Facebook Live is yet another new function on the king-pin of social media, and it’s yet another way for bars, cafes, and restaurants to reach an audience – old or new.
Put simply, the Live feature allows you to stream video live to your Facebook page so followers can watch in real-time. It then stays on your timeline as a video, like any other post usually would, so people can look back over it later.
For bars, cafes, and restaurants, Facebook Live is a powerful little social media marketing tool. Like video content, going Live is great for connecting with your target audience, growing a following, and showing off your venue to potential customers.
Some Added Bonuses of Facebook Live
While you stream live you can see who is watching your video and you can interact with them. People can write comments and like and share as you go, and you can also comment to thank people for watching, answer questions, ask people to follow, etc. The joy of this feature is that it improves reach and engagement through being interactive.
As the Live stream is saved as a video, you can go back after you’ve finished streaming and reply to comments, add tags to it, and promote it further.
People who follow you will get a notification when you’re going Live, too, so the app draws attention to your page because of the activity.
Ideas for How to Use Facebook Live for Bars, Cafes, and Restaurants
- Behind-the-scenes: take guests on a virtual tour of the kitchen. It may be better to do this out of opening hours so you don’t accidently film your kitchen staff saying or doing something that shouldn’t be streamed to social media!
- How-tos: get your chef, or your best cocktail maker, or your barista to give a demonstration in how to make a signature dish or beverage of yours.
- Menu announcements: if you’re having a change of menu or revealing some big news for your café, announce it by going Live.
- Live entertainment: if you’ve got some special event on or live entertainment, go Live to give viewers an insight into how happening your venue is. Just make sure that whoever you’re filming is happy to be filmed.
- Q and A: a question and answer session on Facebook Live is a great way to interact with your online community and give them a chance to have intimate access to the people behind your business.
Facebook Live Tips and Tricks
To get the most out of your Facebook Live streaming, there’s a few things to keep in mind. The difference between Live and regular content is that you have less control – whatever you film is being streamed straight to your audience. It’s not like taking a video where you can look back at it and check that it all looked and sounded right before you upload it.
Because of this, you need to do a bit more prior planning to ensure your Live stream is top notch. Here’s how to get the most out of your Facebook Live experience:
- Ensure good video quality by only streaming when you’ve got a strong network connection.
- Promote ahead of time when you’re going to go Live.
- Write a snappy, accurate description of your video before you start.
- Plan what you’re going to film so you have direction and purpose with your video.
- Use a microphone for clearer audio. If your stream will focus on talking (i.e. a Q and A or How-To) film somewhere without background noise.
- Respond to viewers by name. Even if you’re talking into the camera you will still see pop-ups of who is watching and who has commented. Give them a shout out and say hi and thanks for watching!
To further maximise the power of your Facebook Live video, go back and do a bit of editing to include categories and tags. Like other videos on Facebook, you can go back and select an appealing thumbnail for it, tag it and categorise it so that it can be found by a wider audience more easily, and choose a call-to-action button for it.
Facebook Live is a fun new tool for bars, cafes, and restaurants to engage with their online audience and grow a more engaged social media following. Keep the tips and tricks in mind to ensure you’re getting the most out of it, but, most importantly, have a play around with it and see what works for you!