Day 2: Discover 17 Ways to Promote Your Livestream for FREE to Get More Exposure and Better Results

Welcome to the Author Audience show, the podcast that helps you reach more people with your message. Create a book, connect with your audience, change lives. Here's your host, Shelly Hitz.

Welcome to day two of the five day live Video Challenge. My name is Shelly Hitz and I have been on live video broadcasting since June 5, 2015. That means I have been doing this for over a year, have produced hundreds of videos, and have spent many, many hours speaking in front of my smartphone. If you have a smartphone, you can do this for free. So thank you so much for coming back and joining me for day two. Day two is all about how to discover 17 ways to promote your live stream for free to get more exposure and better results. If you've been getting value from this training, I encourage you to share it. You can share it by just sending your author friends to the URL shelleyhits.com live video and at that link, you'll also be able to sign up and get access to my checklist. I ended up making it more, more extensive than I initially thought I would. It ended up being a 17 page checklist. So you can get access to that checklist and there's a bonus video for those of you that finish the challenge. So make sure you sign up. Once you confirm, you'll get all the instructions on how to join my member area. So welcome back to day two. So on day one, what we did was we decided where you were gonna broadcast from, your Facebook page, a Facebook event, a Facebook group or not recommended, but your profile and what type of strategy you were going to use, whether it was going to be some sort of promotion or it was going to be content marketing, list building, and then you were going to list out your specific goals for that challenge. I want you guys to get the most out of this challenge. And the way you're going to get the most out of this challenge is not, not by simply coming and listening to the trainings, but by implementing what you're learning. So on day two, I'm going to go through the different strategies you can do to get more traffic to your live broadcast. But I'm going to talk about a few things before we dive into those topics. Because.

What I want you to do is when you're promoting your live broadcast, you must have a very clear call to action. Cta. Cta, Call to action. It's a basic marketing term. And when you're marketing, whether it's online or offline, you need to be very clear what you want your target audience to do. Try to get as clear as possible. When you're posting, when you're sharing what it is you want them to do, you can either lead them to a landing page like I'm doing shellyhits.com live video. You can set up a page, capture email addresses, and then schedule emails to go out when you're going to be live. So you can totally do that, or you can send them directly to your Facebook page where you will be broadcasting live. You just have to be very clear and really know what is it you want them to do. If you're confused, they're going to be confused. And a confused mind says no. So you need to be very clear, make that decision. Now. Where will you send them? The second thing I wanted to cover today is if you're going to be broadcasting consistently live on Facebook, which this is what I'm recommending you do, I don't want this to be a bright shiny object syndrome. If you're going to use this technique, this strategy, I want you to be consistent. And so if you're going to do that, I recommend that you educate your audience on how to subscribe to your live updates. It's shellyhits.com.

Facebooklive that URL is one I've created for my audience so that you guys can see a screenshot and step by step, instructions on how to subscribe to my live video broadcast. It gives you all the instructions. That URL follows forward you to a post on my Facebook page that then gives you the instructions. So I've been putting that URL everywhere. I've been putting it into my blog post, into some of my YouTube videos, and I've been really educating people on my email list and so forth. This is how you subscribe to my live updates. If you want to catch me live, if you want to interact with me, make sure that you subscribe. So that may be something that you want to do for your audience to walk them through the steps. Now, this process could change at any time. Facebook is changing things so rapidly when it comes to live video. But that URL, shellyhitz.com FacebookLive it redirects. And so what I can do is I'm using the Pretty Link light plugin in WordPress. I can just go in there and I can change it. If something changes in Facebook and how you can subscribe to updates, I can just change where I redirect that URL and that will help. And so that is the second thing. The first thing is to make sure you have clear calls to action. Where will you send them? What will you be telling them to do? Number two is to consider educating your tribe, your audience on how to subscribe to your live updates. The third little tip before we dive in is I want you to consider for your first broadcast the broadcast you do as a result of this challenge. So maybe it's not your first, maybe it's your next broadcast, but whatever broadcast you do as a result of taking this challenge, I encourage you take a few minutes and invite specific family and friends to join you. You know, there's nothing like being on live and there's. It says zero live viewers. You know, it just kind of crushes your spirit. So if you can just get a few of, like your best friends, your accountability partner, your family, just say, hey, guys, would you