AWAI's video: FACEBOOK LIVE ENGAGEMENT SECRETS for 2021 - From The Queen of Facebook Mari Smith

Boost your engagement and your ROI in Facebook Live sessions with these little-known secrets from the Queen of Facebook, Mari Smith. Facebook Live is an excellent way for writers and businesses to connect with viewers and prospects within a niche. With these tips from Mari Smith, you'll see how easy it can be to boost engagement for as little as a dollar. Mari will also share her thoughts on the future of social media and upcoming platforms that are worth checking out. Chapters: 0:00 Reach and engagement through Facebook Live 1:14 Facebook Live Engagement Secret 2:08 Facebook Live Engagement Secret 2:38 The future of Social Media platforms This is an excerpt from Mari Smith's talk at AWAI's 2021 State of the Industry Summit. Watch the full Summit, with copywriting tips and advice from our industry leaders: https://awai.com/summit === Watch next: How to Get Better Writing Clients, with Seth Godin: https://youtu.be/H5ZnIVpovgg Content Marketing Strategy for Writers, with Russ Henneberry: https://youtu.be/FOIjgBVYLuQ === Transcript: Facebook Live is actually one of my favorite modes of communication, methods of communication. I think it can help create the most intimate, deep, meaningful connections, and relationships with our audiences. I used to say that, for like a decade, I’d always say, I speak at a lot of live events, dozens every year pre-COVID, of course, and I would always say, you know, there's no amount of sophisticated technology that can ever take the place of live, in-person connecting where you can look in somebody's eyes, you can shake their hand, you can feel and sense their energy, their body language, but the next-best thing, of course, now, here we are post-COVID, is absolutely video and especially live video. So, Facebook live - the thing is with Facebook, they actually have been turning up the dial on the organic, the algorithmic reach for organic live video. Either natively uploaded and especially with live, it gets the best reach and the best engagement. I love that you're talking about, okay, “reach, results, revenue.” How are you going to get the ROI? The return on investment of presenting yourself on camera whether live or recorded. So, two really important tips is that you want to make sure that you put that CTA - that call to action ideally above the fold before they have to click the more button to read more. I usually start out with maybe two, one, two, three, four sentences… just something to describe the video, and a title. Once I finish the live, I will go back in and I might add more, I’ll add keywords, hashtags and I'll always make sure that CTA and the link is above the fold. So that's one thing. Don't be afraid to ask for the sale. You're giving this content away for free. Your sharing your knowledge. Say, “By the way, if you'd like to work with me, I've put a link right here.” Whilst you live, you can pin the comment to the top. And then, in addition to that, a little known secret is that if you go to promote using some ad budget, even a nominal amount of dollars literally $1, $5 $10 … using the Boost button or, if you know what you're doing, you can go into Ads Manager. And the very act of turning your Facebook live video into a paid placement will attach… the entire bottom part of the video player becomes a clickable link. Absolutely, you're going to add the CTA in there. So, I love to do that. That's a really good one. Tick Tock is a formidable competitor and that's why they're really dialing up the reach and engagement and visibility for real. So, if you can do, even just one or two reels a week. Facebook video, for sure, as we've talked about and, keep your ears and eyes out - well, your ears - for social audio. I know Clubhouse is all the rage right now. They have some privacy and some security challenges that I'm not happy about, but I'm keeping a close eye on them. I have an account on there, but there there is actually around fifty - 5-0, social audio companies in the making. It's a huge space. Facebook's coming out with their own social audio app as well. And then the final point in terms of where to focus is - I just have the sense that something new and niche might be coming along, where we can just get back to the humanity of marketing and we're not at the mercy of a zillion algorithms and fake news and just all kinds of rubbish coming at us, right? Just like Clubhouse seemed to kind of come out the blue and just skyrocket, and they will be coming to Android. So they've broken into this whole new area of social audio. I just feel like there's room in the market for not necessarily a new social network or a new social audio company… like a new way for us to deeply connect with our niche, and not feel at the mercy of these multibillion-dollar, Silicon Valley companies. And, yes, that from the mouth of the “Queen of Facebook.” ==== AWAI: Helping people from all walks of life get paid to write. www.awaionline.com