Using Facebook and Instagram Live as a list growing method is an excellent way to use social media and the power of video to grow your email list. But you won’t grow your email list without a plan to follow. Use these business hacks to grow your list with Facebook and Instagram Live.

Develop Lead Magnets

The first things you need are multiple problem-solving, attention-grabbing, lead magnets. Think about what your ideal audience members on Facebook and Instagram want and need. Your lead magnets should address a common need of your ideal customer. After all, you want to build an email list of buyers.

• Facebook / Instagram Buyer Persona – Who needs this lead magnet on Facebook or Instagram? What other products would they be willing to buy after getting the lead magnet? Knowing what you’ll want to promote after they download your lead magnet is as important as creating the lead magnet.

• Facebook / Instagram Buyer Needs – As you determine what to create ask yourself what can you do particularly for your Facebook and Instagram buyer? What problems does this audience have? What solution or info can you give them to download as a PDF?

• Facebook / Instagram Audience Solutions – The lead magnet you offer Facebook and Instagram members should inspire hope and provide a solution. When you solve an issue for your audience, it highlights your value and authority, as well as the solution’s worth. This builds trust and reduces the ever-present risk and fear factors involved with signing up and downloading.

• Name the Facebook / Instagram Lead Magnet – Choosing a name for your Facebook and Instagram lead magnets is very important. It should grab the audience’s attention, be direct, intrigue, and allude to the solution offered. It should also enable the people who need it to see themselves or relate to a specific emotion or situation. Ideally, the title and promise should excite the potential Facebook and Instagram subscribers or buyers.

The lead magnets you develop for Facebook and Instagram followers should be created in the formats that the audience prefers and best suits the type of content pieces you include. The end-product should be delivered in a standard file format that is easily downloaded, read, viewed, heard, or used on a wide range of devices. The PDF file format fits the bill for most written and non-verbal content. There are exceptions for some function-friendly spreadsheets and similar items which require the ability to edit. For these situations, find out what software your audience prefers.

Lead Magnet Landing Pages

Once you have your lead magnets and their supporting items ready, including the cover image, copy text, benefits, advertising text, CTA, etc., you’ll want to create a landing page for each lead magnet. Treat free products with the same attention and care that you treat your paid products. Your free items will serve as an example of your overall quality and set the expectations for other items.

Create landing pages that pre-qualify the reader. Summarize the problem, who often experiences it, and let them know why this is the solution they need. Explain the benefits of the product to your audience. Make it quick and easy for them to access the lead magnet.

Your landing page can consist of an image of your product, a list of the benefits of the product, your small form, and a guarantee of what the freebie will accomplish. This form can fit above the fold of any page on your site.

The keys to great lead magnet landing pages are:

• Bulleted Lists – Instead of long copy use bulleted lists instead. This can get your point across a lot faster in smaller spaces while enhancing understanding.

• Minimal Copy – Instead of using long-form copy, use shorter forms with minimal copy space included to help your audience make a faster choice.

• Security Badges – Making your customers feel safe doesn’t end just because your item is free. You want to show them that you care about security.

• Visual Cues – Help lead them to the CTA button by providing visual cues in the form of pictures, actual arrows, and other methods to lead the viewer’s eyes where you want them to go.

• A Short Form – This depends on your goal but if you want more people to sign up ask for less information and use only a short email and name form.

• A CTA Button – Make sure your CTA button is visually appealing and noticeable. If your viewer cannot see the button, they may not know what to do to get your offer.

• An Amazing Headline – You’ll want to craft a headline that gets the message across of what’s on this page. Just like any other headline you want to be clear and to the point about what the reader will get using keywords that people may use to search for the information.

• Emphasis on The Free Offer – It’s important when you’re offering something free that you brag about the item being free even though its value is much higher. You want them to feel smart and special for taking advantage of the free offer.

• Testimonials – If you already have some testimonials, you should include a quote or two to grab attention.

• A Valuable Image – Putting an image of your product or the results of the product is a great way to get your point of value across.

• Multiple CTA Opportunities – Even when you have a landing page for your offer you may want to offer multiple ways for your ideal customer to get that freebie. Offer it in your footer, in your header, on your sidebar, in a slide or pop-under. Just make sure they don’t compete.

Getting most of these ideas into one landing page may be impossible at times but the more you can incorporate these ideas into your lead magnet landing page the better it’s going to work for you to add members to your list.

Plan Your Live Event Topic

Once you have a sales page for your live event freebie, it’s time to plan your live event. The way this is going to work is during the live event you’re going to ask them to go to that landing page that you’ve created which will lead people to join your email list.

Facebook or Instagram Live Event Considerations:

• Know the Purpose of The Live – Understanding what your purpose is for the event will help you get the topic right. So, one purpose is you want them to download the information that you’re promoting which is your freebie. Therefore, you should talk about the problem the freebie solves. You’ll want to poke the bear. You’ll want them to feel the problem so that they want the solution.

• Hype Your Live Video Event – If you can schedule your live event using third-party technology do so. That way you can get people signing up for notification of the event going live. Plus, you want to tell everyone about it as much as possible in the week leading up to the event. Tell your affiliates, tell your list members, tell your social connections. Let everyone know about the event happening, when and where.

• Incentivize Their Viewing – You want your audience to be excited about coming to your live video event. One way to do this is to give prizes to those who are watching live every few minutes. Ask them to tweet a quote with a hashtag. Then enter those who used the hashtag into a drawing and let them win something.

• Practice Makes Perfect – Try some shorter unplanned lives to promote the main event so that you can test out your technology. More times than not it’s best if you’re hard-wired to the internet or using very good internet via your mobile device. Make sure things work as you expect. Know how to flip your camera, understand what to do if there is a volume issue, and ensure that people can hear you.