do me a quick favor? I'm going to go live on Facebook for the first time. Would you just be there to support me? You know, type in the comments and just be there. Moral support, basically, you know, just so that you don't have to be there by yourself. And then at the end of this training, I'm also going to share a way that you guys can, can support each other. So those are my first few little tips. Now I have 17 different ways you can get more people to attend your live broadcast. Now, I don't want you to do all 17. Like, you don't need to do every single thing on this list. I want you to pick three to five things. So as I'm talking through this list, I want you to take notes and I want you to take notes of which three to five things you you're going to do to promote the live broadcast you do as a result of this challenge. Got it. Because I don't want you to get overwhelmed. I just want you to do a few things to try to really start getting a boost for your broadcast so that you can get the most out of it and you can really reach more people. Yeah, three to five. And if you have the checklist, the checklist is available when you sign up@shellyhits.com live video. The checklist has all of these 17 things written out. So if you have the checklist, you could have that in front of you. As I'm teaching through it, I'm going to give you little nuggets along the way that aren't in the checklist. So that's why it's always important to watch the videos. All right, so we're going to talk first about the very first thing is your email subscriber list. Does anyone not have an email subscriber list yet? I hope not. That's one thing I think every author needs to have in place. You need to be building your list. This is something so key. You should already have a list, whether it's small. Maybe you just have a few people or 100 people. I had one author in Author Audience Academy. She said, shelly, it took me a year to grow to about 100 people, but now it's a snowball effect. It's that consistent action over time that will help you continue to grow your list. Alright, so the first thing though is using the power of your email list, you want to schedule a time I recommend for this video that you do as a result of the challenge, schedule a time that you'll go live. When you do that, then you can email your list and let them know with the link to join whether it's your landing page and you're having them opt in again to join. Or you can just send them direct to your Facebook page. The one reason I like having a separate list for something like what I'm doing here today, a challenge is so I can specifically follow up only with those that are interested. That way I'm not emailing my entire list every day. When I'm going live, I'm just emailing those that have opted into that list, like, hey guys, it's time for day two. I'm going live. Let's do this. You know, so that's number one. And the tip is you can simply share your Facebook page URL. So say join me here. That's what I have done. And there's nothing fancy that really has to be done. So here's a ninja tip. You can also, like I said, create a post that tells your followers how to subscribe to your live videos and then create a redirect. And mine is@shellyhits.com FacebookLive and that way you can potentially get repeat viewers because they're gonna continue to get your notifications. Okay, Number two, it's also under email. I have kind of put these into categories. Number two is to email the unopeneds from your list with a new subject line one to two days later if you're letting them know in advance. So this is something that my business coach told me to do recently and I have to admit, I kind of forgot about it. And it's such a simple thing and yet you can get so much more traction when you do this. So. So what you do is you simply go into your email provider and if you need help, just contact their support And I use getresponse so they have statistics. And I can then email specifically only to those who haven't opened my previous email. I use a different subject line, try to catch their attention and that way you can get even more people. So email for sure. So if you're not building an email list, that should be one of your number one priorities and it's going to build your tribe, your audience. It will be a long term strategy, but it is so worth it. So I don't recommend any author not have an email subscriber list. Okay. The second thing is social media. Now we're going to be focusing primarily on social media today because it's free. And that's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about free strategies. I'm not talking about things that you're going to have to pay for. And so that's why we're going to be focusing so much on social media today. So one of the things that you can do is once you schedule a time that you're going to go live, let your Facebook fans and or friends know about your live broadcast. Now, I don't recommend putting this on your personal profile all the time. That could get a bit overkill. But there may be some of your friends on your personal profile that are interested in what you're doing. So occasionally you might want to share something from your page and say, hey guys, if you want to join me. I did that recently for this challenge. I shared my live video that I did last Friday talking about what I was going to do. Shared that on my personal profile and just shared a little bit. The wording is different when you're sharing with your friends versus your fans. Does that make sense? But you know, ask them to come and support you. The Bible says we have not because what, what does it say? It says we have not.

