In this episode, we talk about how to host a live video on Facebook to promote your next book launch. It is easy to look and sound amazing on Facebook Live!

Show Notes

We’ve Learned a Lot the Hard Way!

• Thomas has been streaming live events since before Facebook live existed on LiveSteam and others.
• 12 hour stream at the Texas Capitol called Let Texas Speak. Streamed many other political events.
• Radio show was a Facebook live every day. So I have spent over a hundred hours in front of a live camera.
• Jim has done several successful Facebook live events and just got out of an epic launch party for the Novel Marketing Insiders. You can watch it on Facebook, and if you want to know about other live events, become an insider on Novel Marketing.com.
• Jim started his career on air at a radio station Seattle … no, not FB live, but being live on air.
• Learned a lot the hard way.

Why Facebook Live?

• The algorithm favors it.
• Creates an emotional connection with readers
• Cheap & Easy
• Fun
• Viewers watch a live video three times longer than a regular video.

Why Most Authors DON’T Go Live.

• Self-conscious about their appearance.
• Don’t look as young as you used to.
• Think it is super hard. It’s not!

How to Look and Sound Amazing

• All of the following tips are 100% optional. Don’t let them keep you from going live.
• Wear solid colors.
• For the love of good about, hold the phone sideways.
• Use a tripod if you are using a phone.
• Put the phone higher than your face, to make you look thin, put the phone low to make you look fat.
• Get lights behind the camera. The more light behind the camera, the better you will look.
• Set a way for you to view comments live. The interaction is the most fun part for your viewers.
• Have a strong internet connection. Go to speedtest.net to test your internet. Ideally, you want an internet connection in the double digits. So at least 10mbps up and 10MBPS down.
• Your car is often a good place to go live. It has excellent sound proofing and visual interest. Just don’t do it while you are driving!
• Consider doing it with a friend … GoLightStream.com and BeLive.tv

What to do Before You Go Live

• Outline what you are going to say.
• Announce to your friends and followers when you are going to go live. Email your list as well. Tell them when and where to find the live stream. This is a great way to convert email subscribers into Facebook likes.
• Consider asking for questions ahead of time.
• Consider creating a Facebook event that people can RSVP for.
• Recruit someone to help manage comments, preferably someone with admin powers to ban spammers or trolls.
• Write a magnetic title for your live stream that answers the question “Why should I tune in?”
• Practice:
  • Create an empty Facebook page to practice in front of a small audience.
  • You can also set the privacy settings to be “only me”

During

• Open with a bang. Your audience for the first two minutes is people who watch after your live stream ends, so give a concince pitch for the whole session in those two minutes.
  • Consider scripting out your opening word for word.
• Smile! Have fun!
• If you make a mistake … (WHEN you make a mistake.)
• Read listener comments and ask questions. Use their names, when you respond to them.
• Ask viewers to subscribe to “Live Notifications.” If you viewers click on the “Follow” button on live videos they will be notified the next time you go live. This is helpful if you plan to go live often.
• Ask your viewers to share the video.
• Viewers come and go on live video so there are a few takeaways:
  • The longer you are live, the more people you will reach. There is a reason TV channels never go off the air.
  • Re-introduce the topic every few minutes.
• Thank your viewers for tuning in!
• Close strong.

After

• Pin the video to your Facebook page.
• Check your Inisghts. What were your most interesting moments? What were your least interesting moments?

Sponsor:

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Transcript

Intro: [00:00:01] This is novel marketing, the show for novelists who aren’t necessarily fond of marketing but still want to become best selling authors.

Thomas: [00:00:09] Episode 153.

Jim: [00:00:11] I’m James L. Rubart, but please call me Jim.

Thomas: [00:00:14] I’m Thomas Umstattd Jr.

Jim: [00:00:16] And in this episode we’re going to talk to you guys about one of the ways Facebook still works effectively to market books. Yes we’re going to talk about Facebook Live. But before we do that, Thomas you have to give us a baby update. We’re coming along we’re getting there. I mean it’s not .. it’s no longer oh my gosh my wife’s pregnant. We’re we’re coming down to the short strokes here in a sense.

