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Facebook Live is by far one of the biggest features to evolve from Social Media, and yet one of the most under-utilised by us Small Business Owners.
Could it be the vulnerability of being immediately visible by the world? The perceived technical difficulties, the logistical nightmare of holding a selfie stance the entire time or even the investment in good equipment? |
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Well today's new feature update may heat up the Live Map a bit. As you can see in the above video, Mr Zuckerberg announces, with flair, the ability to stream from any device.
Flying in on a drone, we are transported to the audience view aboard! But exactly what does this mean...logistically? |
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Naturally, I jumped at the opportunity to go Live from my desktop to talk all about this and how it would enable more and more people to jump on-board the Live Wagon!
Whoa there...Not so fast. Take a look a below at what exactly is involved, and I'll try to help you get along with as few issues as possible.
Whoa there...Not so fast. Take a look a below at what exactly is involved, and I'll try to help you get along with as few issues as possible.
Firstly, visit facebook.com/live/create to bring up the landing page for this new feature.
As you can see, it is as easy as 1,2,3...for developers and tech-bods. When exploring the three pieces of software presented, they each seem to be targeting a specific audience.
As you can see, it is as easy as 1,2,3...for developers and tech-bods. When exploring the three pieces of software presented, they each seem to be targeting a specific audience.
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Here is OBS Studio. I'm not about to review each and every one of these softwares, however I would say that Facebook wouldn't present these three if they weren't safe for you to download from this site, or if they weren't compatible in some way.
(OBS Studio is the option I took after seeing the other two.) |
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Telestream is the second option we are given and looks like the most user-friendly of the three.
My reasoning for not using this just yet, was simply that it appears to be entirely geared up to Periscope, rather than showing that it is now available for Facebook Live. This may very well change in the next few days. |
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XSplit is the third we get the choice of and my initial instinct is that this is very much wired up for high speed gaming (far beyond the mediocre set-up I have here).
Choose whichever appeals to you and your hardware and connection speed, as I should imagine each will have a different demographic in mind for its user base. Of course, you might have your own software to do this with, but you will need the ability to customise a streaming link to one that Facebook will provide. Once you have downloaded your chosen piece of software, we can now set-up to Go Live. |
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Once you click "Create Livestream", you are presented with a very familiar option screen.
Go ahead and choose whether you are posting on your own timeline or even as your page. I would urge you to go live in a group or event in the first instance until you get used to your chosen set-up. |
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By this point, you are probably imagining that this is much more effort that simply going live with your mobile...and it is. This is definitely for those that really would prefer to be at a fixed location, have a variety of technical toys or want access to a much wider variety of settings and customisation for their broadcasts.
As you can imagine, even at the simplest level here, there are a couple of factors to bear in mind when going live.
If you want to know more about how to use Facebook Live with streaming software, they have created this article in their Help Centre to give you a hand.
As you can imagine, even at the simplest level here, there are a couple of factors to bear in mind when going live.
- When setting up your software, ensure you enable both your camera and microphone into the current broadcast.
- Take the Stream key (above) and plug that into your Streaming Settings
- Check your internet speed at the time of going live to ensure good connection
- Be aware of a delay. Remember that you are no longer within a streamlined app, but the camera and microphone are talking to streaming software, which then processes the video before feeding to the Facebook Streaming ID. Only then does it go out to your audience and your own visual feedback will most likely be anything from 5-45 seconds behind, which means any comments you might be able to see, will most likely be related to something you said a while ago.
If you want to know more about how to use Facebook Live with streaming software, they have created this article in their Help Centre to give you a hand.
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