How to turn your Facebook Live posts into a useful resource for your readers

If you’re a fan of livestreaming on Facebook Live or Periscope you’ll probably have wondered how to make the best use of your videos once they’re live. You can download them and use them in a blog post or upload them to another social media platform but in this post I want to show you how, in 5 simple steps, you can turn them into a really useful resource page for your readers.

Step 1: Categorise your existing videos on your Facebook Video page

if you click on the video tab on the left hand side of your Facebook page you’ll arrive at your video page – the place where all your Facebook Live videos live. Using the playlist function, categorise your videos into groups. For example I have a 30 sec #BusyMama tips playlist for my 30+ tips videos and a Productivity playlist for videos about being more organised. As well as it being good housekeeping, it’s a great way to work out some simple categories that could double as resources pages on your site.

Step 2: Download your videos

There are a number of ways that you can download your Facebook Live videos…. but I want to show you a little hack that lets you download the smallest MP4 file. This is useful if you’re going to put your videos into a grid as I have done on my Busy Mama Tips resources page as at this size there isn’t a marked impact on the quality of the image.

First you’re going to play the video that you want to download and right click on the video to bring up the video URL. Copy and paste this into a new browser window.

Now replace the www. extension at the front of the URL with m. and press return. You’ll get the mobile version of the same page. You can then simply play the video again and right click to pull up the File Save As function which will download the video as an MP4 file. In my tests doing this hack halved the downloaded file size.

Step 3: Create your resources page

Here is where the magic happens. Create a new page on your blog or website that will house all your downloaded videos. Use a reader-centric title and a short explanation under your videos to entice people to click play. You can see mine here:

As you can see I have mentioned at the top of the page that these videos are from my Facebook page to give my readers a heads up that there will be mention of things like commenting and following that they wouldn’t normally expect on a plain ‘ol video.

I’ve created a grid to house the videos because there are a lot of them and because they don’t need to be very big to get the 1 min message across from each one. For longer videos you might want to use a different layout and a larger file size to make it easier for your readers to watch.

Step 4: Share the love for your new resources page

Like any blog post you should share your resources page and make it clear that you’ll be updating it over time with new videos, creating a ‘sticky’ page that readers return to again and again for new useful content.

Step 5: Keep creating new content…

Once your resources page is live you can make this a focus for your Facebook Live videos and create a plan for new videos which will build on previous ones, showcase new ideas or tips.

Some ideas for resources pages

Craft bloggers – tutorials for different seasonal crafts, tips and techniques or beginners how-to videos.

Fashion bloggers – modelling videos, split seasonally, by occasion or colour

Food bloggers – recipe videos, categorised by food type, meal type or seasonal recipes.

If you’ve been thinking about going live on Facebook or Periscope but you’re not sure how to get started, worried about what to say or what will happen when you press that button come and join me in my supportive Facebook Live Broadcasting Support Group where we share hints and tips, offer friendly advice and cheerlead each other through our live streaming adventures.

Hope you’ve found this useful, my friends, if so feel free to share!