Facebook is a great marketing tool, and with every new content creation and measurement tool it gets better. As the Facebook Team rolls out new forms of content creating and sharing, marketers need to know how effective they are. Right now, the most engaging type of content is video. And Facebook has started rolling out new tools and metrics for this kind of content.
Marketer and Filmmaker with Facebook Videos
The number one challenge for business owners and marketers is learning how to make engaging videos. At the same time, they must make sure that they promote the right brand values through all these Facebook Videos.
For native uploaded videos, things are somewhat simpler. You can spend time editing your video, watching it and making further changes. But what happens when you use Facebook Live?
You are pretty much on your own, hoping that your voice doesn’t falter and you are looking straight at the audience, not at the camera. But now, things will change. You will have more control over how your look and sound in Facebook Live videos.
New Facebook Live Video Tools: Rehearsing and Trimming
The Facebook Team understands that many people suffer from anxiety when they have to go live and speak freely, without having a paper to read from. This is why many Facebook Live sessions get low engagements, although the topic is of great interest for the audience.
Thus, content creators now have the Live rehearsals option before they actually start a live video. How does this work? You can create a Live video and broadcast it only to your Facebook Page administrators and editors. Thus, you can judge your own performance and work on improving it.
The Trimming option allows you to cut the start and finish parts of a Live video recording, eliminating the awkward moments when you turn on and off the session. The trimmed version will be available among your page videos for your followers to watch any time they want.
You Can Go Live for a Longer Period of Time
If you are broadcasting from an event and sharing workshops and keynote speeches, you need time to cover all the important aspects. However, until recently, you had only 4 hours available for a Facebook Live video. If you wanted to continue, you had to create a new session, with the risk of losing the attention of many followers.
Now you can go live for 8 hours without interruption. One of the first pages to try new features was NASA. They broadcast an 8-hour space walk on the 8th of October.
New Metrics for Facebook Watch Parties
Watch Parties are increasingly popular. You can bring your followers together watching an uploaded video and see their comments in real time. For businesses, this is a great opportunity to create and maintain dialogues with their potential customers.
But how do you measure the engagement level and the performance of your Watch Party? This has been a problem for a while. But not anymore, as Facebook has launched three new useful tools and metrics for Watch Parties:
1. Tag Business Partners
If you broadcast branded content during a Facebook Watch Party, you can now tag your business partners in it. Thus, they will be able to look at the insights and analytics and measure the engagement levels.
2. Two New Metrics for Watch Parties
You can now see two relevant metrics in the Insights panel for Watch Parties:
- Minutes Viewed – this metric shows you the total number of minutes watched by all the Facebook users who attended your Watch Party;
- Unique 60s Viewers – here you can see the total number of viewers who watched the first 60 seconds of the Watch Party.
Another upcoming feature that has just start rolling out is Live Commenting. When you create a Watch Party, you will be able to go live at the same time and add comments to your video. Very soon, it should be available for all the pages, so keep checking out for it.