BALI:  Facebook Live offers new opportunities to marketers when streaming and live content are hugely popular, but getting it right requires a clear strategy, say experts in the area.

More than a hundred million hours of video is watched every day by Facebook users – and that’s only continuing to rise month by month, according to Moses Velasco, Chief Product Evangelist at social media analytics company Socialbakers.

“What the audience is demanding is short form, digestible content that comes in the form of video or stories or live content,” Velasco said at the Socialbakers Engage Bali event in Bali, Indonesia recently. (For more, read WARC’s in-depth report: Four tips to produce great Facebook Live videos)

“Social video generates 1,200 percent more shares than text and images combined. Your audiences, your consumers or prospects are sharing more of that video content than any other content type out there.”

For Facebook Live, planning the flow and key messages of the video is important – marketers should focus on their core brand objectives and calls to action in the planning process.

“Make sure that you're considering your objectives: Is it engagement? Is it lead generation? Are you trying to get them to take an action from your live video content? Are you trying to drive them to your website? Use this as your approach when you create your live videos – objectives – to try to drive your performance,” said Alexandria McCulloch, Senior Global Content Editor at Socialbakers.

McCulloch advised to tease the live video in advance and cross-promote it to maximize the number of views.

“It's important to promote. Tell them that you're going to be conducting the Live, no matter what channel you're doing that on, because that's going to give them something to look forward to and to tune in,” she said.

Brands should also encourage viewers to participate. Likewise, brands should absolutely be responding to comments and questions on the live video to boost one-on-one connection.

“We went live and we asked the audience what do you guys what to know about live video? What are your challenges? What are your fears? What are you worried about? They told us, and so we were able to put that directly into our content. And by putting that into our content immediately, it had a real connection with the audience,” Velasco said.

Sourced from WARC