Thomas: [00:00:40] We’re measuring this in days instead of in weeks. So I think we are 50 days away. I wish I could tell you exactly how many days. Of course due dates are suggestions. Babies come when they want to come.

Jim: [00:00:54] Right. Right.

Thomas: [00:00:55] We are crossing each bridge as we get to it. I’m learning a lot about the birthing process in my wonderful pregnancy classes … I’m going through the reality of childbirth classes. But it’s good and we are recording these ahead of time, we’re trying to build up a buffer so that when the baby comes I can take a week or two off the show without the show going dark. So the show will still air but we’ll air the buffer so we are recording this in August so it’ll come out a few days later. In fact we just got finished doing a Facebook live for the Book Launch Blueprint. So you’ve heard us talk about it on last couple of episodes. Registration is now closed. So if you didn’t sign up you missed your chance. I’m sorry but we did an epic Facebook live for about an hour. We had hundreds of people tuned in. It was a great learning experience. And we’re going to talk about Facebook live and how you can use it to launch your book and to promote your book. And I should say this is something we do know a bit about. I’ve been streaming live events since before Facebook existed. I did a bunch of political events including a 12 hour livestream that we called Let Texas speak which was political and very fun. We had hundreds of people giving talks at the Capitol and it was 12 hours straight of live streaming which is the longest livestream I’ve ever done for sure. And it was very well received … thousands of people in fact. I don’t know if I share this or not … I’ll just say this I won’t go into any details but as a result of that livestream many events relating around the lifestream a term trended nationally on Twitter for days. I won’t say what the term was. If you see me in a conference you can ask me and I’ll tell you in person. But it was a great experience. A lot of things were learned that way. And when Facebook Live came around I became a big fan of it in part for a couple of reasons, one because Facebook Live is very powerful, it’s way of making emotional connection directly with your viewers specially if they’re interacting with you live. But two, as of this recording, Facebook’s algorithm really favors Facebook Live. So we talked about it at the beginning of the year, the changes that Facebook’s made in the algorithm, and you know what the winners and losers are … so Pages are losers. But Facebook Live is a winner. And so we’re a believer of it to the degree that we used it for our book lunch course …

Jim: [00:03:29] Just moments ago …

Thomas: [00:03:29] and we’ve already sold more copies of the book launch course through the Facebook Live than we did through the announcement. So we did a huge blast of e-mail and the Facebook Live brought in more sales. Now it builds on the e-mail, to be fair, but that’s how powerful Facebook Live is. And Jim you know a thing or two about this as well.

Jim: 00:03:48] Yeah I’ve done a number of Facebook Live Talks with my son Taylor to promote the Rubart Writing Academy. It’s amazing how people engage and all of a sudden you have all these people coming in and asking questions and it becomes very much a back and forth which we’ll talk about a little bit later in the show. But the cool thing about Facebook Live is it’s not just that live event … people go back and watch the video quite a few days after it already aired. So that’s another one of the powerful things about it. It does have traction after you’ve done it.

Thomas: [00:04:20] So we’ve learned a lot of things the hard way … I’ve learned a lot of things the hard way. I was live on radio … so back when I had a radio show we also streamed live so I spent two hours live on radio every day for three hours or was it two? I don’t remember anymore. I’ve blocked those memories. Let’s talk a little bit about why Facebook is so powerful. As we said the algorithm favors it. It creates a deep emotional connection with your readers. It’s very cheap and easy. So a lot of marketing techniques like buying a Book Bub ad or paying for advertising costs money, but with Facebook Live, you already have the technology with the device that you’re listening to this show on. So if you’re listening to this device on your iPhone or your Android phone you can go live with that phone. In fact it’s a very powerful tool for going live. You can also go live with your laptop or desktop if you have a webcam. It’s also a lot of fun. And according to Facebook’s stats that I saw, viewers spend three times more time watching and live video than they would watch a regular video … a regular video can only hold someone’s attention for 30 seconds a live video can hold their attention for a minute and a half which is a lot of time, that’s a lot of engagement.

