Six weeks ago, I’d never live streamed on social media. I’ve had Facebook for over a decade and Instagram for about six years and I’d never felt compelled to press the Live Video button and talk in real time to my followers.

Fast forward to today and for the past five weeks I’ve done a live video on Facebook every single working day. That’s 18 live streams!

So what changed? Why am I going live all of a sudden?

The catalyst for being more active on Facebook was looking at who I’m serving with my business and how I can help more entrepreneurs. What I really, really want to do is help more women like me. Women who have left their jobs to follow their passion and create more freedom in their lives.

The difference between me and my dream client is - they aren’t marketers. They are smart women and they understand the value of marketing but they need some help and advice to do it better.

I think I’ve found my calling in life! 🥰

I’ve niched down even further and decided that where I can provide most value is with email marketing. I LOVE writing emails, the words flow easily from my brain to the keyboard (because I write how I talk) and with my marketing experience, I know what it takes to write a campaign that gets results.

THIS is what I can help other women to do for themselves! But how do I reach them?

Have you guessed? It’s Facebook!

My dream client is on Facebook and she’s networking like a pro to find like minded women who can help her to overcome the next hurdle in her business and up her game in general. Even more specifically, she participates in Facebook Groups.

I decided it was time to put the effort in to growing a little community of my own. My Facebook group was born!

I know that Facebook groups take a LOT of work in the first weeks and months to keep people engaged and get the group talking to each other. I was conscious that in my group I didn’t want it to be solely me posting topics of conversations or simply sharing links back to my blog - I decided I had to go FULL FACEBOOK. I was going to go live. 🌟

What planning did I do before my first live stream on Facebook?

I’ll be honest here: almost none. I knew that if I started to plan too much, I’d put myself off doing it. I set the group up on the Friday night and I announced that I’d go live on the Monday morning.

I decided to commit to going live every week day and to start off I used a blog I had already written, 5 Quick Tips to Improve Your Email Marketing as the subject. I would cover one tip a day for the first week. Simple!

I didn’t even practice because I was worried I’d come across as scripted or muddle my own thoughts with too much prep. When Monday rolled around, I set my laptop up at the kitchen table, went into the group, pressed the Live Video button and started talking.

I did have some notes that I prepared beforehand. Here they are:

• Say hello

• Update on my day so far while I wait for people to join

• Explain that probably not many people watching live so this is mainly for folks watching on the replay.

• TIPS:

1. There’s an argument for using consistent wording in a subject line if you have a newsletter that you send out regularly. Yes, people may come to recognise it and therefore open it because they like to hear from you.

2. What can also happen is it becomes boring and open rates start to fall. So, my first tip is: Try mixing things up!

3. Take something exciting/interesting that you are communicating within the email (if you don’t have anything exciting/interesting to say then why are you sending anything at all?) and pull this out in the subject line.

4. Don’t just use April Newsletter or similar, for the subject line. That’s not compelling enough and busy people will be tempted to just delete it and wait to see if you can do better next time.

• TAKE QUESTIONS

• Call To Action: I’ve written a blog about how to mix it up with your subject lines so I’ll link to that here.

• Also feel free to drop any subject lines you are thinking of trying in the comments and I’ll give you some feedback.

How did my first ever Facebook Live go?

I was fully expecting zero people to be watching and for the first 45 seconds or so, that was how it was. Then a few people started to join! I got so excited. I actually found it distracting when people were coming in and gave them such a hearty welcome that they probably thought I was a bit crazy.

The group had about 35 members at this point and overall I think four people watched live that first time. Not gonna lie, I felt a little bit famous. 🤩

• I had 3 people like that video

• 25 people have seen it since it was posted

• It has 20 comments

What went wrong with my first Facebook Live

What I didn't realise is that when streaming, at the recording end everything looks perfect. However, this was not so! I had some major internet bandwidth issues thanks to streaming Disney+ channel on the TV to keep my three year old quiet while I was on.

