Facebook Live for Schools

Have you ever needed to be in two places at once? I have. I literally live in two different states.

My girls go to school in Wisconsin and my stepsons go to school in Minnesota. I spend time each week traveling between a rental house and my home.

Thank goodness gas prices are moderately low and I have a little Honda Accord!

While I’m lucky enough to create a work schedule around this nomad lifestyle, that still doesn’t mean I can be at every school play, volleyball game, or music concert. And I know I’m not alone. With the majority of households having two working parents, some performances just can’t be seen as they happen.

Or can they?

Facebook changed the game with its Facebook Live feature. If your school isn’t using it yet, you should definitely try it out! Facebook now allows school pages (along with personal and other business pages) to broadcast live video on their channel. The best thing is that the fans of that page get notified that you are going live!

How it Works

On your mobile phone or tablet, select “Publish.” You may think you need to select “Video,” but that isn’t right. Once you select publish, hit the person with the little rings around their head. In recent updates, it will now show a video icon. We love the updates that make it a little more intuitive!

Once you hit the live video link, your screen will look like the image below. You can flip the camera view, type in a name for what you are about to cover, and then hit “Go Live.” The camera will give you a 3-2-1 countdown and then you’ll be broadcasting live.

Once you are live, viewers can comment and share reactions (like, love, wow, etc). This is a fun way to make parents and others feel like they are really there! Once you stop the recording, the video will be posted to your newsfeed. Viewers still have the opportunity to comment and react to the video once it is there.

A few notes to keep in mind:

Make sure the students you plan to showcase on the live video can all be shown on social media. If you know of someone who can’t, you still may be able to creatively shoot the video. I know of one school that just made sure the student was standing near the camera so they shot over him.
It’s very important to have a strong internet connection when trying to go live. If you don’t, you will not be able to broadcast live. This can be disappointing if you had promoted going live for a specific event. If this ever happens, I recommend recording video with the traditional method and then posting as soon as you can on your Facebook feed.
Practice first! You can practice using your own Facebook page if you’d like to get gain some working experience.
Promoting your live video ahead of time will help increase the number of people tuning in. You can do this through your website, social media posts, announcements and other methods. Don’t stress out too much over the promoting efforts, though. The more frequently you start using Facebook Live, the more in tune your followers will be to pop on and watch when they receive a notification.

Ideas

Facebook’s magic algorithm really loves live video. Finding some ways to incorporate Facebook Live into your social media strategy at your school will surely help your engagement. Here are a few ideas from other schools:

Homecoming Coronation – The Sartell-St. Stephen School District in Minnesota has sprinkled in Facebook Live to many of its school events. Some helpful advice from Communications Coordinator Amy Trombley is to make sure it is a public event where you don’t need to worry about media releases. “And I try to stay away from events where people may feel the need to make some ridiculous comment that ruins the whole thing, like an athletic event where there could be a controversial call.”

First Day of School – The Meadow Ridge Elementary School in Wayzata, Minnesota has found many ways to use live video. The district did a longer video of the first day of school. Andrew Hagen, Communications Specialist, shared that, “The parents absolutely loved it!” Check out those views—over 3,300 views on a page with only 616 likes.

Motivation Monday – It’s just 39 seconds long, but what a great message to the Fall Creek community! Dr. Sanfelippo is such an engaged Administrator and he loves to share his students with the world.

Fight Song – The School District of Wisconsin Dells let the community in on a pep rally where the students were singing their school fight song. Little glimpses like this into student life are great!