Jim: [00:05:35] And we see this principle …. you’ve probably seen this principle in television … my degree’s in TV broadcast journalism and one of my professors in class one day said, OK now we’re gonna look at an SLR. What’s an SLR? Well it’s a silly live remote. He called these things silly live remotes and you see them all the time. “We’re going to Thomas Umstattd, who’s on the scene!” Well the video that plays in the background, they could have just as easily played it from the studio. But there’s something about going live to the scene that subconsciously kind of rivets us. “Oh! Oh he’s on the scene!” But he or she isn’t telling you anything he couldn’t have told you in the studio. But again there’s something about going live with the scene and that’s what you’re doing with Facebook Live, you’re creating a live event and there’s just something in our psyche that says oh this is important. This could be exciting. There’s a danger in it right? Something could go wrong and we’re going to talk a little bit about maybe your nerves some of you … when Thomas said it’s fun you’re going, I don’t know if that sounds like so much fun but it really truly is and we’ll talk to you about how you can make it fun.

Thomas: [00:06:40] That’s right. So let’s talk a little bit about why authors don’t go live because we do need to address this like Jim said. The biggest reason authors don’t go live is that they’re self-conscious about their appearance. And this is debilitating. If you don’t overcome this and you have to just … I don’t have a lot of advice other than to just get over yourself and go live anyway.

Jim: [00:07:07] There you go, that’s it!

Thomas: [00:07:11] I don’t feel like that’s very encouraging. Jim help me out here.

Jim: [00:07:14] Well here’s the reality: we we have a culture that says beauty is everything and perfect skin and perfect hair and the perfect face is it. We have a culture that worships that. And yet the reality in your own life is the people that you really connect with, it’s not the beauty of them, it’s the beauty inside them in the form of authenticity. So you see somebody that’s real and authentic and genuine and you can tell really cares? Oh my gosh really? Think of the people in your life that aren’t the models but you just think of them as beautiful. Well that’s that’s what you’re striving for that authenticity. And back to Thomas’s original thought, just get over it.

Thomas: [00:07:58] You’re you’re never going to be pretty enough.

Jim: [00:08:01] That’s right.

Thomas: [00:08:01] The Hollywood actresses are very insecure about how they look. That is not …

Jim: [00:08:06] Horribly insecure.

Thomas: [00:08:07]  It’s not a measurement that you’ll ever reach. You just have to be OK with who you are. Or at least OK enough to be willing to hit record, and that said, we are going to share some tips with you. They’re going to help you look and sound amazing … ten pounds lighter on camera and how to sound amazing. These are all 100 percent optional. You can go live without doing any of these things and you’ll be very successful. So don’t feel like, oh I have to do all of these things that Thomas just said in order to look good. The one thing that can kill it is if people can’t understand you, if you’re in too loud a spot. But even then, doing it in a loud spot will give you better results than not doing all right. So first thing: Wear solid colors, your web cam may get confused if you’re wearing stripes or plaid. I remember the event I did the Facebook Live at the Capitol … I was in the newspaper. The media took a photo of me and it was in the newspaper and it was on their Web site. And I in the photo in the newspaper it showed me wearing a blue gray shirt and I at the time did not own a blue gray shirt. I saw it the next day and I knew what shirt I was wearing at the Capitol the day before and it was a shirt with white stripes and blue stripes.

Thomas: [00:09:37] And what I realized was that this was not actually fake news. This was not the press being biased against my political opinions by changing the color of my shirt. No it was the way that digital cameras interpret color.