Because we ask not. And I really believe this applies to much of life. We need to ask. And I know it's going to be out of your comfort zone to do that, but that's what we have to do. And it's about a relationship. How many times do you share things that you love? You share something like a new movie you watched and you love it and you share that. Or, or you share like your favorite restaurant you just went and you're like, oh, I love that we share things that we love. And so I hope that you're passionate about the topics you're speaking about and just think about it as sharing. Think about it as a relationship talk in your copy like when you're typing out talk as you would talk to a friend, because think about that one person that you're talking to and don't make it all about you or don't make it all about just promotion, promotion, promotion. Add some of your personality into it. You can look at a lot of my posts on my page or on my profile. My profile is facebook.com shellyhits you can see how I do it differently on my profile versus my page. But you can see how I interject some of me, my personality and that sort of thing make it about a relationship. So the fourth thing is you can create a Facebook event. So whether it's a one time broadcast or it's a challenge like this, where it's several things in a row, you can actually create a free Facebook event. What this does is instead of just posting it on your profile or on your page, you can actually invite specific friends that you know are interested in your topic to the event. So I did this for my book launch when I did it on live video and I created a special event for that. And I just invited the friends on my list that I knew were authors that I knew would be interested in that specific event. You don't want to spam your whole friends list, but people are really interested. They'll be thankful that you invited them. And then you can follow up with posts and events. One of the things that kind of annoys me is when I just keep getting tons and tons and tons and tons of notifications on events. So just maybe once a day, twice a day, you know, or something. Unless you're doing a really special event and it's a big giveaway or contest or something. But you can create a Facebook event and then invite people that are interested and then you can ask them to share the event. So it's a way to have something specific to share. All right, number five, you can research and use relevant hashtags so that any post that you do like on Twitter or Instagram, that they'll be searchable. So what a hashtag does is it makes it available on a certain list. Like for authors on most platforms, the hashtag amwriting, that's a really popular hashtag. And so I'll add that hashtag a lot to my writing posts. If it's something about self publishing or book marketing, I'll add self pub or indie pub because that's the audience that I attract is those that want to self publish or independently publish. And so you can do a little bit of research and find out A few hashtags that you can add and then you can get exposure to a new audience on Twitter or Instagram. All right, now don't get overwhelmed. This is a lot of information. If you don't even know what a hashtag is, don't choose that option. All you have to choose is what, three to five. So make it easy for us, make it easy for you. Just say let it be easy and just choose the 3 to 5 that make the most sense to you, that are the easiest for you right now. And then later you can always come back and research these other things and add them in to your promotions and see what works best for you. Make sense. I don't want you to get overwhelmed. Okay? One of the things I love to do is I love to schedule. Some people will say automation is like a robot. It's not authentic, but automation when you when done correctly and it's your words, it's the things you've written, it's who you are, it's not some automated bot. When it's done correctly, you're going to be able to have less stress and you're going to be able to do it in less time. It's going to save you time. And so what I recommend is writing out a bunch of tweets and posts and then pre scheduling them for your live broadcasts. So I personally use Post Planner. My affiliate link is shellyhits.com postplanner. It's very affordable and you can actually do recurring posts too. So like my quote images, I have them recur every 24 months. Once I have 24 months of quotes in there, they'll just keep going all the time. And it's the stuff that I like, my words. And I'm just simply scheduling it to save me time and to be able to just take stress off thinking every day, what do I have to post? If you want A free option, Hootsuite.com is a great free option and you can add your Facebook and Twitter or whatever accounts that you have and then you can pre schedule any posts that are going to promote your live broadcast. That way, when you're going live, like you could preschedule some things that are like, I'm going live in just five minutes, just join me here. But guess what? You don't have to be sitting at your computer typing that out five minutes before. And then you're rushing around trying to get everything set up and then you're feeling stressed out because you scheduled it. It just goes out. Like I like to say Automagically, So that is number six. Number seven is use clicktotweet.com. you've probably noticed if you signed up for my email, that list. For this challenge, I've used some click to tweet links. And what I say is click to Tweet. And basically ClickToTweet.com creates links for you that you can put in your emails, you can put on your blog, you can put in a bunch of different places. What it does is it helps people to be able to share about your challenge. That is something that is really great that you can consider doing as well. Number eight is to find some relevant Facebook groups to your niche and then post in there about your live broadcast. But you have to make sure that what are the guidelines of that group? For example, I have a group for Christian entrepreneurs. It's a free group to join. You can join@godlygain.com but I don't allow