“Do I have to go live on Facebook? Oh no!” Today’s show is all about Facebook Live. I’m going to share with you five hacks for making the most out of your Facebook Live, especially if you’re in real estate.
Tip Number One. Use Facebook Creator App. Did you know there was another app Facebook has? I know there’s a lot of apps! But Facebook Creator App is a free app that you can download that makes it really fun to go live on Facebook because it will give you filters and all kinds of fun things that you can do to actually brand your Facebook Live and have it be something just a lot more fun than just sort of the plain old, plain old Facebook Live. Now of course you can use Facebook Live anywhere on your desktop, on your mobile device, but using Facebook Live Creator App kind of takes up your Facebook strategy to a whole other level and it’s free which is awesome, so check that out.
Hack Number Two. Use a third party scheduling tool. What’s a third party scheduling tool? Okay so we love two specific tools around here. I love using BeLive.tv. BeLive.tv is fantastic and Zoom is also a fantastic tool. There’s lots of other third party apps but one of the reasons we love using those two particular tools, especially for my business page, is I love that I can schedule my live broadcast. Because when you can schedule your live broadcast what happens is in the news feed people will see that’s it’s scheduled, they can click on it and get a reminder for when you’re actually live, which helps tremendously when you actually go live. You can then also take that link and pre promote that broadcast ahead of time which makes a huge, huge difference. There’s other things that are available through both those tools, like additional branding and just some things you can do on the back end. But using a third party tool, especially for scheduling makes a huge, huge difference.
Tip Number Three. Being prepared. I never really script anything I do but let me tell you, anytime I do a video or anytime I do a Facebook Live you guys know, I’ve got my little cheat sheet and especially with Facebook Live I always just jot down a couple things I know I want to cover and I also make sure I jot down if there’s any links or any kind of call to action that I want to make sure that I want to talk about in my Facebook Live. I always have a reason of why am I doing this Facebook Live? Is it to highlight someone else? Is it to give some education? Is it to get someone to like me on Facebook or get on my email newsletter list, what’s the why behind doing that particular Facebook Live and then have that one or two calls to action. And being prepared helps tremendously.
Tip Number Four. Promote Ahead of Time. Promote your Facebook Lives ahead of time whether or not you are scheduling it or not, promote your Facebook Live ahead of time a day or two in advance is really kind of the sweet spot. So how can you promote it in advance? You can do a post on Facebook saying, “Hey join me live tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. where I’m giving my Monday market update.” And you give the link to your Facebook page. If your active on LinkedIn or Twitter, or Instagram, any of your other social media platforms promote it the day before. You can do a quick Instagram story or a SnapChat story or whatever platform it is that you’re on, promote it ahead of time that makes a big difference. If you have an email newsletter list you can also send an email saying, “Hey join me live tomorrow at this time.”
Don’t just say, “Join me live.” Tell people why and what they can expect. Now if you don’t have your act together and you don’t promote it a day in advance you can still promote it up to an hour before. Sometime shorter notice is better. Has that ever happened to you where maybe you saw something in your news feed and you’re like, “Oh that’s happening in 10 minutes, I’ll tune in.” So promote it ahead of time, you can promote it ahead of time again on Facebook. You could say something like hey join me in 10 minutes, I’m going to be live talking about XYZ, here’s the link, you can do the same thing with your email list or any of your other social media platforms.
The more you promote ahead of time the more people will actually show up live and it does help I think tremendously, just your confidence when you go live and then you can see that there’s, you know, more than just one or two people there. Just helps a lot. I would also recommend messaging a few people one to one and letting them know individually that you’re going live. So if you’re talking about a specific topic, maybe it’s around becoming a first time home buyer and you’re working with a couple of people who are first time home buyers you could message them or text or email them and say, “Just a heads up, I’m going live today at 10:00 a.m. and I’m talking about being a first time home buyer and I know you and I have been talking and so I wanted to make sure that I sent you this link first.” Right, people love when you can really kind of invite them first into something, so reach out to people maybe three, four or five people ahead of time.
My fifth hack, is to promote afterwards. So think of Facebook Live as this grand event, right, and you’re going to promote before, during and after. And so afterwards what I like to do is let that Facebook kind of marinate in the news feed for maybe 24 hours and then we’ll boost it, or we’ll advertise it. If you run a Facebook group you could share that into your Facebook group. You could share into other groups depending on what the groups are all about. You could share that over to your personal profile. You could take that link and share that link in your email database and say something like, “Hey if you missed us live, catch the replay here.” You can share the replay link again on any of your social networks, Instagram, Facebook, SnapChat, whatever it might be. So think of it before, during and after.
Those are just a few things that I’ve noticed make a really, really big difference. At the end of the day how do you turn Facebook Live into a way that helps sharing more business? It’s really about consistency, and it’s about providing really great value. So look at your schedule and see when you can do Facebook Live on a consistent basis and then start to work on that content schedule and get a sense of what type of content you can share that would be really, really valuable.
As always I would love to hear from you. I would love to know from you, are you broadcasting on Facebook Live? Leave me a comment below.
