How To Repurpose Facebook Live Videos With Ian Anderson Gray

This week’s podcast episode is all about how you can repurpose Facebook Live videos and I have the pleasure of introducing you to a fantastic guest - Ian Anderson Gray.

Ian is a live video marketing confidence coach and founder of Seriously Social. He’s an international speaker, trainer, teacher, web developer and consultant. He has a passion for making the techno-babble of live video marketing & social media easy to understand and helping people overcome their fear of the camera. As well as being a geek, husband, and dad to two kids, Ian is also a professional singer.

Ian is a good friend, he lives near me in Manchester in the UK…although we seem to spend more time hanging out at conferences in far away (and more exotic places) like San Diego.

When it comes to repurposing content, I think live video is a great starting point. I’ve already covered this topic in this post and episode 7 of the podcast but I felt it was time to bring in an expert for a much more detailed look at live video.  There was no-one else that I considered talking to about this topic other than Ian!

Here's a summary of what we discussed.

How to plan your live video BEFORE you go live 

Whilst a big part of the fun with live video is the spontaneity, it’s always a good idea to have a plan before you go live. Here are Ian’s top tips!

• Check your tech beforehand. Go live to yourself and check all is running okay – you can do this in Facebook by selecting your audience as ‘only me’. Also, check your internet speed. You are looking for upload speed not download speed, and you need at least 4mbps or you may encounter issues (you can use speedtest)
• Get your energy levels up. You might want to consider doing some voice exercises, this all helps to make sure that your live audience are greeted by someone who is going to capture and keep their attention!
• Start confidently and with purpose. It’s good to bear in mind that the first people who will watch your live video are actually your replay viewers. It’s your viewers in the future, those who watch the replay, who are going to see your (once-live) video from the very start (because live viewers aren’t usually there at the beginning, they tend to join a little later)
• Welcome your replay viewers first - announce what you’re going to be talking about and introduce yourself
• Then, welcome your live viewers – have a look, see who is watching you live and say “hello”. Don’t spend too long on this, but it’s nice to acknowledge your live viewers. You can you do this step in one discreet block of time so that it can be edited out later. Let your viewers know that you are going to move onto the main content, encourage them to make comments and ask questions but you won’t respond until the end or the middle. If you take questions on the go this will distract you and may not create the best experience for a non-live audience
• Commence your topic / presentation / main content. This is the main section that you can use for repurposing later. Keep it focused – as mentioned above, leave questions and comments for later. As a tip, when deciding what content to cover, you could select a blog post that you have written, summarize it into the main points, and use those main points as the plan for your live video
• After you have delivered your main content, get interactive with your viewers – make the most of the live aspect of the video and add lots of value by interacting with you viewers and answer questions. You could potentially create short separate videos from the Q&A sections where you create a video on a question and answer for social sharing, your website, membership site, etc…

Tips on co-presenting a Facebook Live show 

Co-presenting a Facebook Live show is an option. Facebook are currently rolling out a feature which allows you to co-present a live video when using the mobile Facebook app – if someone is watching your live video you can bring them forward to present with you.

I experienced this first had a few weeks ago when I went live with Janet Murray after appearing on her podcast. It was super slick and saved getting your head around yet more online tools. Good job Facebook!

Ian co-hosts a weekly Facebook Live show with Julia Bramble called The Free Range Social Show.

Ian explained on the podcast how the plan for co-presenting can be very much similar to conducting a live broadcast on your own.  However, a big benefit of having co-host is that you can bounce ideas off each other and it can flow very nicely.

Ian recommends that you don’t have too much banter and small-talk…you want to cut out the chitter-chatter and keep it interesting for your guests. Having a structure to your show is even more important when you have co-presenters.

Tools for Live Video

When it comes to tools for live video, rule number 1 is do not overcomplicate things and keep it simple!

You can start by going live on your smartphone using the Facebook app.

You can enhance the experience by getting a lapel microphone which will improve sound quality (really important if you go on to repurpose your video, especially if you are repurposing your video into a podcast episode…I have a future podcast episode incoming on this topic).

The only drawback with this approach is that should you want to use your video for other purposes, for example, uploading to YouTube, the quality of the video that Facebook provides you with is low quality.

As you become more sophisticated with live video you may want to consider using other tools and here’s what Ian suggested…

eCamm Live – Desktop – Mac only

This is great software, it’s under $30. You record your live video from within eCamm, which you integrate with Facebook, so that it streams your recording to Facebook Live. You can save your video in full HD and it displays the comments. It’s really good but it’s only on desktop and only on Mac.

Switcher Studio – Mac only

Starts at $29 per month. You can do all sorts of great things with your live video, like create multiple cameras on ipads and iphone with your ios devices, add graphics and effects, multiple camera angles and more.

OBS Studio (free) – Mac and PC

Ian really recommends OBS studio. Whilst there is a bit more of a learning curve when using it compared to eCamm Live there is so much that you can do and it’s free. You record your video in OBS Studio, stream to Facebook Live, and you can then save the video in full HD (great for repurposing). Plus you can do lots of cool things like bring in guests, switch scenes, add webcams.

If you’d like to use OBS and want some help, I highly recommend taking Ian’s online course - he will rapidly reduce the learning curve and you'll be recording live video with OBS in no time.

Other options (that can be quite pricey) are Wirecast ($700) and Vmix (up to $1200)

Using a tool to get a really great quality video would really enhance your repurposing endeavours.

Getting started