Facebook Live provides a greatway to engage your audiences, and the best part is it’s free and easy to use! No matter what industry you are in, any company can take advantage of Facebook’s interactive feature. However, it does require a little strategy to get it right. Here’s our best practices to create high quality and authentic engaging Facebook Live stream video.

The question is, “how can you leverage this effective format to increase engagement for your brand”?

Build an authentic connection with your audience – be personable

The best part of creating a Facebook Live stream is that it’s authentic and doesn’t require post production. This gives a raw and humanized look at a brand, and that’s exactly what audiences are craving in a world of stunning manicured photos and videos. You want to be open and honest, use humor and try to relax. Try to think of how you can be approachable and create a one-to-one connection with you audience.

Plan your Facebook Live stream before you broadcast

It’s important that you determine the objectives you want to achieve with your Facebook Live stream. What are the key messages and core brand objectives you are trying to convey? Remember who your audience is and why you’re talking to them. You need to define what success means. Think of specific metrics and KPIs, do you want to:

• educate your audiences
• increase engagement
• generate leads
• stimulate a CTA such as an app install or website visits

Practice your Facebook Live in advance

Yes, Facebook Live is less polished than a traditional television newscast or documentary production with a grand set-up of lights and cameras, but it still requires thoughtful consideration of its content. After-all, you still represent your brand. So, now that you’ve determined the objective of your Facebook Live stream, it’s time to devote your focus to what you’ll be speaking about. We encourage doing a dry run before launching that Facebook Live broadcast. This will help you discover which talking points are the most interesting to discuss, as well as mitigate technological difficulties, and reduce nervousness. The more you do Facebook Live streams, the better you’ll become and the less practice you’ll need. The point of practicing is to see how the conversation flows organically with your guest and where you should focus your attention. You don’t want to to overdo your practice runs and sound scripted when you go live.

Promote your Facebook Live to tease your audience

As you are gearing up to conduct your Facebook Live, it’s critical that you inform your audiences when you are about to go live. Do not tease your audience only on one channel, cross-promote it to maximize the number of video views. If you build anticipation, then it will give them something to look forward to and tune in. If you happen to be collaborating with an influencer, you will want them to promote the Facebook Live broadcast beforehand as well. That will help you reach their network and encourage more people to watch your discussion.

If you make a mistake on camera, just keep going

In the real world, sometimes we use the wrong word or term, it’s natural, but you won’t be reprimanded for it. Of course on camera, you don’t want to make mistakes or cause your video editor to pull her hair out. But on a Facebook Live stream, it’s just as normal and could be good fodder for the conversation. Slip ups happen, so if you make a mistake, don’t get discouraged. Use it, make a joke, turn it into enthusiasm, but just keep going! Don’t be afraid to do that. That’s what makes Facebook Live so powerful and fun, because it’s not overly polished. Also you should keep your global audiences in mind – make sure to list the various time-zones so everyone can be watching at the right time.

Get audiences to participate during your Facebook Live

One way to increase engagement during your Facebook Live stream is to encourage your viewers to participate throughout the video. Create a dialogue between you and your audience, but what’s even better is if it sparks a conversation between them. You could respond to those questions in the video during the broadcast. Don’t leave questions unanswered. Go back and respond to the comment thread if you didn’t have a chance to address questions during the Facebook Live stream.

As the trend of video consumption continues to rise, we predict that Facebook Live will become even more important for social media marketers. In short, Facebook Live provides new opportunities for marketers to engage their audiences in a landscape where live broadcasts are becoming immensely popular. We’re seeing that audiences are demanding short form and digestible content.

Creating great live video content begins by looking at who’s mastered it and learning from them. Start monitoring live videos for any Facebook page and see which moments get the most interactions from that audience.