If you aren’t reaching as many viewers during your Facebook live selling video as you should, you’re not alone. Facebook algorithms display content in users’ Feeds in the order of what they deem most relevant for audiences based on how the subject matter fits with their interests. Another ranking factor is the level of user engagement during your live stream.
The Facebook algorithm is triggered by user activity generated from likes, comments, shares, and embedded posts, which they consider to be a positive signal of relevance to the target audience. The more engagement a live video has, the closer to the top of users’ news feeds it is positioned, making it more noticeable and easier to find at a glance.
Thankfully, there are ways to reach more of your target audience and Facebook followers when you go live. Especially when you are utilizing multichannel live sales. When considering how to get more views on Facebook Live, not getting the kind of audience you want initially can help you establish a baseline that you can work from to make adjustments and improve organic ranking for your live videos.
Once you put these tactics into practice by selling on Facebook, you’ll start reaching more of the users you’re targeting and they’ll engage more. This will help your video rank higher in their Feeds, resulting in more viewers and overall Facebook engagement from a more qualified audience.
Why Is Going Live Important for E-Commerce Businesses?
Until 2016, e-commerce marketing and brand communications were mostly static. Customers would click on ads served to them by a search engine and respond to social media posts or emails. Once on a website, they could watch a product video or read product descriptions and sometimes get answers from chatbots. Maybe they’d speak with a sales rep through a dedicated online chat. There were no person-to-person live interactions at the level customers have when they’re visiting retailers in person.
Live shopping videos, an entertaining way to share product information with customers who watch and shop remotely, became immensely popular in China on Alibaba’s Taobao social network and Douyin in 2016. Viewers could actually purchase the products they saw in the video through comment replies or clickable “add-to-cart” features that allowed them to shop directly from the live videos. Brands announced that they generated millions of dollars in a single live video selling session.
Within a couple of years, Douyin rebranded as TikTok and launched in the United States, sending Facebook and other platforms scrambling to improve their social media marketing and live streaming capabilities just as the COVID-19 pandemic gripped the world in a giant lockdown in 2020. E-commerce stores in the West started taking notice of what was happening in the East as they pushed to adapt quickly to the new live selling video format.
Meanwhile, technology is now more accessible than ever. Internet connection speed has been improving steadily as smartphone ownership in the United States has increased by more than 50% since 2011, with 85% of adults using mobile phones.
Live Selling is Here to Stay
While the 2020 pandemic may be winding down, video consumption is at an all-time high and rising, with 75% of all videos viewed from mobile phones, and 85% of shoppers hungry for more video content from their favorite brands. Live video selling adds the personal attention that shoppers, who have grown accustomed to the convenience of e-commerce but disillusioned with poor user experiences, have been craving.
Live selling allows sellers to reach customers anywhere, anytime, with no physical contact.
How Live Selling Helps E-Commerce Businesses Expand Their Reach:
- Building trust. Live selling has become a way to build trust with customers who want to make a personal connection with brands.
- Developing personal relationships. By making customers feel like they have a one-to-one connection with retailers during live video streams, retailers can create better relationships with customers. The advantage to live selling is that retailers can go live to large online audiences. By interacting with each customer in turn, everyone feels important and individually appreciated, which can result in higher average order values and increased customer lifetime value.
- Entertainment encourages sharing and referrals. Customers like tuning into live sale videos to be entertained and informed by the brands they like. The more spontaneous and exciting a live video is, the better the chance is that customers will share it with their friends and family, which increases viewership.
- More engagement with better-qualified customers. Retailers who go live regularly can create a loyal following for their brands and products. Live viewers who tune in frequently often look forward to interacting with the live hosts via the comments section. Loyal viewers often watch entire live video streams to learn more about products as they participate in tutorials, demonstrations, and special promotions.
Why Retailers Should Use Facebook Live
Facebook is one of the top social media sites with 2.7 billion monthly active users. Facebook Live videos are watched three times longer than recorded videos, and sellers have the opportunity to reach their audiences on the platform in real-time.
If you go live on Facebook you’ll get 10 times more comments than you would from a recorded video. That’s 10 times the opportunity to engage your customers! Plus, more comments mean more organic reach for the live video.
- 500 million people are watching 100 million hours of video on Facebook every day.
- 80% of Facebook users would rather watch live videos about products than read the product descriptions on a website.
Even with these statistics in mind, many retailers are wondering how to get more views on Facebook Live and are looking for proven strategies to boost their live sale viewership on the social platform. The first step is knowing the best products to sell online and then using Facebook live to promote your business.
22 Best Practices to Get More Views on Facebook Live
Here’s a list of optimization tips for how to boost a live stream on Facebook. When you implement these best practices, you should see a big impact on viewership, engagement, and audience quality. You can also attain better organic placement for your live-selling video in users’ Facebook Feeds.
Optimizing Your Facebook Profile to Boost Relevance
Facebook’s algorithms look at more than just your live video stream content and engagement to judge whether the live video is relevant to your target audience. The algorithms also consider the post content and frequency on your profile or Business Page and compare it with the content in your live video.
- Post focused content to your Facebook profile on a regular schedule. If you haven’t posted frequently to your Facebook Business Page or Group, or your posts haven’t been focused, create a posting plan to post at least a few times a week. Stick to this schedule for a couple of weeks before your first live sale. Make posts that are relevant to your industry niche, audience, and products. Include hashtags and encourage people to like and share your posts.
