Facebook live video streaming is very likely the single most important digital marketing trend.
After you read this post you’ll have a clear understanding of how Facebook live, works and why making it a center piece of your digital marketing strategy in 2016 is an absolute must.
I also share a powerful list of tips and strategies for how to create an amazing live video experience to get more customers and clients for your fitness or personal coaching business.
Here’s what you need to know:
Facebook live empowers you as a fitness or coaching expert to share high value video content with hundreds if not thousands of your ideal customers (people looking for your expertise, products and services right now) in real time.
So, What Makes Facebook Live Video Marketing so Important?
A major reason for the incredible social selling value of live video streaming on Facebook is the sheer number potential viewers compared to Periscope
(Note: Meerkat is no longer a major player in the battle for live stream video dominance and is likely creating its own social sharing network source: recode.net)
With Facebook live you have 1.6 Billion potential viewers compared to a mere 10 Million via Periscope.
Not only that but with live video on Facebook, you also have the option to pay a little extra to boost your most important business content.
A second but equally important reason is that Facebook live drastically increases the online competitive advantage and organic SEO value that already exists in great video-based content marketing.
This is because your live videos can also be saved preeminently to your Facebook time line, which means you can work with and benefit from those videos long after they’ve been saved.
Before we learn more about Facebook Live, here’s a quick recap of the value of video marketing compared to text based articles and blog posts:
With Strong Video Marketing Content You:
- Get a massive boost in targeted traffic– 75% of viewers visit a website or landing page after viewing a video about a company’s products or services they’re actually looking to purchase.
- Reverse Visitor Bounce Rate: With great video content the page visit time spent by potential online customers’ jumps from an average of 8 seconds to an amazing 2 minutes on average. And that means more potential sales and new clients.
- Boost Your Social Media Sharing Rates – 12X more shares, tweets, likes and pins then an old fashioned video free blog post.
- Strengthen Your Brand Recognition– 70% will still remember great video content after 3 days!
- Experience Major Increase in Digital Marketing ROI and New Client Numbers – Strong Video boosts Conversions on average by 24% and digital marketing ROI (Return on Investment) to 300%
- Using Video in Your Email Marketing Campaign can boost open rates by 20% and increase click-through rates 200-300% (MarketShark.com)
- Using the word “video” in email subject lines boosts open rates 19%, click-through rates by 65%, and reduces unsubscribes by 26%” (MarketShark.com)
Facebook Live Video Boost These Video Marketing Benefits by Another Whopping 300%!
Facebook recently announced that based on their data:
“People spend more than 300% more time watching a Facebook Live video on average compared to a video that’s no longer live.”
What’s the reason for this? Well for one thing, a recent update in Facebook’s algorithm now means live videos are more likely to appear higher in your followers’ Facebook News Feeds while they’re actually live compared to video content that’s not live.
Live video on Facebook = an immediate competitive advantage over videos that aren’t live.
It’s also important to plan to have longer Facebook live videos, to give more people time to actually discover and click through via your video title in their news feed and join in.
People also find live video more “interesting” and engaging then recorded video. That’s why it’s critical to directly interact with viewers as much as possible while your Facebook live video is streaming.
For example, viewers can actually post and ask questions in real time, which enables them to interact with you person to person. This lets them play a genuine role in how the live video experience unfolds and insures that they’re most pressing questions and concerns are addressed right when they’re top of mind.
With live video streaming you get all the serious value of good old fashioned video marketing (Facebook live videos are saved permanently compared to for just 24 hours on Preriscope) + you can experience an extra 300% boost in follower engagement levels due to these live interaction, engagement and news feed ranking factors.
How do You Actually Start a Live Video Broadcast from Your Personal Timeline?
Starting a live video stream is actually incredibly easy. Here’s how to do it step by step:
- Log into the Facebook for iOS app or the Facebook for Android app
- Tap from your News Feed or Timeline
- Tap
- Write an optional description for your broadcast
- Tap Go Live to begin your broadcast
When you want to end your broadcast, tap Finish.
During your broadcast, you’ll see the number of live viewers, the names of friends who are watching and a real-time stream of comments. Your broadcast can be no longer than 30 minutes. When you end your broadcast, it’ll stay on your Timeline like any other video.
Note: You can block viewers during a live broadcast by tapping the profile picture next to a viewer’s comment and then tapping Block. You can unblock someone that you’ve previously blocked.
Source: Facebook
Now that you know why and how to start unleashing the incredible digital marketing power of Facebook Live, here’s what you need to know about creating an amazing live video experience for your Facebook fans that lasts long after each video has been saved to your Facebook feed.
10 Powerful Facebook Live Video Creation Tips, Tools and Strategies:
When it comes to creating a great live streaming video experience for your fitness coaching or consulting business on Facebook the most important rules of online video creation also apply.
- Pre-Create Deep-Engagement Content and Structure:
The real key to live video engagement is pre-creating genuinely interesting content to cover that clearly describes and solves a real world personal or business pain point or challenge that your ideal customer is experiencing in the moment.
You can create basic structure for your live video by writing point form notes to guide what is essentially a live online presentation of high value tips, strategies and expertise.
Always make a free gift of your highest value action plans, tips and strategies in your live videos; – strategies viewers can implement right now that will translate into real, positive and live enhancing benefit and value.
Treat your Facebook live video viewers like high paying customers and that’s what they’re more likely to become!