Thomas: [00:09:53] They often see lines as errors and will correct them by blending them together. In a photo it’s fine, it just lied and showed this wrong color of my shirt. But in a video it can create this shimmer effect that’s very distracting for the users. You want to wear solid colors and if you watch TV you’ll notice that in live TV typically they wear solid colors and now a lot of jangly earrings and jewelry because it flickers off the light. But I do recommend the wear solid colors and for the love of all that is good about video please hold the phone sideways! You have two eyes and they are connected to each other horizontally so you have one to the left of the other. So your eyes are not above each other. And so if you want to counter video in the best way possible you want to see it horizontally. So don’t do that video up and down. Don’t let that keep you from recording. It’s not that hard to just rotate it 90 degrees either way it doesn’t matter. Hold the phone rewind just hold that sideways.

Jim: [00:11:06] And they do that using their hand .. isn’t that the way?

Thomas: [00:11:12] If you’re using your phone, use a tripod or set it up on something that keeps it still, especially if you’re going to be going for a long time. We’ll talk about whether you shoud go long or short here in a bit. But spoiler … you want to go longer with a live video. You’ll get more viewers that way.  OK so here’s how to look thin on camera. This one rule of thumb this applies for video and still photography. It’s all about how high the phone is or how high the camera is. If it’s higher than your face it’s going to make you look thin. It’s lower than your face it’s going to make you look fat. So if you’re wanting to gain weight have it shooting up at your face. And if you want to lose weight have it shooting down at your face. If you’re sitting at a desk and you’re on a laptop, that laptop is going to be angled up at your face and it’s going to add weight to your face. The easiest way to look better is to just stack some books on the laptop so that it’s angled down on your face you know look a lot better.

Jim: [00:12:52] For example on the Facebook Live that Thomas and Mary and I just did, I just put some cardboard boxes on my chair and so my laptop was a little bit above my face … so real simple to do. So if you’re doing Facebook live even if you’re doing videos for YouTube your YouTube channel whatever. That’s just a real simple tip to very quickly make yourself look better.

Thomas: [00:13:15] Another thing is to get lights behind the camera so you want the light coming from behind the camera and shining on your face from behind the camera. You’ll look better that way. If the light is behind you you’ll be all shadowed. So a classic mistake is if somebody is in a room and they have their back to the window and they’re pointing towards the doors. So if you’re in a bedroom or an office, that’s going to make you look terrible. If you just rotate around where the windows are behind the camera, you’re going to look amazing. That minor change will just brighten up that photo or brighten up that video. Another thing you want to do is you want to make sure there’s a way for you to view the comments your viewers make. The interaction with your viewers is the most important part of the video so you want to have a strong internet connection. If you’re on a wireless Internet connection or your house has a wireless connection to the Internet, it’s easy for packets to drop that you won’t notice when you’re browsing the web. But when you do video, that causes the video to stutter and you won’t have a clear signal. You can test your internet speed by going to speed test dot net. Ideally what you’re wanting to look for is at least double digits up, double digits down and a really strong consistent signal that’s really going to make a difference, and I will say if you have a 4G LTE on your phone you may have actually better internet than what you have at home. And those of you listening in the future once 5G comes out this will absolutely be true. Your connection on your cell phone may be a faster connection to the Internet. I will say one of the best places you can go with has amazing light and amazing soundproofing that you already own is your car. You often see videos float by on Facebook with people in their car. These are people who train professionals like a Hollywood actor who wants to do a live video and share it with his fans. He’ll often do it from his car because he knows the car’s sound proofed the car has amazing light coming in from all directions so it’s going to be well lit. It’s got really good sound deadening and it’s visually interesting. Just don’t do it while you’re driving! That is a bad idea. Although that you know maybe that adds a little bit of drama if you’re willing to risk your life.

Thomas: [00:15:55] Get one of those mounts for ten bucks on Amazon. Put your phone on your dash so you don’t have to touch it if you don’t want and it can be a very very powerful video. And then another thing to do is consider doing it with a friend, but just realize that live streaming with multiple people is a lot more complicated especially if you’re doing three people … you can’t use Facebook Live to do it. I mean it goes out on Facebook but you have to record it on some other service like Be Live TV which is what we just used which has some really cool features like where you can take someone’s comment and and put it up on the screen which we discovered about halfway through the livestream. The reason we discarded halfway through is that it was our backup. We were using go light stream dot com which is free (Be Live TV is 15 dollars a month) go lifestream is free. It’s very powerful but as of recording they are in some sort of conflict of Facebook and it’s not working on Facebook right now. So it works on YouTube and on twitch and on the others but it won’t work on a Facebook page. So which is why we didn’t use it.