promotion in that group. So it's mostly support. Let's share insight that we've had from the scripture for, like, our business and let's pray for each other. But I just don't want a ton of promotional stuff in there because I want people to be engaged. I don't want them to tune out the group because it becomes one big promotional thing. So you need to read the description of the group, make sure you know the guidelines. And if you're allowed to post promotional stuff, a lot of times, a lot of groups will have promotional threads, like once a week. So you can post in the comments like, I'm going to be going live on this topic, and at this time, you know, you can join me here. So those are things that you can do. Another little tip is you could actually choose one or two of those groups that are really big, really active in your niche, and actually set a timer for about 15 to 30 minutes and say, I'm going to go into that group today and I'm going to offer tons of value. I'm going to answer questions. And then all of a sudden you're seen as an expert in the group because everyone sees that you're answering the questions, you can solve their problems, and all of a sudden they see you as an expert. And then when they see you have a live broadcast on the topics that they're interested in, they're going to be much more likely to spend time with you. But again, remember, you don't have to do everything. All right, so that's social media. Went through eight of the 17 ways. Are you Guys taking notes and have you started to write down your three to five things that you'll do? So I want you to be writing those down and let me know at the end. Next thing is social media graphics. Graphics are just so powerful right now. All the statistics show that if you have a really eye catching graphic with your post, it's going to tend to get more engagement than a text post. So you want to think about maybe doing some graphics and you can have some social media images created to post on social media in my book launch checklist and swipe files and templates that I have in the bonus section of Author Audience Academy for the book launch I did through live video, I give you the exact resource I used and for just $5 I had four really great graphics created. So all of that stuff is available for you in the bonus section of Author Audience Academy. But you can also use canva.com it's a free tool online and you can create very professionally looking graphics there yourself for nothing. It's free. You know, I mean, if you want certain images, you have to pay. Number 10 is to change your social media banners. Did anyone notice that I changed the banner of my page and my profile to promote my five day challenge? That was one of the things that I did. And when you change your cover image, it tends to get seen more often. Not always, but it tends, you know, when you change your profile image or change your cover image, it tends to change again. You can use canva.com or you can hire someone to create a cover image for you and notice what I did. Success leaves clues. So when you watch people who've been successful watch what they do. I didn't just put the image up there in the description of the image. I have my call to action. I tell you that I'm doing this challenge and I have my link there and it's clickable. Later, if you go back and you look at my cover image, I filled out that description part and I have a clickable link of where to go. That's one of the things I see a lot of authors missing. When I do platform reviews, I'll do author platform reviews and right now I'm just doing them for Author Audience Academy members. But I've done a lot of them and I notice a lot of authors missing that opportunity on Facebook when they have a cover image or your profile image. Both of those, you can click edit description and you can put a call to action with a clickable link. That's something you really want to make sure that you do if you change your social media banners. All right, number 11 is to create an infographic and post it on Pinterest. If you go to my Pinterest account, shellyhitz.com Pinterest Go ahead and follow me when you're there. Did you check that Call to action. But you can see in my board book, Marketing Tips, I created a Pinterest infographic. Basically what I did, it was a similar graphic to what I used for my Facebook cover. And then I just put what each of the five day topics were going to be. I didn't put the entire title because it was too long and I put that on Pinterest. So depending on your niche, you may be able to get more traffic from Pinterest. And again on Pinterest, you want to make sure once you add the image, if you haven't added an image from your blog, then you have to go back in later and click edit on that image. And then under the website, add in your URL that you want them to go to. Whether it's your Facebook page or your landing page. You have to do that manually because what happens is otherwise the image won't be clickable. And then what I do is sometimes I'll also put the link in the description on Pinterest. But don't forget, if you're using this strategy to click edit on the image and then add your website URL so that anyone who's on Pinterest, if they click on that image, which is what people do on Pinterest, that it sends them where you want them to go. And then I have a ninja tip for Pinterest. My business coach had taught me several years ago that one of the things you can do is you can search for groups on Pinterest that are really active group boards. Pinterest doesn't have groups, but they have group boards. So what will happen is a group or a board owner will decide that they'll allow other people to pin to that board and you usually have to request to be added and you contact that owner or you comment on one of their pins. But I have been added to several group boards. And then what I can do is I can pin onto that group board and it gives me a lot more exposure to a much bigger audience. And one of the sites that you can find these group boards is pingroupy.com there's a ton of them. That's just one resource for you, but just a little case study. I was