8 Tips To Reach More People Through Your Facebook Live Service During COVID19
I’m so encouraged with seeing churches use Facebook Live or Facebook Premiere for their church services during the recent COVD19 crisis.
It’s been great to see so many adopt this way of broadcasting their church services. I’m seeing some churches do a great job of utilising a very different context to communicate the gospel.
Today I’d like to share some tips on how to reach more people through Facebook Live or Premiere.
The fantastic news is that your church service on Facebook Live or Premiere is like having a church service in the open air. Everyone else can watch or listen in if they choose to.
Because of the viral nature of Facebook there are significant opportunities here.
Tip#1: Invite your church to add the ‘See You First’ setting for your Facebook page – This means that they will see every post you have and will never miss your Facebook Live or Premiere. See how to do this in this post ‘How To Get Your Facebook Page Posts Seen First All The Time.’
Tip#2: Pre-service hosts – Don’t start your Facebook Stream with a 10 minute countdown. Have two pre-service hosts welcome everyone and have some casual chat before the service starts. They can do shout-outs as people join and engage with questions below.
Tip#3: Ask questions – Get your communicators to ask questions like:
Tell us which suburb you are watching from?
What room of the house are you watching from?
Tell us who are you watching with?
Tip#4 Pastor, engage with your audience – This is like the previous tip. But as the main communicator you can encourage your congregation to leave a comment to a question you ask.
Tip #5: Share into your Facebook Group. See more here “12 Of The Best Post Ideas For Your Church’s Facebook Group.”
Tip #6 Email your congregation – Just after the service finishes to tell them that they can watch the replay on Facebook, start a watch party and to share the FB Live/Premiere with their Facebook friends.
This tip is huge, and will have a great impact for your increased reach!
Tip#7 Have hosts ready to chat with people – Facebook has given every page to add your welcome team as hosts. Add them and get them to welcome people into the service.
Tip#8: Virtual welcoming – Encourage everyone to welcome each other on the stream who they recognise by commenting.
Your Turn
What have you seen that has helped more people see your Facebook Live Service? Comment below.
Hey Steve, good tips. One of the challenges that I found with Facebook Live is that there is about a 30 second delay from when the person doing the live stream says something and when people can see/hear it. Add in the time it takes for someone to type in a comment, and even asking simple questions like “What city are you watching in today?” challenging. You have to be able to fill 40+ seconds with something else before can expect to be able to read/respond to answers in the comments. Got any ideas for how to handle that?
Great question Paul, I haven’t seen that lag with our church. But yes there will be some time filling. As long as it’s high energy ‘time filling’ it is fine.
I have seen our hosts segway into talking about another topic for a minute then come back to the comments as well.