How To Use Facebook Live To Drive Traffic To Your Blog – Blogcentric 121

Facebook is greedy, it wants all the people for itself, forever. It doesn’t want them to leave their site and go to yours. As bloggers and as businesses that’s definitely not what we want. We want people to read our blog and buy our stuff. 

The question is, is it possible to use Facebook Live to drive traffic to our blogs and websites? And if so how?

But first, why?

Facebook Live streaming is an effective way for you to build relationships with your audience. There is something about people seeing your face, live, on-screen that is attractive. It helps them get a measure of you; it helps build the know and like factor.

This makes it a powerful tool. One that will help you scale up your reach and make you a recognisable brand. It’s easy to think Live streaming could replace our blogs completely.

But wait, your blog is still powerful, if you can get readers onto your site and spending time with your content you can convince them to buy.

Can we combine the two? Can we get our Live audience onto our blogs? And if so, how?

Yes, you can. Here are 9 tactics you can use to get viewers onto your blog.

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1. Build a Facebook Live page

Obviously, the place people are most likely to watch your Live broadcast is Facebook. Users will discover it in their feed or get a real-time notification from Facebook to tell them you’re Live. That’s great, Facebook are helping you to reach your audience.

But, if you want people to visit our own site you need to get creative and build a page for your show.

The first step is to invest in some third party software so you can schedule your broadcast in advance. 

Don’t worry, this doesn’t have to be costly. You can use Belive.tv for free if you limit yourself to two 20 minute broadcasts a week.

If you are a Mac user, you can buy Ecamm Live for a one off payment of $79. It’s what I use, and it’s just brilliant.

These tools, amongst others, let you schedule your broadcasts on Facebook. They create a post on your news feed that transforms into a live broadcast at the allotted time.

The advantage of scheduling is that you can grab the embed code from the post and add it to a webpage. Now people can watch live on your site rather than having to go to Facebook. 

I have a page just like this. You can watch my show there and I also have an email sign up so that people can get show reminders. I’ve recently added a messenger sign up to the page that sends a reminder via Facebook Messenger 10 minutes before I go live.

Using these tools I’m growing repeat and loyal show viewers. I can also capture visitors to that page with the Facebook pixel and retarget to them later. More on retargeting shortly.

All this is useful, but it doesn’t get people reading your blog.

2. Turn your Live into a blog post

Preparing and producing a Facebook Live takes time but your video on Facebook is fleeting. Seeing as you’ve put all that effort into your broadcast and opened a discussion with your audience, why not turn it into blog content?

The Simple Social Press plugin for WordPress will create a draft blog post for every Live you create on your page. This gives you almost instant content. 

You can use a service like Rev.com to to transcribe your broadcast and you have the basis of a blog post to accompany the video. It’s good fast content.

I’ve seen Mark Schaefer uses a variation of this technique on his blog. You’ll see here he’s using a YouTube embed rather than the plugin.

Now you have a Live page on your site and blog posts from your live streams, make them the centre of your social sharing.

Change your focus from trying to get people to watch on Facebook and send them to your site instead.

3. Messenger prompts

Imagine you reference one of your blog posts during your Facebook Live. The viewer wants to know more and makes a mental note to look it up later, you may even tell them you’ll leave a link in the comments.

Although your viewer had every intention of checking back later on, or visiting your site they’ll often forget about it immediately. 

To combat this, you need to capture your viewers in the moment. And you can do this with a messenger bot prompt.

A what now?

A messenger bot prompt is an automated direct message sent to people who comment with a specific keyword on your live broadcast. 

For example. During your show, refer to a blog post and tell people to comment with ‘Blog’ if they want a link to it. The messenger bot will automatically send the people who do, a direct message with the link.

It sounds complicated, but it’s actually simple to set up and you can be sure it will drive more traffic than a verbal cue alone.

Here’s a guide from Digital Marketer on how to set that up.

4. Tag products

Facebook has a cool feature that lets you add products or services to your page.

**NOTE changes in Facebook mean this is no longer possible for non product pages on your site**

Although it’s designed to showcase what you sell, you can hack it to link to the blog posts you mention in your live broadcasts.

Once you have scheduled or broadcast click to edit your post.   Select the ‘Tag products’ icon and create a new product for $0 for each blog post you mention. Make sure you include a link back to the blog post.

When users click, they are directed to the product on your Facebook page, one more click and they’re on your site.

5. Boost your post

When you boost a video post on Facebook (or use the advertising interface to create an ad with a video) you get the option to add a call to action button to that video and include a link.

This is beautiful. It adds a clickable visible link to your post so people know exactly what to do next.

You don’t have to spend big money either. The minimum budget for a video boost is €1 or $1. That’s all you need to spend to get that magic link.

6. Retarget your viewers

When people watch your live video on Facebook, you can add them to an audience of people to retarget with ads. Use these ads to direct them to a blog post relevant to the topic of your live broadcast.

For example, if someone watches 25% of your live video they know who you are. If you show those viewers an ad, directing them to a blog post, they are more likely to be interested than someone who hasn’t encountered you before.

If they watched 25% of your video and visited your blog post, it shows they are even more interested in what you do. Now you can sell to them using ads for a product or service.

This is a very basic funnel for converting your viewers into customers but it’s the basis of a strong sales strategy.

Read more about Facebook ad audiences here.

7. Bribery

I already suggested that you could create a blog post from your Facebook Live, but what about turning that on its head and creating a Facebook live about your blog post?

Talk about the key ideas you cover in the post and how it can help your audience and then offer a bonus. Tell people to visit your post to read in more detail and offer them a freebie if they do. This could be something as simple as a PDF printable version of the blog post.

8. Research

Use your live broadcast to research your post. Ask your audience to comment on their opinions on your topic and collate those responses as part of your blog post.

When you’ve completed the post go back and share it with each commenter on the broadcast.

9. Make a trailer

With third-party tools it’s possible to include pre-recorded video as part of your broadcast. I do this on my show. It makes it easier to break up the segments, and it gives me a break halfway through to collect my thoughts.

If you pre-record a trailer for your blog post, you can take a break from your broadcast and play it to your audience. Include a call to action to your messenger bot to ensure people click through and read. 

These are just some ways you can use live streaming on Facebook to drive traffic to your blog. 9 is an odd number so if you have any other creative solutions I’d love to hear about them so I can round this up to 10 tips.

Using your Facebook Live broadcasts to drive traffic to your blog posts and website will ensure that you not only build that strong live relationship with your audience but that you continue to build on that relationship on your own land, your website, making it easier to sell.