2016 became the year that live video streaming came to prominence.  Starting out on Periscope initially and then soon after Facebook moved into the live streaming arena.

In the beginning Facebook live was only available to a small percentage of business pages to test the system out.  Now though, it is available to anyone with a personal account and a compatible phone.

Live streaming is going to be massive this year and you’re going to see me on there a lot more.  Here’s why.

Use Facebook Live To Connect With your Audience

Facebook live is a great way of allowing your customers to see who you really are and also to interact with you.   People can post questions to you live so that you can use this tool to build credibility and also to connect on a deeper level.

Your audience don’t just want to see postings, they want to be able to connect with you.  They want to find out about who you are as a person.  They want to know that if they entrust their money onto you that they will be able to trust you.

This is one of the opportunities that you have with Facebook live.

How To Use Facebook Live The Right Way

1. Let you fans know that you are going to be online.  Send out a message telling people that you are going to be online on a certain day at a certain time.  Send this out to your Facebook page and also to your email list.  Encourage as many people as you can that you are going to be online and available.
2. Tell people what you are going to be talking about.  Encourage people to come to you with any questions that they have about that topic.  Also encourage people to ask questions that they would like answering for future live videos.  This also gives you content that you can produce that will be useful.
3. Can you have a regular time slot?  Going live at one time of the day might be more popular than at other times.  Can you then make that a regular slot so that people know when and where to find you?  What would that do for your ability to connect with your audience?
4. Give lots of value.  Don’t use this medium as a selling board.  People don’t want to come to a live video to be sold to all of the time.  Give them something useful that they can implement or take further.

Looking forward to seeing you on some of my Facebook live feeds in the near future.