working on a website previously. I no longer own it. It was all for readers. And we had. I can't even remember which page it was, but we created an infographic and you know, we had it for one of our pages. It was one of our resource pages. It ended up getting repinned. I think it was like Random House Publishers or some really big publisher. And it just, I mean it blew up our traffic like huge. I was like, where's all this traffic coming from? And I dug deeper and I was like, oh my goodness, Random House repinned this. So if you have really good content sometimes when you post and it was a pin that we have paid pinned to a group board. So it can be really effective for certain niches. All right, so now we're down to the last few options. The next is social media videos. So you can actually just create a 30 second video on your phone. You're going to be using your phone for live video broadcasting, right? Just create a little 30 second video, have a little tip, make it fun and add your call to action. What do you want them to do? And you can post this to Twitter and to Instagram from your phone. I don't think you can post to Twitter right now the video from desktop. I've tried before, but that may change. But Twitter and Instagram both allow short videos. I think Instagram you can do up to a minute. But if you make a 30 second video, you can use it two places. I love being able to do work once and use it more than once. Right? So why not just make the 30 second video and then put it both places? That's one thing you can do now if you are on Instagram, one tip is to change the link in your bio and then say link in bio in all caps when you're posting to Instagram. So I did this for my book launch. I did a lot of different promotion for that book launch I was doing on live video. I did a lot of it on Instagram. I don't think I've done anything really for this one on Instagram. But then I changed the link in my bio and then I just put link in bio in all of my things because links aren't clickable on Instagram right now. And the only link you have that's clickable there is your bio link. So that's a little tip. You can also post a video to your YouTube channel if you are a YouTuber and you can have a call to action at the end. I don't recommend it just being an ad. Give a tip, give something of value and then at the Call to action. Say, if you'd love more of this, I'm going to be doing a live broadcast on my facebook page@facebook.com authoraudience and so get the URL right. Right. And make sure again, with YouTube, this is a big mistake. I see a lot of people making use the description. Put your Call to Action link right at the top where everyone will see it, and then put a description in there. So don't forget to put your URL in that description. And then for video, you can also cross promote your Facebook Live broadcast on Periscope or on Blab. So you don't have to do this. But if you have a following on either of those, you might try it. For my book launch, I did this on Periscope. Every day of my book launch, I did a few minutes on Periscope. I used that Periscope video to go onto my podcast. It went onto my blog. So I still use the content. It was still really good content. But I went on Periscope, shared a little tip, and then I sent them to sign up for my challenge and to join me on Facebook Live. And again on Periscope, it will get posted on Twitter, so you can use those relevant hashtags if you've done some researching. All right, we're almost there. Okay, thanks for hanging in with me. So blogging, if you're a blogger and you have a good following on your blog, use your blog to promote your live broadcast. You can go to shellyhits.com and see how I do it. In my sidebar. I have a little screenshot of me teaching on one of my Facebook Live broadcasts. And then I say, click here to subscribe so you can join my Facebook Live broadcast. And I have that in my sidebar. You can also add a call to action at the end of your blog post to join your live broadcast and how to subscribe. I've been doing that in my recent blog post. You can also see how I do that on my blog. And then finally, this is probably the most powerful is JV Partners. So if you're new, if you have a small, teeny tiny list, if you have a small following on your Facebook page, the best way to get people on your live broadcast will really be to have JV partners. So what are JV Partners? JV Partners. Joint venture. That JV stands for joint venture, not Junior varsity. Right. And joint venture partners are going to be people in your niche that are doing things similar to you. Maybe not competing directly, but they reach a similar audience. And you guys can cross promote each other or maybe they would post in their Facebook group for you or maybe they would send out in their email something about your live broadcast or maybe they would tweet about it. These need to be people you have a relationship with. I don't recommend just cold emailing or cold calling people. I get these all the time. People just wanting me to promote them. I've never even heard of them. I don't know them, I don't trust them. I only promote people to my audience that I know and that I trust and that I have a relationship with. And so these will need to be people that you have a relationship with. If you don't have any JV partners right now, start cultivating some relationships. I have about five different people in my niche that I specifically try to interact with on social media. I try to support them when I can and it's because I like them, it's because I want a relationship with them. But it's also because I would love to do some JV partnerships with them too. But it starts with a relationship and so you want to make sure it's a win win for you both. If you do a JV partnership, what will you do? Because I don't want you to be sitting on your broadcast by yourself if you're talking to an empty audience. Will your message have any impact if you are broadcasting and nobody is there live, nobody is there watching the replay. No, not going to have any impact. And so you do have to do some of this marketing. You do have to do some work.