Jim: [00:17:03] And when we say consider doing it with a friend if you are in the same spot as them then it’s just very easy to do it. It’s the same as doing it as if it’s just you. So if you have a friend, say another author, and you can get together that just makes it a little easier because now you’ve got a co-host, now you’ve got somebody that when you start going you can turn it over to them and the back and forth banter works really well. But if you have somebody that’s in another city then it starts to get more complicated. And as Thomas said when you have three people it starts to get really complicated.

Thomas: [00:17:34] So let’s talk about what to do before you go live. How do you prepare to have a good launch? What I recommend is you outline what you’re going to say ahead of time. We did this. We had a three page script for our live stream with Mary and Jim, and I had notations for who was going to say what. It was a kind of bulleted list so still kind of organic, but we had an idea, we had some structure.  No plan fully survives contact with the enemy but having some preparation is better than just rambling. And we have a script every time we do one of these novel marketing podcasts, a bulleted lists and you can actually see that list if you go to the show notes for this episode. Just go to Novel Marketing dot com forward slash 153 and you can see our notes and now thanks to our patrons we also have transcripts. Thanks to you who helped make the transcripts possible. So consider asking for questions ahead of time. That’s a great way to build some anticipation as you announce it ahead of time, “Hey, we’re going to go live at 2 o’clock tomorrow or 1:00 next week. You want to have people ready to go when it’s time to go, and asking questions ahead of time is a good way to build up hype. So, “Hey, does anybody have any questions for when I go live on Facebook tomorrow?” You might also consider creating a Facebook event that people can RSVP for. We didn’t do this because we were doing it across so many different accounts.  But again this is another way of connecting these two different Facebook products. And it does help if you have somebody who helps manage the comments and ideally someone with admin power so they can ban spammers or trolls. One troll can really make a lifestream miserable. You want to have somebody who can do that. And it’s hard to do that kind of admin stuff while talking. I found this is one of the challenges when I am hosting a live stream …

Thomas: [00:19:42] … getting other people to talk so I can do the admin stuff because there’s lot of copying, pasting comments and stuff. It’s hard to do by yourself. Next, you want to write a magnetic title free lifestream ahead of time, and in that title you want it to answer the question, Why should I tune in? And one more tip before you go live is to practice. You want to practice several things. Practice, if you’re not comfortable speaking on a microphone, you can practice a dry run so to speak, but at least do a tech rehearsal. There’s a lot of pieces that can go wrong and it just takes time to troubleshoot so you don’t want everyone tuning in at the last minute and hoping for it to just work. That never ever works.

Jim: [00:20:39] And then you’re going to want to have a friend or your spouse or somebody you trust … play it for them, and then what they are going to do is they’re going to watch it and give you feedback and ideas and point out things that you just wouldn’t see yourself … so so take the time to get some feedback constructive feedback.

Thomas: [00:20:57] One way to do this is to create an empty Facebook page to practice in front of a small audience. I have a Facebook page called Test Thomas and it’s a secret. It’s not really secret but no one’s really found it although I guess if you search around some of you might be able to find it … and I stream it live. And my wife can tune in and make sure all the technology is working and it’s a full test. Another way to do this if you’re planning to stream to your private page like your personal Facebook profile, you can set the privacy settings to the only me, and you can do a test that way but ideally I’d like to have the test be as similar to the real thing as possible. Just make sure that any bugs that jump out, you have chance to squash them. All right so let’s talk about what to do during the campaign. So we’ve done the preparation you’ve got your outline you’ve got your light behind the camera. You’re looking great you’re sounding amazing. You’re going to do this. You’re going to hit play. Or sorry. Hit go live on Facebook or tap it on your phone and give me that countdown, three two one and then you’re live and zero people are watching. And so the temptation is to just kind of meander into talking about nothing until people tune in because you’re kind of waiting for the Facebook notification to go out and for the people to tune in.

