main Benefits of Facebook Live
Here are the main benefits for businesses to use Facebook Live as we see it. There are others too and we will discuss the benefits in more detail:
• You can reach the largest audience in the world using a website that they use all of the time –Facebook
• Facebook Live has some excellent audience engagement features including two unique ones which are live reactions and commenting real-time
• Businesses can use Facebook Live for internal meetings or external meetings with customers etc
• Video performance analytics provide excellent insight
• You can use paid Facebook ads to boost your live events to reach more potential viewers
When you use Facebook Live to connect with your audience you bring a real human touch. You are not a faceless organization that customers and potential customers do not know the people behind it. This is very important for developing trust and establishing credibility for your brand.
A Facebook Live event provides a “face to face” opportunity that text posts and image posts cannot achieve. You can have a single host or introduce other members of your business to your audience.
Questions and Answers
Another benefit of holding a Facebook Live event is that you can hold a real time question and answer session. This will boost your engagement and it is a good idea to let people know that there will be a Q & A session prior to the event going live. People like to ask questions. It is likely that a lot of the people attending will have their questions answered by other attendees asking the questions. This is fine as not everyone feels comfortable about asking questions on a live video stream.
You can either take questions as they come up or request that people wait until the end of the event and you will answer all questions then. By waiting until the end, you will increase the chances of your followers watching the entire event.
Some businesses set up recurring Facebook Live events where they take questions as they arise.
Recurring events are good if you have a lot of content to share with your audience. It is best if the content is different each time and not a repeat of what you have presented already.
Great during a Pandemic
At the time of writing this guide, the world is in the grip of the Covid-19 pandemic. Some countries and states are in total lockdown so they cannot attend physical events. So the interest in your Facebook Live event is likely to be higher in this scenario.
Applications like Zoom have seen a significant increase in users over the past few months. So
attending a live event on Facebook will not be a problem for most people. After the pandemic, we estimate that the demand for online events will remain strong so the time to get started is right now.
Share Product or Service updates
A Facebook Live event is a great way for you to share the latest information about your products and services. Do you have a new product or service? Have you made enhancements to existing products or services? Are there any special discounts that you are offering right now?
In some industries, things change rapidly. If this applies to your business then you can let your
followers know about the changes with a Facebook Live event. Your audience will appreciate you
keeping them informed and will spread the word for you.
Behind the Scenes
People want to know who is behind your business. They want to see faces and know the names of your team. If it is possible (pandemic permitting) you can shoot a live event during your opening hours and give your followers a tour of your business.
Interviews with other employees are a good tactic as well. Your audience can see that your team is totally committed to providing them with the highest quality of service. All of this will help to establish you as a brand that truly cares about its customers.
Facebook Live is well established
These days a lot of social platforms offer live event streaming. The good thing about Facebook Live is that it has been around for a few years now and has undergone a number of enhancements to make it better and fix any issues.
Facebook Live has some great features that other live platforms do not have such as their advanced notification system which will let your audience know when an event is going live. You also have the capability to promote your Facebook Live event in advance now.
At the end of the day, people like Facebook and trust it. The numbers do not lie here – no other social media network comes close to user numbers and traffic. So holding your live event on Facebook is the smart thing to do.
Your Event Saved
Facebook will record your live event and turn it into a normal video post on your Facebook page. This means that you can continue to use it for promotion after your event is over. There are always going to be some people that cannot attend a live event so you can offer the replay to them so that they don’t miss out.
If you are running a series of live events on Facebook then anyone that was not in from the start can go through the recordings on your Facebook page to catch up. You can also boost your recorded video posts to gain more followers and potential viewers of your next live event.
Top Notch Analytics
For any online marketing that you do it is essential that you have the analytics available to see how well things went. When you use Facebook Live for your events you will have access to very well developed analytics.
Not only will you be able to see the comprehensive video analytics that Facebook provides but also there are live analytics that you can access. The information that you can expect to see with live analytics includes:
• Number of live viewers (peak)
• Reactions to your event
• Shares of your event
• Comments
• Your total reach
You need to know which content works best for your business and the analytics in Facebook will help you to discover this. When you have a few Facebook Live events under your belt you will be able to see which events your audience responded the best to and make more of these types of presentations.
You get Eight Hours
Other social platforms offer live event streaming such as Twitter, Instagram, and Periscope. These are fine if you want to provide short live videos. With Facebook Live you have a limit of eight hours which is more than enough time for a business to get its message across to followers.
The other thing to bear in mind here is that Facebook users are used to spending quite a bit of time on the platform. So they are more likely to hang around for a live event than they could be with other platforms. The interface with Facebook is also ideally designed for a live event.
Interaction
With a Facebook Live event, there is a lot of opportunity for interaction. Unlike other social platforms that offer live events, you can write a caption for your live video as a way to attract more viewers to it. When you host a Facebook Live event the interface will display real-time comments. You can react to these comments as they arrive. Conversing at a moment like this will drive engagement levels higher and help you to build a solid relationship with your audience.