Mixdown’s Guide To: Broadcasting Your Band Live On Facebook
Subscribe
X

Subscribe to Mixdown Magazine

Mixdown’s Guide To: Broadcasting Your Band Live On Facebook

livestream.jpg

What Should I Broadcast?

So before you jump straight into it, first consider what you actually need to broadcast. The feature is a great asset to your band if you are smart about the way you use it. However, content that isn’t interesting to your audience will result in low engagement and/or no viewers. The feature could work best in a number of situations.

 

There are a number of ways to use this feature. Be creative and express yourself the way you want your band to be perceived. You could use the Live Broadcast feature to:

 

Live stream a snippet of your gig
Go behind the scenes in your album writing process
Inform your fans of a new tour and/or album release
Tour diaries
Behind the scenes access to your studio sessions
Q and A

 

Executing Your Idea

Now that you’ve got an idea, it’s time to execute it. Before grabbing your phone and hitting the broadcast button, you need to plan the actual broadcast to ensure people are prepared to view it. Of course, as the Live Broadcast feature is new, Facebook will consider it as rich content, resulting in it having a higher reach then other content. So audiences will stumble upon your stream. But you want to make sure your biggest fans see this content to ensure a higher level of engagement.

 

So before you “Go Live”, here are a few things to ensure you are prepared:

 

1. Alert your fans in advance about plans to broadcast live, in order to build up anticipation. This can be done through an email alert, status update, or social media push from other accounts.

2. Ensure that you have a fast enough connection to broadcast live video, preferably WiFi or 4G. Be aware that the “Go Live” button will be greyed out if the signal is not strong enough to support Facebook Live.

3. Post a description of what you are about to share before going live. Fans should know what they are about to watch, so don’t give them false hope.

 

“Go Live”

So now the stage is set; lets “Go Live”. Once we are live, we want to keep audiences involved. An aspect of live streaming that is unique to the medium is that audiences are able to shape the content in some way through interaction via the comments section. Don’t ignore them! Say hello to fans that attempt to interact with you or even get them to comment questions. The more interaction, the higher engagement you will receive.

 

Now it is important to stay live for longer time periods in order to receive higher timeline rankings. Facebook recommends at least 10 minutes, and the feature supports broadcasts up to 90 minutes.