Thomas: [00:22:21] Don’t do that because while no one is watching you at the moment, the first few seconds of a live video are the most watched seconds of somebody tuning in later. So when someone comes in after you’re no longer live, which can be a lot of people, that first little bit is so important. The first thing they’re going to see is you so open up with the bang if you’re announcing a new book. You want to hit the ground running with this really solid pitch for your new book and you want to go for three minutes before you try to have any audience interaction and you may want to have that whole part out scripted word for word … maybe something to consider … just really having it scripted. If you’re doing it with multiple people, one of the things we do is … for instance with a video we just did … we published the live video to the Novel Marketing page. But we shared it to Author Media page and to the Facebook group and  Mary shared it to her group. And I shared it on my personal page and we are kind of taking turns sharing it while somebody else was talking.

Thomas: [00:23:21] So after we were two or three minutes into the live video it had been shared everywhere is going to get shared to.

Jim: [00:23:28] In terms of scripting your opening word for word don’t fall into the temptation of scripting it out word for word and then reading it word for word without practicing it. That’s that’s another skill that you’ll gain over time of doing it. You want to sound natural … you don’t want to sound like you’re reading it. So practice that part of it too. And again we encourage you to do that in front of somebody that can go, “You know and that really sounds like you’re reading it … why don’t you try that again, a little bit more relaxed, a little slower, a little faster.” Critique is valuable.

Thomas: [00:23:59] Yeah even if you’re a professional public speaker Facebook Live is different. And the only way to get better is to practice and ultimately you’re going to have to practice live. But I like to think that getting through the script so it doesn’t sound and stale is very important. And if I could give one piece of advice during the during part, it’s to smile and have fun. Things are going to go wrong it’s going to be weird. You may not know what to say it’s OK. You’re just having a conversation with your friends and fans. If you’re smiling and having fun they may not even know that things are broken … We had a typo on our video for the first 45 minutes of our Facebook Live and no one noticed. No no noticed because they’re paying attention. They’re looking at our faces rather than the texts on the screen … so just realize that you may make mistakes.

Jim: [00:24:49] It’s not if you’re going to make a mistake it’s when you make mistakes and the worst thing in the world you can do is, “Oh my gosh I didn’t mean to say that oh shoot. Oh gosh. Let me go back let me back up.” No you you just go on as if nothing happened. I remember years ago when I was playing guitar a lot and somebody said if you make a mistake during a solo do it again. The audience will think it was intended. And I think it applies here too where you just you move on. Do not call attention to the mistake … it’s very tempting to do so and to apologize. Do not apologize. You move on or if you’ve got a quick wit you make a joke out of it. In the case of us having the wrong URL up there, we just said, this is proof to you guys that Thomas is human. So a little playful self-deprecating humor can go a long ways.

Thomas: [00:25:38] That’s right. Same as in acting … people won’t know that you missed your lines unless you tell them you miss your lines. So if you just act like those were the lines that you were supposed to say in the first place, then you know, you just roll with it.

Thomas: [00:25:50] And that’s the same kind of principle in improv or acting. Another thing that is really powerful and which will keep people watching for a long period of time, is reading listener comments and asking and answering questions and using their name. One of the things I like about Be Live is that we’re able to put somebody face in their name and their question on the actual video itself. It’s just a click of a button which is a really powerful feature.

Thomas: [00:26:15] It made me almost think that be live TV might actually be worth the money. We used it out of emergency because the other service was not working. But it may actually be the superior service due to just that one feature. But if you’re not using Be live and you’re just on the Facebook dot com app or the Facebook app on your phone just you know use their name with your own voice. It’s FREE. You can just say, “Hey I have a question from John Smith in Nebraska …” and he asks you know, blah, blah, blah. Another thing I find is very powerful is ask people where they are from. And you could say we have John Smith from Omaha Nebraska. We have James Rubart from Chelan Washington … welcome. And that’s really powerful. But don’t do just that … I have seen people go overboard where there’s nothing but shout outs to people and your audience really doesn’t care that much about hearing about these people.