• Host a Q & A Session – Including a Q & A session in your live event is a great way to entice people to attend the event, especially those people who need to hear directly from you. You can ask that topic related questions be sent in advance. Provide more details on your mailing list. If that prompts more sign-ups, consider creating a product from those related questions and solutions.

Planning your live video includes setting the stage for an exceptional experience by taking care of the little details such as sound and lighting quality. It also means that you start marketing your event by building pre-event buzz. Marketing and promoting are keys to ensuring that your live event is successful.

Promote Your Live Event

Once you know what topics and problems you’ll cover in the live event, you can start building excitement about it. When you know the time, the date, and the place, you can officially start promoting it with marketing materials. You’ll want to create memes, mailing list invitations, and attract new subscribers on social media using ads and warm up live events.

• Paid Ads – You might think it’s nuts to pay to promote your free live event and lead magnet, but the truth is, this is the best way to get people to come to your live event and to ensure that the word gets out to more people. Paying for ads isn’t expensive on Facebook and Instagram and can be done through the same system via Facebook Ads in your Facebook account for your page.

• Affiliate Promotions – Teaching your affiliates about what they can promote of yours that is free to their customers is a great way to build that affiliate relationship too. Teach them the value of promoting your free offers by showing them what promotions you’ll send to referrals who click through and sign up.

• Social Networking – One way to get people to watch your live is to remind your social networks of the event repeatedly. Every day leading up to the event post at least one post about the event giving a little more added detail about why they don’t want to miss it.

• Blog About It – Ensure that you write blog posts about the event and explain why you’re hosting it. This will be another way to share the event and give details about when and how people can participate.

• Promote Posts – When you share a blog post to your page, be sure to promote the post so that you’ll get more eyes on it. You may also want to use your Facebook Pixel to promote to people who have come to your website before.

• Share – Keep sharing other people’s content, as well as your own content, and relate it together about how this proves or shows that they should attend your live event and what they’ll get out of attending.

The more you can talk about the live event and when it’s happening, and how it’s happening, as well as why it’s happening, you’ll be able to get to more people and have a much bigger turn out than if you said nothing.

Your Live Event

Now that you’ve promoted your live event, it’s time to host it. You’ll want to do your best regardless of the turnout. The main reason is that people can watch the event as recorded and you’ll still get a lot of responses this way, in fact, you may get more after the recording is up than during the live event.

• Limit Distractions – Before you start your live event it’s imperative to get rid of distractions such as kids, animals, and other sounds and issues. Turn off your house phone and notifications. Make sure your kids know you’re busy for an hour or so. Put someone in charge of the dog and the baby so you can focus.

• Check Your Technology – About 30 minutes prior to your live test out your technology again to ensure it works. Go live fast to say I’m going to live in 30 minutes to check your volume. You should have time to watch the recording to make sure it all works.

• Give People Time to Show Up – When you do go live, it’s not like a TV show where everyone will be paying attention right off the bat. Go live in advance and put up a sign that the live starts soon to turn up their volume or grab a cup of coffee or tea and get ready for an amazing event.

• Think About Your Introduction – Instead of getting on the live and just starting, give it some time so that people can not only join in but so they can see you first. Wave, look at the camera, say hello to your audience. This reminds your audience to turn the sound on or up.       

• Remember to Promote Your Freebie – You’ll want to think of the live as if it’s in segments. This is going to help you remember what to say each segment. Then after each segment, you’ll want to promote your freebie to get more list members to sign up. And, if you’re giving prizes announce your prizes too.

Be enthusiastic, authentic, and upfront, during your live event. Let your audience know who you are and what you stand for. It’s easier to be yourself than what others want. Remember, there is only one you, and you are the right messenger for your people.

Repurpose the Recording

Once the live event has been recorded, you’ll want to keep using the content you created during the live event. You can use it as is, or edit it and use it in different ways. Repurposing content is the best way to update and create more content without doing much more work.

• Upload to YouTube – You can simply download the video as is and upload it to your YouTube channel. Add a good description, adding links in the description area, add some editing like annotated clickable text for the offers you make in the video. And of course, add a link to your social media page so new people can follow you in both places.

• Cut & Use in Paid Ads – One way to use your old live recordings is to market the next one. If something fun happened cut that part and use it to market your next live video event. When people see how much fun you have, they’ll be more likely to join.

• Bite-Sized Videos – Just like you can cut the video into an advertisement, appropriate for getting people to come to your next live event, you can also make a bite-sized video based on the segments you created or specific quotes you make within the video. Then, you can upload those separately to different platforms and embed in separate blogs about that issue.

• Blog Post – When you create a video you should always create a blog post about it. Include a description of the video and/or a transcript. Embed the video in the blog post so people can watch it on your site, where they feel safe and don’t have to login on another site.

• Transcribe the Video – Take the time to have the video transcribed. When you do, you’re more likely to identify good points that can be used individually or form the basis for new content.

• Turn It into A Podcast – For some video, you may realize that it could be only in audio. If that’s the case, you can turn it into an MP3 and upload it to iTunes as a podcast. Then you can link to the podcast on each incidence of the video in case someone wants to listen while they do something else.

Finally, you’ll want to share the recording of your live events anywhere and everywhere you can. If it’s an answer to a question, share it. If it gives someone help, share it. Don’t be shy about sharing your live video recordings whenever the opportunity arises.

Any time you create a lead magnet, you can also promote it directly, to build your list. Even though you made this lead magnet for your live event topic, you can promote it without the live event. You can also use parts of the video to run ads that promote the lead magnet. The options and content combinations are almost unlimited.