Facebook Live - Behind the Scenes

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Video Transcript | Intro

My name is Hannah and I'm a social strategist here at Hootsuite. To prepare for a Facebook live here at Hootsuite, what we do is come up with the concept that we want to be talking about first, whether it's an AMA or something where it's moderated or a panel-type discussion, and then figure out who the best people are gonna be to be in it, and kind of go from there. 

Day of the Event

So, the day of the event, what we do is usually go through the audience's that we're - we always boost our Facebook lives, so we go through the audience that we're going to boost for it, we write the caption that we are gonna be promoting, we make sure that there is an engagement person on hand to answer any questions that are in the comments, and we go through what the content is going to be with the panelists or the guests themselves and make sure all the technology is 100%.

The day of a Facebook live event we’ll usually just use our computers - we’ll just use the native Facebook platform to do all of that. Every once in awhile, if it's kind of a more high-profile Facebook live, then we'll use outside hardware and software as well as different cameras and mic equipment. However, you don't need all of the outside stuff. You can just use your computer to have a really successful Facebook live.

During the Event

During a Facebook live event, we usually have another person on standby, kind of behind the scenes, to do engagement, and that person will be answering any questions, sending any alternative links, or information to any of the audience. 

During the live event any negative comments or constructive comments that we get, we make sure that there is someone on hand to talk about and answer any problems that anyone might be having, whether that's a customer support person or an engagement person from our social team. We always want to make sure that we're doing our best by our audience so anyway that we can do that is great.

Measure Success

The way that we measure the success of our Facebook lives here at Hootsuite is - organically we look at how many people watched the live itself, as well as the percentage watched and any other type of engagement that comes in whether it's likes or comments or shares. We also tend to boost every single one of our live events so once we boost it, we're able to look at all of the efficiency metrics that we have for paid initiatives - such as cost per engagement, cost per click, cost per view, cost per like. And base that on the past Facebook lives that we've done and look at what's done better, like what our benchmarks are and go from there.

After the Event

After Facebook live we look at a lot of the comments that have come in and can base what we're going to do in our next Facebook live on those. So, the questions that people asked, the comments that they make, as well as how long people have watched it, how many people have watched it, is this content that people actually want to know about? So it's really engagement metrics. 

Tips and Tricks

If there were any tips and tricks that I would offer for Facebook lives, is to make it as casual as possible, to make it as authentic as possible, to be asking questions in real-time, to be making sure that you have experts that know what they are talking about, as far as content goes. Just to make it a real experience for your audience because that's what they're looking for in a live event.

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