For example, as certified corporate wellness and sleep science coach marketing your expertise to prospective corporate clients, you could share some of the startling facts and figures about the seriously negative effects that not getting enough quality sleep has on employee health, wellbeing, safety and work performance.
For example, did you know that by the end of the day, typical levels of North American sleep deprivation impair cognitive and motor function to levels equivalent to 2X the legal alcohol limit for driving, or that it’s one of the main contributing factors to obesity and a number of other physical and psychological disease processes?
You could then outline some of the most effective sleep hygiene tips and strategies currently available, along with research based facts and figures on the incredible positive health and work place performance gains and costs savings organizations can enjoy as a result of hiring you as corporate wellness coach and sleep science expert.
Seeing how your share tips and strategies live will also give your viewers a real sense of what it will be like working with you in person or online as a fitness expert or wellness coach.
- Inspire and Encourage Real Time Viewer Engagement
Remember, one the major reasons live video is so effective as a digital marketing and branding tool is that it uniquely allows you to connect and interact with your viewers in real time.
Facebook live allows you to see each new person that joins in on your live video stream. It’s important to welcome people by name and to give live shout-outs to key influencers and potential new customers and new followers/live feed subscribers. Make sure to encourage questions and carefully answer questions.
It’s also a good idea to invite viewers to “subscribe” to get notification for your future live video episodes.
- Craft a Great Title and Description for Your Live Video
Another critical success factor in really maximizing your online business results with Facebook live is carefully crafting a title for your video, – one that’s catchy, that contains 1-3 carefully placed market relevant keywords and that clearly conveys the value your viewers will get from watching it.
Shorter is always better. The ideal video title length is around 6-8 words.
Use free content marketing tools like Buzzsumo to look at the kinds of titles and content that are currently receiving the highest number of social shares. You can also use Coschedule’s great title analyzer app to help you develop a emotionally engaging titles for your live videos.
- Give Your Followers Lots of Advanced Notice for each Live Video Event.
To put it simply the more people who actually know about your live video in advance the more likely it is you’ll have more viewers show up when you go live. Make sure to let people know at least a few days if not a full week or more in advance.
For example, you can use Canva.com to make visually rich social media notices and invites that tell people what your next live video will cover and the specific date time they’re invited to attend. You can then share these social media invites across all of your key social media platforms.
- Use a Tripod
Yes it’s true: live video needs to have that sense of spontaneity and real-time viewer interaction to maximize its digital marketing and branding value. But your viewers need to actually see what’s going on and inducing vertigo in your viewers is not a good social selling strategy.
Make sure to use a tripod for your phone or webcam to make sure your images is stable and viewer friendly. A tripod will also make transitioning between the front and back camera (so viewers can see what you’re seeing) on your phone that much more seamless and effective.
If and when you do you hold your phone or camera directly it’s good to place your elbow on a solid surface and stabilize that elbow (and thus the image being captured) at the base, with your other hand.
- Use a Quality Microphone or Headset
Top quality sound is just as important as a stable quality image for live video. So make sure to use a good quality headset in addition to an image stabilizing tripod.
It’s a good idea to verify that you have great sound and image quality by running a test live video that you only share with a few close friends or colleagues, in order to test for sound and image quality and to get their feedback and suggestions for improvement.
- Insure a Strong Connection/Use Airplane Mode
One thing you don’t want is for your live video to fade or break up. That means making sure that the location you’re streaming your video from has the strongest possible and most reliable Wi-Fi connection.
If you’re using your phone’s camera for your Facebook live video, make sure to turn on airplane mode (with Wi-Fi on) so that you’re video isn’t interrupted or cut off by incoming phone calls.
- Do Value Adding Product Demonstrations and Broadcast Live Events
Another great idea for creating high value live videos is to do live product demonstrations. For example, you could demonstrate how to use the latest health and fitness wearable tech gadget. You could also demonstrate the latest piece of fitness equipment or wellness coaching app.
Why send your clients to the health store for their supplements when you can provide all their supplements, and make the money instead? An increasing number of fitness pros and wellness coaches are creating a great additional revenue stream offering high quality ISAGENIX health supplements to new and existing clients. Live video is a great venue for showing these off and sharing the benefits of these amazing supplements.
Facebook live is also a great medium for broadcasting from live industry conferences, presentations and other professional development and marketing events in real time. You can share presentations you make at such conferences, presentations by others and even interview key industry thought, and business leaders.
- Embed Saved Live Stream Videos in Your Blog and Socially Share Them
As I touched on earlier, one of the great advantages of Facebook live in contrast to its main competitor Periscope, is that each live video is actually indefinitely saved to your Facebook account right after it ends. Periscope on the other hand, only saves each video for a 24 hour period and then it’s gone.
This means you’re free to use each saved Facebook live video for video marketing purposes the same way you did with pre-recorded videos in the past.
These saved videos can be added to your blog, along with freshly written blog content outlining what’s covered and even adding additional value. You can then share these video-based blog posts across your other social media accounts, for even more branding and social selling reach!
- Live Stream Your Podcasts
Finally, Facebook Live video streaming is the perfect complement for socially sharing and super-amplifying your fitness pro or wellness coaching podcasts in real time.
If you’re doing podcasts, you’re already set up for great sound quality. Now it’s just a question of setting up your phone or webcam on a tripod and pressing the Facebook “Go Live” button just as you start your next podcast to unleash the digital marketing synergy!
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