Thomas: [00:27:07] Another thing you can do is ask viewers to subscribe to live notifications. So if they click on the follow button on a live video, they’ll be notified the next time you go live. And this will help you plan to go live often. This is a feature stolen straight from YouTube. And that’s a very powerful feature, but you do have to remind people a lot of people don’t know about that.

Jim: [00:27:34] Another thing you can do is ask your viewers to share the video. Ask them to share on their page and all of a sudden you can get exponential growth through that. We gave away some prizes during ours just now. If you were there you saw that we were giving away some prizes and one of the prizes came from, “All right, the next person who shares this, we’re going to give away a prize to them,” so use that as well.

Thomas: [00:28:02] Yeah. There’s nothing wrong with incentivizing people by doing giveaways and I will say, you want to come to the Novel Marketing page and click the follow button on our live videos because while we have a lot of views on the videos over time, the number of people who tune in live is much lower and you have a very good chance of winning a prize. So we give away a lot of cool free stuff when we go live which we do from time to time. Another principle you need to realize you’re going have some people who tune in for the duration. Start to finish. There are hardcore fans, but you’re also going to people who are tuning in for a short period of time and they’re tuning out. And it’s really important to reintroduce the topic and reintroduce yourself, especially if your viewers are sharing it to their friends. People aren’t going to know who you are, so every few minutes you want to reintroduce yourself. Just like how they do on the radio it’s like, “Hey this is Thomas Umstattd, you’re listening to KTXA on the bridge and we’re talking today about Facebook Live,” and you kind of throw that out. What we were doing is we’re giving the Web site we are promoting (which was what I had incorrectly on the video as book launch dot TV). It should have been book launch dot fun, which I bought just yesterday  for this Facebook Live.

Jim: [00:29:23] The other thing you want to do and this is this is simple. Thank your viewers. Thank you for stopping by. Even if it was for a few minutes, thanks for viewing this I really appreciate it. This makes it all worthwhile. Just something as simple as that a little bit of gratitude goes a long ways.

Thomas: [00:29:42] Especially at the end you want to close with a strong ending. So you want to make it look like you closed on purpose and not just that the feed cut off. Just close on purpose. So that’s during the video, so we’ll go real quick to after the video. You want to pin the video to the top of your Facebook page so that people who missed it can easily watch it. At least for a couple of days, tag it there at the top. And then also, check out the analytics or the insights. Facebook calls it insights for the video and you can see what your most interesting moments were, what were your least interesting moments. When did you get a lot of comments. When did you get a lot of likes. This can help you improve your live video skills moving forward … it makes you a more powerful video person. And it’s a great education because you’re like, “Oh yeah I guess it was kind of boring right there everyone seemed to tune out.” You can see when people are tuning out in real time it’s very very powerful. As a podcaster we do not get that kind of insight.  If I’m boring you right now there’s no way for me to know …

Jim: [00:31:12] But if you want to write in and tell us we we would love to get your input.

Thomas: [00:31:16] We do accept friendly criticism and free and constructive feedback.

Jim: [00:31:22] This episode of the novel Marketing Podcast is brought to you by My Book Table. It’s a way to quickly and easily, even if you’re not a techie you can do this easily, build an online bookstore on your WordPress website. You can use it to rank number one on Google for your book and boost your book sales on sites like Amazon and Barnes and Noble Books-A-Million etc. You can get it for the the low low cost of free at My Book Table dot com. Now there is a pro version that you can check out. But seriously the intro version is absolutely 100 percent free and Novel Marketing patrons if you do want to book bump up to My Book Table pro, you can get 25 percent off  that. Go to My Book Table dot com.

Jim: [00:32:12] You’ve been listening to James L. Rubart and Thomas Umstattd Jr. on the novel Marketing Podcast. Giving you novel ideas on how to promote yourself and your writing off line online and everywhere in between. Thanks for listening.

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