Livestreaming videos pack a punch. With livestreaming dominating social media, there is no better way to start marketing your book even more creatively. Now that Facebook Live Video has joined popular options like Periscope and Blab, indie authors have tons of great livestreaming options for book marketing. Perhaps you’re ready to jumpstart your book promotion with livestreaming video.  But, where should you start? Let’s start by reviewing some of the most popular options.

Facebook Livestream

You’ve likely seen Facebook’s new option to “go live,” particularly when you post from your mobile device. Perhaps you’ve seen something in your notifications saying that a popular figure you follow is now live on Facebook. In a nutshell, the new Facebook Live feature gives you the opportunity to take advantage of livestreaming video right on your Facebook page. To start a livestream, open up the status bar as though you were going to write a new post and click the little red head with the circles around it. This will push you into a cue to start your livestreaming. You will then be prompted to name your video feed and choose who you want to see your livestream. You can choose to Livestream to everyone, or just selected followers. Now, just click the button to go Live and voila! You are now broadcasting to your Facebook audience.  If you choose, you can save the video to share later – so perhaps add it to your YouTube channel or webpage, etc. Any marketing channel where you’re actively working on your book promotion.

Tips for using Facebook Livestream:

• Ideal video length: 5 to 20 minutes
• Use a short, catchy video title. If you need to add a longer description, do it in the comments.
• After the live event be sure to add a little narrative to the post, a call to action and change up the thumbnail (Facebook allows you to choose 1 of 10 images)
• Use tags to help people discover your video so add any that tie into your topic.
• If you’re interviewing people in the video, you can also tag them under “edit video” (one note, you can’t edit the video yet on mobile, just on your desktop)

Periscope

Periscope is a mobile app that allows you to broadcast to your followers through an active Twitter account. It’s important to note that you must have a Twitter account to use Periscope. Periscope’s streams are temporary, and will only “exist” for 24 hours online. The app settings, however do feature an “autosave broadcasts” option that will save your broadcasts to your phone. The livestreaming video is shared with your Twitter followers who can then click and watch it live or in replay for up to 24 hours.

Still not convinced? As of March 28, 2016, there had been more than 200 million Periscope broadcasts.

Tips for using Periscope:

• Since you’re broadcasting on Twitter, I recommend limiting your scopes to 10-15 minutes, and make sure followers know from the onset what they’re getting.
• Click on the Twitter icon before you put the broadcast live to ensure the scope is posted to your Twitter feed.
• Watch for commenters. Whoever watches you live can comment on your video. To reply, just click the “reply” button right from their comment.
• Before you launch your scope, invest some time to write a compelling title. Maybe something “exclusive”: a book promotion launch, a special offer, or a rare, behind the scenes look.
• When Periscope launched, using location and tagging was a bit of a concern because it could pinpoint the exact area you were scoping from. Now the focus is more general, so you should feel comfortable turning this on during your livestream.

Blab.im

Blab has been called the “Foursquare of video,” because it’s all about the check in. Blab’s mobile app allows you to log on, view other Blabs, or start one of your own. Unlike Facebook Livestreaming and Periscope, Blab doesn’t force you to integrate with any social media site, meaning you can share it on your social sites, but you aren’t forced to run the stream through Facebook or Twitter, etc. If you’re big on advance planning, you’ll love that you can schedule your videos up to a month in advance. This allows you to plan in advance to Blab when you have a big book promotion launch or event that you want to promote but know you won’t have the time to film a livestreaming video at that exact time. There’s also a nifty countdown timer on the page, which boosts the excitement of your broadcast. It’s definitely worth your while to check out a few Blabs before you launch one to get an idea of how they’re run, how the interface works, etc.

Tips for Using Blab

• If you want a replay of your Blab available on your Blab.im profile, you’ll need to record it using the record button.
• Blab has a unique feature that allows you to drop in a PowerPoint presentation if you’re doing a class or something else that may require using PPT.
• Be sure to play around with letting guests in and locking seats, because this is a useful tool. The option to “lock seats” is especially handy if you’re limiting your audience or just want to do a round-table chat without anyone else popping on.
• Blab allows you to broadcast either privately or publicly, so be sure to check the settings before you begin.
• You can easily connect your Blab and YouTube accounts so that when you post a Blab you can choose if you want it posted to YouTube as well.

I strongly encourage you to check out these platforms and see which feels the most intuitive to you. Play around with it — have FUN! Then, watch for our next post on how to use video specifically for book promotion!