With more than 1.7 billion monthly active users, Facebook already gives marketers better reach and audience insight than any other platform on the web.
Now, with Facebook Live, marketers can get face-to-face with their audience in real-time. It's a new era for both engagement and traffic, when done correctly. But how can marketers leverage the platform to drive more users to their site? Here are four tips to keep in mind to optimize your Facebook Live strategy.
Create Anticipation for Your Upcoming Content
One of the most innovative ways content marketers are using Facebook Live is by creating anticipation for their upcoming content. Instead of publishing and then looking for traffic, they follow the opposite strategy and focus on creating excitement first.
For example, social media expert Kim Garst uses Facebook Live to get her fans excited about her upcoming blogs 10 or 15 minutes before publishing each new post. Garst goes live on Facebook and discusses some of the best tips from the post, engaging the audience and inviting questions to encourage a deeper discussion on the topic.
Just when it gets really exciting, she reveals that the best tips are found in her blog post, which she then publishes during the live session, sharing the link in the comments of her live video. According to Garst, this simple strategy can drive 10 times more traffic than a post that wasn't similarly promoted.
Ask Your Audience to Suggest Ideas
Successful bloggers aren’t superhuman. They’re just better at identifying the biggest pain points of their audience and creating content that answers questions their readers have. With Facebook Live, now you can do it as well.
Start a live video stream and ask your audience about the topics that bother them the most. Understand their needs, take notes and generate new ideas based on their feedback. The content created as a result will not only be more useful and targeted, but also generate more interest and traffic.
99Designs, a logo and graphic design platform, used the same strategy to create a popular post on logo design trends in 2017. While researching the post, it went live on Facebook and asked its audience for feedback. The result was a comprehensive blog with exactly the content its audience was looking for, plus a great Facebook Live video to boot.
Interview an Industry Influencer
What’s the easiest way to harness an industry influencer’s traffic? Simple, just invite them for an interview. Again, it works just like blogging.
Most bloggers publish interviews and expert round-up posts in which they ask multiple influencers the same question and compile the answers. When the post is published, every influencer is notified, along with a request for a Tweet, which sends hordes of traffic to the page. That same strategy can be applied to Facebook Live as well. If you can invite multiple influencers, great. If you can’t, even one is enough.
For example, e-commerce giant Shopify recently did a Facebook Live session with Tim Ferris, the author and entrepreneur, and used it to route traffic from Facebook to its website. Ferris also asked his email subscribers and social media followers to join him live for the session. Overall, the live broadcast generated over 12,000 views.
Of course, not everyone can afford to invite Ferris or other celebrity influencers for a live video session. You could, however, target experts or influencers who are looking to expand their networks.
Looking for a deep dive into all things social? Check out the full program and speaker roster for The Social Shake-Up, which will be held May 22-24, 2017 in Atlanta. Brand communicators from Coca-Cola, Dunkin' Donuts, the Atlanta Hawks, Arby's and many more will speak on a breadth of topics from content marketing to measurement to Snapchat strategy.
Use Video-Specific Content Upgrades
Generating traffic to your blog and getting followers on your social media profiles is great. But there’s still nothing more important for an online marketer than building a subscriber base. And Facebook Live gives you a great opportunity to turn followers and viewers into email subscribers.
How? By using video-specific content upgrades. A content upgrade is just an additional resource related to a blog post—it can be as simple as a checklist, a worksheet, a small eBook or quick video—that readers can download once they've entered their email address. But how does this relate to Facebook Live?
You can replicate the content upgrade strategy on Facebook Live and achieve the same results. All you need to do is create an additional resource closely aligned with the Facebook Live topic, and then ask your viewers to download it from your website or blog.
It’s a simple yet effective way to build your email list every time you go live on Facebook.
Jawad Khan is a certified inbound marketer and contributes regularly to a number of leading digital marketing blogs. This article originally appeared on SocialMediaExplorer.com and was republished with permission.