Oh no, did I actually say that? Four letter word marketers never use that word because no one wants to hear that. No one wants to hear the reality of what it takes to be successful. They just want this bright shiny object syndrome. They just want the the Whiz Bang software. They just want the easy button. But you guys, honest to goodness truth, it's going to take a little bit of elbow grease, it's going to take a little sweat equity, it's going to take a little bit of your time. But is it worth it? Is it worth it to you? That's what you have to decide. Is your mission, is what you are doing, is your message, is your books or worth it for you to be willing to put in some time to put in some sweat equity to invest in building your tribe, to invest in reaching those people who need that message you have. Is it worth it if you have any doubt that you even have a message worth sharing, don't even do this. Don't even waste your time. But if you know that, you know that, you know this is what God has created you to do. This is what God has gifted you to do. It's what God has called you to do. It's what you're to share with the world and know that it's going to take a little bit of work sometimes a lot, right? You don't have to do everything. Like that is the lie in marketing right now. Like you get this like lie and you hear this voice like oh you need to be doing this. Oh you need to be doing that. Or oh you're not on Pinterest. Oh maybe you need to be on Pinterest. No, no, no, no, no. Don't hear that from me today. You do not need to be doing everything. There is a rule called the 8020 rule. 20% of your efforts will yield 80% of your results. And by far I have found that building an email subscriber list, focusing my energy on building that list and then nurturing that list has been part of that 20%. I love social media. It is so powerful and live video is powerful as well. You have to have people there to watch it, right? You have to have people there to interact with you and to learn from you. Just a bonus tip, you can use paid advertising if you have a budget. I do caution you that if you are only really focusing on selling books, it's going to be hard to get a good return on investment from Facebook ads. I've primarily used them to promote my higher end products but it is an option. You can do Facebook and Instagram ads that way. And then I do have a resource for you. Like I mentioned my book launch checklist and swipe files. So in that it's an entire module in AuthorIt's Academy. You'll find it in the bonuses. But I include all of my the emails I've used, I include the different social media posts I use. I include my exact checklist that I use. And so if you're an author Audience Academy member that is available for you in the bonus section, use it. Use it for your live video broadcast because I give you permission to adapt it and to use those templates and things. Now only use what you need but that is available for you. Well again, my name is Shelli Hitz. I am an author coach and I am passionate about helping you reach more people with your message. You guys, I'm not about hype. I'm about what really works to I do this stuff too. I'm in the trenches with you. And I'm all about working smarter, not harder. The systems I teach in Author Audience Academy are about not having to do your marketing and be behind the computer all the time. But it's about freeing up your time and setting up systems that will work for you 24. 7 We're in the middle right now of the Author Automation system, and I'm teaching that inside authoraudienceacademy.com but when you think about your marketing, I want you to always be thinking, want to work smarter, not harder. It is going to take work. It is going to take effort. But you don't have to be behind a screen all day, every day. Like you can have a life. All right? So if you haven't yet, make sure to share with your author friends about this challenge. Shellyhits.com live video what's coming up next is how to properly prepare for each of your live broadcasts. And so you want to make sure you don't miss any of these important steps. By preparing, we're going to actually go through addressing your fear. We're going to go through some of the best tips I found on that. We're going to go through like actual, like brainstorming topics and stories and things that you can share so you'll never run out of ideas. So make sure that you catch this next video. You can watch the replay or catch me live. I will be here at the same time tomorrow. We'll see you guys later. Bye Bye.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Author Audience Show. Connect with us online@authoraudience.com where you'll find all the resources mentioned in today's episode. While you're there, grab Shelley's free video training on how to write and publish your book using her Six Step Ascent method. Join us again next week to learn how to reach your audience with your message.