Last month we conducted an experiment. Every day in October we live streamed video using Facebook Live. There are many reasons why businesses can benefit from using Facebook Live, we were motivated by a desire to drive more traffic to our Facebook page so that we can merge legacy accounts.

Having rebranded and brought the Bordon Hub firmly into the SiGNAL brand we no longer need to have different Facebook pages, however to merge these accounts Facebook require us to boost the likes on the SiGNAL page. Facebook Live is just one of the strategies we are using to do this.

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Facebook Live - the results!

So does it work? Yes! Across the board all our metrics on our SiGNAL Facebook page went up. While we can't attribute this just to Facebook Live (as we continued to share other content during the month), we didn't change our Facebook strategy in any other way. Here are the results:

Actions on page: up 100%

This is the number of clicks on buttons from our page such as to get directions, phone number and go to the website. These are not clicks on links from posts.

Page views: up 34%

This is the number of times our SiGNAL page profile was visited during the month.

Page preview: up 76%

This is the number of times people hovered over the page name from a Facebook post so they can see details of the page.

Page likes: up 75%

This is the all-important metric that we needed to see if Facebook Live would increase the number of page likes so that we can merge our accounts. A great result!

Post reach: up 114%

This is the number of times people saw a post from SiGNAL during the month.

Recommendations: up 100%

The number of people that have recommended the SiGNAL page.

Post engagement: up 77%

This is the number of interactions with our posts such as reactions (likes, loves etc.), comments, shares and clicks.

Videos: up 229%

Not surprising since the campaign was all about video! This metric measures the number of times our videos were played for longer than 3 seconds.

Page followers: up 85%

This is the number of new people who have followed our page and therefore will see our posts in their newsfeed.

Since our Facebook Live experiment ended we've continued to see growth in our key metric of page likes: up 157% in the first 7 days of November. We haven't started a new campaign or anything that might specifically boost these numbers so I'm confident that this is a legacy of the Facebook Live month.

7 key benefits of using Facebook Live for business

If this has piqued your interest in live streaming for your business, what benefits can you expect if you were to start building regular Facebook Live sessions into your social media strategy? Here are our top 7:

1.     Boost page likes: that's why we did it and it seems to work!

2.     Authentic content: people really like unique, unedited, unfiltered content that provides a great insight into your business

3.     Cost effective: brand video content needs investment to ensure that production values and creativity are aligned with your brand, but live streaming doesn't require that degree of branding. You can film on your smartphone, just adhere to your brand values and ensure the content is what your audience wants to watch.

4.     Creates excitement and exclusivity: live content makes people stop and watch. There's also a sense that only a select group of people are accessing the content (although it could be 1,000s) and that makes people feel special.

5.     Get feedback from your target audience: Facebook Live provides a platform for talking to your target audience directly. You could host a Q&A and ask for viewers to post their questions in the comments or give them a sneak preview of a new product and request they give you a reaction (like, love, LOL, sad, angry etc.).

6.     Test content ideas: if you're experimenting with different formats of content, for example you're considering in investing in a series of video interviews or behind-the-scenes footage of your business, use Facebook Live to test them. Real-time engagement will give you an indication of whether this is the right kind of content for your target audience. With good quality metrics available in Video Insights you can also measure how content performs.

7.     Raises brand awareness: video is highly shareable and therefore live streaming can be a great way to raise brand awareness. With Facebook Live people can invite their friends to watch as you stream or share content to their feeds for viewing later.

Although Facebook Live is real-time, unedited and unfiltered content, don't press record on your smartphone without doing a little bit of planning! We decided on a simple format of 60 second views. These included tours of SiGNAL, interviews with our business community and insights from our team. 

Here's our most popular 60 second video that's had 2K minutes viewed!

Even though they're no longer live, you can still watch all our videos here.

And while you're at it, please give our SiGNAL page a like too!