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Crossposted at VirtualOvationTV

The Facebook marketing team behind the spinning wheel of death- People or corporate autmatons?

I love live streaming. I have devoted my career to building live streaming into the performing arts. Live streaming offers you an unparalleled method of both communicating with your audience on an authentic, granular level and of building community around your brand.

Note the words Community and Communicate.

For the past two days I have been logging into the Facebook Marketing Bootcamp streamed live via Livestream ( a company I love).

Now, as much as anyone, I understand how hard it is to stream live – there are a multitude of factors which need to be in perfect order in order to send a stream that is both visually and audibly clear. But this is Facebook!!!! A multi-billon dollar technology company that is attempting to launch a huge advertising initiative with this bootcamp, and they can’t stream a live event that will load and that is audible? Come on!

So, yes… technically I would give this stream a fail… but after two days there are two far more important reasons I think that Facebook Marketing Bootcamp Live is failing- and they go back to the greatest assets of livestreaming- COMMUNICATION AND COMMUNITY.

On the first day of the bootcamp thousands of us set our reminders so that we arrived on the bootcamp page with five or ten minutes to spare. A perfect opportunity for Facebook to send out a message in the player that says something like

“Hi! Thanks so much for coming to our first Facebook Marketing Bootcamp. We are so glad you are here! We will begin at 12:30 EST and so look forward to answering your questions”.

Ahh…as a viewer i feel like my time is valued, I matter to the company and I am  reassured that I have come to the right place at the right time. I am relaxed, taken care of and ready to hear Facebook’s message with an open (even excited) mind.

Instead… Facebook had a keynote speech given by Sheryl Sandburg auto-playing on the page. Great speech…but the news feed below the video was filled with viewers who were confused. They thought they had come to a live event- why was a pre-taped video playing? (want a simple fix… just add a scroll with the welcome message above and all your potential customers feel taken care of and acknowledged.)

Then, 12:35 and the stream hadn’t begun… still no message from Facebook. This is appointment viewing. Respect your audience by letting them know that you know they are there, they are waiting, they have taken time out of their day, and you will be with them shortly. Again… a simple scrolling message will solve the issue. Perhaps Click to continue reading post…

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