This meant that for everyone watching, I was a pixelated, stuttery mess. 🤦‍♀️

They were kind about this though and I learned an important lesson for the next day: Keep all the bandwidth to myself.

On Tuesday morning I was back with tip number two in my email marketing mini series and this time my daughter was being entertained by cartoons streaming over 4G on the iPad. I had all the broadband to myself.

About four minutes into the stream, my daughter started to shout for me and I had to go check on her. I apologised to my viewers (more people had tuned in live!) and stopped streaming.

I sorted my daughter out (she’d pressed something on the iPad and My Little Pony had gone off), gave her strict instructions to sit still, not touch the iPad and to wait for me to come get her when I was finished.

I started a brand new live stream and luckily, people had stuck around for me to come back. Phew!

Top tip for anyone with kids at home: Like a lot of mums, I’m currently juggling work and childcare so I planned my live streams to be less than 20 minutes long (the length of one episode of My Little Pony). 🐎

I didn’t watch it back

I got through the next three days of streaming with no hiccups and I was starting to feel really energised by the whole experience.

Something I refrained from doing is watching the videos back. I know that I’ve said “err” quite a lot, stumbled over my words and rambled a bit. I don’t need to watch that back.

I believe that for me to get better, the best thing to do is keep going. Practice makes perfect!

I’ve since been interrupted by the postman (one knock wasn't enough). I left the video streaming while I dashed off to sign for the parcel. It was all fine!

Testing different times of the day for Facebook Live

I went live in the mornings for the first few weeks and I then put a poll in the group to ask people what time of day they would be most likely to watch live. The results said afternoon so I’ve now changed my times to go on between 2pm and 5pm to see if that gets more watchers.

Like everything marketing, you have to try new things and record the results. I’ve also done a Friday night live at 7pm where I did get a few folk watching. I’ll keep mixing it up to see what works and continue to ask the group what they want.

Ask group members what they want

I’ve been asking people in the group to tell me what they want me to cover which is great for two reasons:

1. It makes them feel heard and increases engagement

2. It tells me what my dream client is interested in

I used a poll to ask what topics people want to see covered and I discovered that most people are beginners at email marketing and so want some advice for getting started. Very useful to know!

The results of going live on Facebook every day

My group has really flourished. It’s relatively small but I’m over the 100 members milestone now and the group has some really nice conversations going on. A landmark day came four weeks into the group where members started posting and talking to each other without any instigation on my part. That felt great!

I’m keeping focussed on quality not quantity and I am strict about only admitting people to join if they’ve answered my screening questions. If they don’t answer, I send them a direct message to remind them to do it and if they still don't respond, it’s access denied. I don’t want to let people in who can't be bothered to answer three simple questions. They aren’t going to engage.

BONUS: Around half of the group members subscribed to my mailing list upon joining the group (it was one of the entry questions) 💌

What’s next for my live streams?

This month I did my first two-person stream where I invited a guest in to talk about marketing with me. I used Streamyard (it’s free) to host the stream so we could both be on at the same time.

It was really well received but I’ve now decided that I will limit the guest lives to a minimum as I want to be the main voice of authority in the group.

Conclusion

Going live on Facebook was completely new to me but I just jumped in with both feet and made a commitment to my group members that I would be on every day. To be able to do this, I couldn’t spend too much time planning what I would talk about or it would become too much like hard work and I wouldn’t keep it up.

I recycled my blog content so that I didn’t need to write new material. I also kept my lives to a maximum of 15 minutes so that I could get it done while at home with a small child.

Going live every day has boosted my brand new group to a place where members are engaged and talking to each other. It gives new members something to look at and learn from straight away.

I’ve had loads of new people subscribe to my mailing list.

I’m so glad I gave it a go and didn’t let those early teething problems put me off.

Have you ever gone live on social media? If so, how did you find it? Let me know in the comments.