With more than a decade of experience working with human behavior in the advertising industry, Stephanie Liu has made herself an expert in live streaming.

She is the host of Lights, Camera, Live, which shines a spotlight on the best and brightest marketers in the industry. Liu also is an online marketing strategist, live video trainer and self-proclaimed ’90s beat scholar.

Ask a question about live streaming on social media — and marketing entrepreneur Madalyn Sklar had many — and Liu has the answer.

Live streaming emphasizes that there’s a real you behind your brand. That lets you play up your ideal customer’s persona traits.

“Nearly 2 billion people have watched a Facebook Live,” Liu said. “This creates new opportunities for you to connect with customers. Create original programming at a scheduled time to engage viewers. Then leverage custom audiences to retarget viewers or create lookalike audiences.

“Live streaming is one of the fastest ways to grow your audience,” she said. “Expand your reach. Then invite viewers to become fans of your page. Engaged users have a lower cost per action, in my experience.”

Above all, the personal touch must prevail.

“Consumers are going to gravitate toward brands that add a human element people relate to,” Liu said.

Entrepreneurs can tap into new Facebook Live features to grow their audience.

“Live polls are now available to all Facebook pages through the Live API via Publishing Tool,” Liu said. “Just imagine what you can do with interactive polls and how that can spark more engagement from your loyal fans.

“I tested it with marketer Mike Allton, and it’s so easy,” she said. “You don’t need a third-party tool to poll viewers and publish results.”

Crossposting value

Liu also likes live video crossposting.

“Go live once and have your content appear live on multiple pages,” she said. “It’s perfect for blitz campaigns. New features like these can give you valuable audience insights.”

When live streaming on Facebook, Liu opens the post on her desktop.

“From there, you can edit, interact, create, poll and publish,” she said. “Once viewers vote, you can publish the results.

“I live stream tutorials,” Liu said. “It’s natural for me to remember how-to’s and step-by-step instructions.”

Businesses also can benefit from Facebook Premiere.

“It lets you debut videos as live moments to create pre-buzz,” Liu said. “Imagine dropping the world premiere of your newly launched product, course, product or flash sale. You can get people talking about your launch before your cart even opens.

“We’ve been using Premiere to get fans hyped up for a client’s upcoming Facebook Live,” she said. “The engagement has been amazing. You can share the Premiere link just like a scheduled broadcast.”

Using Premiere and live streaming in general comes with great responsibility.

“If consumers see brands abusing a feature like Premiere or Live Streaming, the businesses open themselves to getting ignored in the future,” Liu said. “The key is to be strategic.

“We’ve tested Premiere compared to regularly scheduled videos,” she said. “We find that we get more engagement before it even airs. Brilliant.”

Fun and creativity

Liu believes in adding fun to content strategy.

“Social media is usually the first place brands like to test new campaigns and be creative,” she said.

According to Liu, these are six social media marketing tools every marketer needs:

• AgoraPulse
• Ecamm Network
• LastPass
• VideoHive
• Connected TV
• Creative Market

“You get a lot of features with a third-party platform like Ecamm,” Liu said. “Brand your show, invite guests, intro and outro videos, feature comments, screencast and more.”

She uses Ecamm for two of her shows and highly recommends it for Mac users.

“Automate how you repurpose live videos,” Liu said. “My new secret weapon is a repurposing tool that takes your Facebook Live videos and publishes them to YouTube automatically. You can even turn your videos into audiograms.

“If you want to get a lot of live viewers, consider having a pre-promotional strategy,” she said. “That could include creating a Facebook event, leveraging bots for reminders and promoting the scheduled broadcast across all channels.”

Find insights

Liu agreed that it’s important to seek insight behind your content first.

“You also can look at viewer comments to see if there’s a specific question always being asked,” she said. “Use that insight as you plan your content calendar. Even if you automate your process, go back and optimize for search engine optimization.”

She also recommended having a run-of-show template that outlines the flow of the episode.

Liu went into greater detail about Facebook Live Crossposting and how someone can live stream to multiple Facebook pages.

“Live Crossposting allows you to publish a single broadcast across multiple pages as an original post,” she said. “That means one piece of content can be repurposed. Engagement across all those videos will roll up to the original page. Again, use it for blitz campaigns.”

Like many tools, Crossposting has pros and cons, according to Liu.

She gave these favorable attributes:

• Live video viewer count will appear on all crossposts.
• Video metrics — such as views — will roll up to the original broadcast.
• See which page is driving the most views.
• Build relationships with pages that produce high-quality content.

Then there are the negatives:

• Comments and reactions from your page’s live video won’t appear in the other page’s crossposted broadcast.
• Viewers can’t see where the original live video is coming from.
• You have to keep an eye out for comments and questions that may appear on other pages.

Liu had several tips for content creators who wish to use a script during live video broadcasts.

“Try not to read a script word for word,” she said. “Instead, create bullet points that are easy to remember.”

Keep these factors in mind:

• What is your livestream about?
• Why should viewers tune in?
• How will it impact viewers?
• What if viewers tune in, what will happen?

“If you’re live streaming from your desktop, try adding little Post-it® notes next to your web cam,” Liu said. “Then it still feels like you’re keeping eye contact with viewers.”

Whichever method used, Liu said it’s always helpful to research and have an outline or script before going live.

She and Sklar continued with their own live stream in a Facebook Live conversation.

This article was originally published by Jim Katzaman on medium.