Post by W. Ryan Dodge, part of the Digital Engagement team at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, ON Canada

 

Facebook Live is a relatively new way for museums to share live video with their fans on Facebook. With Live, Museums have a great opportunity to take their community behind the scenes, host a Q&A, share announcements, give a gallery tour, and more — LIVE!
There are a number of reasons why you should be working Facebook Live into your content strategy and especially during the #MuseumWeek. In this article I’ll outline a few below before showing you how to go live and a few tricks and tips.

Grow and engage your community

Whether you have an established community or want to build up your audience, Live gives you the opportunity to connect authentically in the moment. When you start a Live video, it will appear in News Feed and your community will receive a notification that you are live. They can then interact with you by commenting, liking and sharing the live event with their networks. Needless to say that your audiences will be connected during the #MuseumWeek!

Interact directly with your community, in real time.

During your broadcast, you’ll see the number of viewers and a real time stream of comments from people tuning in. You can respond to comments live during the broadcast, giving you the opportunity to have a dialogue with you community, in real time!

Keep your video for fans to view later.

After your broadcast has ended, your video will be published to your Page so your community can watch at a later time. If you’d rather not keep the video, you can also remove it from your Page at any time.

Starting a live broadcast from the Page Managers app is easy:

Tap on Live button in the Facebook Page Managers app.

Add a description for you broadcast and tap the Go Live button when you’re ready.

During your broadcast, you’ll see how many viewers you have and can respond to comments live. You can also hide comments or switch the front and back cameras of your phone.

 

 

End your broadcast when you’re done by tapping on the Stop button.

Your video is automatically saved to your Facebook Page for your community to view later. However, you can remove it at any time, just like any other post. You can also update the description if you like by editing the post.

Tips and tricks

• Introduce yourself and describe what viewers will be seeing. It takes a few seconds to build an audience so don’t jump right in, give people time to show up.
• If you have a presenter and you are the host, start with the camera on you for your intro, then flip to your presenter. That way people know who’s voice that is in the background.
• If the host and presenter are both on camera at the same time, give the host a device so that they can monitor for questions during the live.
• Ask people to comment when they are tuning in from and to share the live event with their network during your intro.
• Do a test before you go live on your personal Facebook page. Check for sound and image quality and also wifi/cell service issues.
• Use a mic when possible, especially if you are doing a live event in a gallery or there is background noise.
• Use a gimble or a selfie stick to stabilize the video, nothing worse than a shaky video!
• Keep it short and to the point, 20 minutes is ideal, 40-60 minutes is too long.
• Acknowledge people when they ask questions, let them know that you’ll answer them after the live event if you can’t get to them during the event. You’re doing this to talk to your community after all, think of your lives as a conversation, not a broadcast.
• Have fun with it! Don’t take yourself too seriously, people want to meet and talk with the people who work at museums. Be yourself!
• Last but not the least, register on this Google spreadsheet so the #MuseumWeek team will be able to feature your live session!