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If you are thinking about growing the audience or customer base of your small business, there’s no better way than via video. And the top video platform these days for small businesses is not YouTube or Instagram – it’s Facebook Live. The live streaming feature from Facebook integrates easily with everything else your business is doing on Facebook, and it has proven remarkably adaptive and flexible for a wide variety of uses. Let’s take a closer look at how your business can engage with leads and customers via Facebook Live.
#1: “Day in the Life” videos
If you have a loyal and passionate customer base, one way to feed that passion and loyalty is via “day in the life” videos that take viewers behind the scenes of your business. If you’re a small restaurant or cafe, for example, now is the time to show people parts of your business that loyal customers might never see if they are simply dropping by for takeout delivery. Deep down, people are always fascinated by how things get done, and even if it’s just showing people how dishes from the kitchen make it into your food truck making rounds around the city or how you are able to source local produce from area markets, it’s worth experimenting with video.
#2: “How to” videos
Next up are tutorial videos, better known as “how to” videos. Facebook Live is an easy, effective way to show off the expertise and knowledge of your employees. The added bonus here is that you can often drive additional sales or upgrades to premium versions of your products if customers are empowered to do more and learn more.
#3: Q&A sessions
A popular format for any video Q&A is the “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) format pioneered by Reddit. It helps, of course, if you are able to showcase people who are already known to your customers and partners – such as your company’s CEO or founder. That ensures that people will have a lot of interesting and compelling questions to ask during the live Q&A.
#4: Interviews
On a similar note, you can also structure a Facebook Live session as an interview on an important topic or issue. Say, for example, that a breaking news story is going viral all over the internet – this might be a great time for someone at your business to weigh in on the issues and possible implications of that news story. Or, say that your business will be launching a new product or offering – this could be a great time for someone on the product side of the business to explain what it means for customers and prospects. What makes Facebook Live particularly flexible is that you can literally launch a new live stream with just a few minutes’ notice.
Final takeaways
Just keep in mind, however, that in order for your Facebook Live experiment to work, you have to put in a fair amount of effort promoting it. Thus, it’s helpful that you spend at least 24 hours in advance putting out notifications and alerts across social media that you will be going live at a certain time on a certain day so that people have time to adjust their schedule to tune in for “live” coverage. Over time, your audience for each show will grow in size. At some point, people will begin to expect a live show on a regular basis from your business, and that’s when you’ll know that your Facebook Live experiment has been a rousing success.
