How to Repurpose Your Facebook Live Videos
The qualities that make Facebook Lives unique are easy to spot; it’s right in the name. Live video captures attention on social media and often shows a side of people and brands that you don’t see anywhere else.
Don’t lose the momentum that you build during your broadcast the moment that you stop streaming. In this piece, we’ll cover how to download Facebook Live video, and some of our favorite ways to use that video to market your business.
How to download a Facebook Live video
Before we get to the ways that you can use your Facebook Live video, you’ll need to download it. Fortunately, Facebook makes it pretty simple.
Step 1: Open your Facebook page and select your Videos tab
From that page, you’ll be able to select your video, which brings us to step 2.
Step 2: Select the video you want to download
Click the video that you’ll be repurposing, and then click the three horizontal dots in the upper right corner of the window. From there, select the “Download Video” option and your download will start.
Ways to repurpose your Facebook Live video
Once you’ve downloaded the file, it’s time to put it to work! Here are a few approaches to get you started.
Upload your video to YouTube
Hosting your videos on YouTube as well as on Facebook adds an additional element of discoverability for potential viewers who are searching YouTube for content.
Make it as easy as possible for people to find your video by adding a description that includes keywords that you think people are searching for, as well as adding subtitles for your video, which will also contribute to how your video appears in search. Figure out the “need” that your video addresses, and gear your text toward explaining in clear language how your video meets that need. For a guide to setting up your YouTube video from an SEO standpoint, check out our blog post.
Pull quotes for bite-sized videos
Facebook Lives tend to run much longer than most social videos, but they often contain nuggets of info that can stand alone from the rest of the video. Break up your video into more digestible portions, and give social media viewers a snapshot of your Facebook Live by grabbing a memorable quote or moment from your broadcast. Use our Quote Block, more on that here, to highlight a topic of conversation that will grab your audience’s attention. You could even link to your full video in the post.
Embed the video on your website
Facebook Live videos can make excellent visual companions to blog posts or other landing pages on your website. On our blog, for instance, we embedded a Facebook Live interview into a recap piece, which lays out the key themes and takeaways from the conversation regarding branding and marketing to millennials.
If you decide to add your video to a web page, you have a couple of options to choose between. You can either upload the video file directly, or you can embed the Facebook player on your page. Facebook lays out those steps here.
Create teasers for future live videos
Make your video work for you! Select a few choice moments from your existing Facebook Lives that’ll entice viewers to tune in for a future broadcast, and turn them into a brief video ad. As you create your video, consider what your audience tends to respond to: do they want to learn? Do they want to laugh? Choose the moments that fit the bill for what your audience responds to. If you’ve already scheduled your next Live, include a link to the post so that potential viewers can sign up to receive a reminder notification.
Create content based on the Facebook Live
Each year, we hold a Social Video Marketing Summit on Facebook Live which features talks from industry experts. After the fact, we make sure that their expertise reaches the widest possible audience by creating blog posts with highlights and quotes from the speakers. While not ever Facebook Live will feature influencers, lessons learned can always be extended by adding them to another of your marketing channels.
Promote the live video after it ends
While you can’t promote a scheduled Facebook Live post ahead of time, you most certainly can after the fact. If you landed a particularly influential guest, or made an impactful product or business-related announcement during your broadcast, promoting the video with a Facebook ad can be an excellent option to get the video in front of more sets of eyes. If you’ve never set up a Facebook ad before, check out our guide here on our blog.
Let us know how it goes!
We love Facebook Live, and not just because going live is so darn fun. We love it because it’s the gift that keeps on giving. A Facebook Live can be a source for a dozen shorter videos, in addition to all the additional viewers it receives once the broadcast concludes.
If you have any ideas repurposing Facebook Live videos that we didn’t cover here, please share them in the comments, and if you have any questions, let us know!