Since, its launch in 2016, Facebook Live has seen an incredible growth. It has opened a huge scope for publishers, media companies, celebrities, influencers, and brands to share interesting content with their target audience. With video marketing on the rise, coming up with a catchy and attractive video can be a huge challenge for those who lack the time and money. That's where the beauty of Facebook Live comes in. Making its debut in 2016, the service has enabled users to make videos that stream live using only a minimum of your smartphone's camera to capture it. But as intimidating as streaming live might be, there is a variety of brand-boosting benefits to using the service that will only make you seem more trustworthy and credible as a company.

One of the most amazing opportunities Facebook Live offers is the ability to engage with your followers. With reactions, comments, and viewer numbers shown in real-time, you can prompt responses by asking and answering questions in your broadcast. Going live, well, it's kind of scary. What if you mess up? What if the camera wigs out? There are a number of things that could go wrong. But while you're contemplating the risk, a ton of brands are out there engaging their audience in some really exciting and personal new ways.

Now let’s look out the 7 Facebook Live tactics to boost your creative marketing strategy.

1. Inform your network before hand

If you have an awesome Live session planned, then make sure to inform your network about it, to build appointment viewing. Do proper promotion, giving out details about the profile of the special guest, the topic of the session, with exact date and time when the audience needs to login. It’s important to let your audience know about your upcoming live video with news feed posts. Experiment with images and perhaps even a short video to tell them about the bigger video to come. Don’t forget about the world outside of Facebook. Invite your blog readers, email subscribers, and followers from other networks. Include a link to your account, business page, group, or event.

2. Roll out new product

Facebook Live is a great platform to roll out new product. It is a great strategy to interact and excite the super fans, whom you can please by sharing exclusive feeds.

A printer manufacturer can explain in detail the functions of its latest product and even show a demonstration of how to get the most out of the printer. Even challenges relating to setup can be easily addressed through the interactive sessions.

IHOP, the family restaurant chain’s Facebook live stream of pancakes on a beach went viral and became the brand’s top social video ever. The brand setup the Facebook live stream to engage customers and draw focus to the pancakes. With 385,000 video views, the effort was IHOP’s top-performing social video. The minimalist video showed pancakes set in a paradise environment with different characters popping in and out to show that it was a live stream and not a video playing on an endless loop.

3. Do fun and quirky stuffs

Fun and quirky sessions can also go viral and have huge chance of increasing engagement. Like Buzzfeed who don’t sell products or services like most businesses, so it doesn’t have any new products to launch or any services to show off in a live video.  But in this video, two people put rubber bands on a watermelon, one by one, to see how many it would take before the watermelon burst. The video unfolded over 45 minutes, and despite its ridiculous premise, it ended up attracting over 807,000 viewers at its peak in popularity,  because Buzzfeed had increased viewers curiosities, and kept escalating the tension literally and figuratively throughout the video.

4. Live streaming event

Facebook Live is a great platform to live stream your event to attract people, who can’t be present physically. With the 90-minute time limit lifted, you can now conveniently live stream an entire event or conference to your fans on Facebook. Even those who are overseas can benefit from the insights shared at the event.

McDonald’s recently live streamed an art show titled ‘The Starving Artist’, where it unveiled three paintings as part of the National Hamburger Day celebrations. McDonald’s first foray into Facebook Live, the stream reached 884, 300 people in 40 minutes according to the figures shared by the brand. So live streaming an event can extend reach to a much larger audience and achieve massive engagement.

5. Behind-the scenes

Nine times out of ten, consumers only see the forward-facing side of your brand, the side that markets to them and wants to impress them enough to purchase your products or services. But if you use Facebook Live to take them behind-the-scenes, you’ll find brand loyalty and interest will grow. You can do this by showing them preparations for a red carpet event, revealing the process of how their favorite product is made, or by letting they follow along with a particular employee’s daily duties.

Dunkin’s Donuts provided fans with a behind-the-scenes look into their kitchen for Valentine’s Day, featuring their culinary team preparing a cake made from heart-shaped donuts, and introduced a special February Dunkin’ Hearts Love contest, offering engaged couples a chance to win $10,000 for sharing their story of how their sweetheart proposed.

6. Use Facebook Live for AMA and Q&A segments.

Ask Me Anything (AMA) and Question & Answer (Q&A) content is a shoe-in for Facebook Live, as many brands boast audiences which use Facebook on a daily basis. AMA’s and Q&A’s are a direct way to communicate with your fans, but make sure they don’t become stagnant. Set a new theme or topic for each session you conduct, or bring on a collaborator or person of interest to answer your fans’ most burning questions.

Ellen DeGeneres subjects guests to Facebook Live videos, where they take questions from the Facebook Live audience. Brands in the media and broadcast space can surely explore it and use it to increase their followers and engagement on the platform.

7. Promote movies

Facebook Live is a great platform for promotional purposes. It gives huge scope to create buzz before the release of the film. It has become a very popular marketing strategy with films these days and gives immense scope for films to not only talk about their project, but a chance for fans to connect with their favorite celebrities.

Baahubali 2 did a Facebook Live session just before the release of the movie and it had garnered immense viewership and engagement.