- Actively engage followers on your Facebook Page by replying to their comments, creating posts that answer their questions, and tagging them when you post. Encourage followers to message you with any questions.
Ways to Pre-Market Your Live Video
- Keep your followers in the loop. Make sure your audience knows when you’re going to go live but also make sure you know the best time to go live on Facebook to get the most engagement. The more followers you have, the better, because they’ll be notified automatically when you go live. When considering how to get more views on Facebook Live, keeping your audience informed should be top of mind.
- Pin a link to your live sale at the top of your Facebook Page so anyone who may be new to your brand will see that you’re going live. Encourage people to “like” your Page so they’ll get a notification when you go live.
- Make your live video feel exclusive. Tease a giveaway, special guest appearance, promotion, limited-run product, or special discount for early birds to get people to show up and stay until the end of the video. Consider creating a VIP Group on Facebook, if you haven’t already, and posting special live video sales only to those group members of repeat and loyal shoppers.
Tips to Check Your Tech
Your stellar presentation will quickly lose steam if your audience can’t view the video due to a poor Internet connection or shaky video. The last thing you want is for customers to jump off your live sale because they can’t view your video. Take a few minutes to check your Internet connection quality and do a dry run with your phone and other equipment to make sure you can create a high-quality stream.
Here are some tips for using Facebook live:
- You need a strong, fast Internet connection that can handle live streaming, preferably broadband WiFi with a 5GHz WiFi router on a network with an upload speed of at least 3Mbps for optimal stream quality. If you’re going live from your mobile phone, use WiFi instead of cellular for your connection.
- It’s best to use a tripod, especially if you’re doing a live broadcast from a phone. That way, you’ll avoid having shaky video and your live stream will convey a more professional feel. Film videos vertically so all product details can be seen clearly from viewers’ mobile devices.
- Use a ring light. Good lighting greatly improves video quality. You can get an inexpensive floor or table ring light with adjustable settings to make you and your products look their best.
Adjust Your Settings
- The wrong privacy settings can make you feel like you’re live streaming to an empty room because you’re not seeing any viewers. Before any live broadcast, check your privacy settings by clicking the down arrow at the top right of your Facebook profile and selecting Settings & Privacy, then Privacy. Select the audience that should see your post—ideally “Public” to maximize reach by allowing your viewers to like and share your live video with their friends, who may not have liked your Page yet.
- Optimize the audience that Facebook will target by going to your Business Page
Optimize Your Live Video
- Create a descriptive video title that tells viewers what your video post is about and gets them interested and excited to view it.
- Keep your introduction brief. Tell people what you’ll be presenting, how to register with your shop, and ask an engagement question or two to get live viewers commenting to boost the video’s engagement.
- Start talking when the video starts, even if people haven’t joined yet. Facebook records the live video for you to use later, so keeping dead air time to a minimum is a good idea because you’ll be able to re-use the recorded video after the live stream.
Tips for Going Live on a Regular Schedule
- Create a schedule and stick to it so your customers can count on seeing you on specific days and times. This is a great way to answer the question of how to boost a live stream video post on Facebook the organic way — when people have your live-selling schedule memorized, they’ll tune in regularly.
- Be punctual. Show up on time to start your live video. Don’t worry if people haven’t joined yet. Just start and assume they’ll join shortly.
Tips for Knowing Your Audience
- Use Facebook Insights to get a better understanding of audience demographics like age, gender, interests, and location. Go to your Facebook Business Page and click on the Insights tab. You’ll see who has been tuning into your video, where they’re located, and what timezone they’re in. You can also view how many people have liked and shared your live video. This tool will help you identify different Facebook groups you might be able to target to expand your audience.
- Understand and anticipate engagement patterns. After you stream a few live-selling videos and check Facebook Insights for the analytics, you’ll start to recognize patterns in visitors, levels of engagement at certain times in your video, and response to your live-streamed offers and promotions.
- Create for your audience. Once you have a better idea of who your most engaged viewers are, you can start to tailor your live stream shopping content to their interests – to increase comments, likes, and shares, and get more Facebook live views and sales.
Tips for A More Engaging Live Video Experience for Your Viewers
- Address people by name. Ask them questions and answer their questions. Take time to have conversations to create a personal connection with your customers.
- Make all viewers feel included. People will come and go, so make sure you re-introduce yourself often and remind people what you’re discussing throughout the live sale. Greet viewers by name as they join your live Facebook live video.
- Go live for at least an hour. This gives people a chance to tune in later if they need to but still not miss your live video content. It gives you the opportunity to address more of your viewers individually to make them feel included and appreciated. You can also show off more products in a longer live-selling session, which can lead to more sales.
- Encourage comments, likes, and shares. When your live video’s active engagement increases, Facebook’s algorithms will trigger to give your live video a boost.
The Takeaway
When you go live on Facebook but aren’t getting as many views as you’d like, it’s a good idea to update your privacy settings, keep your customers and followers informed, and think about how you’re posting and optimizing the video content itself to boost your live sale. If you’re asking yourself how to boost a live stream on Facebook organically, consider the best practices above and incorporate them into your live-selling strategy. Implementing some or all of these tips can help you improve your audience quality and attain a better organic ranking for your live videos in Facebook users’ Feeds.
