There's been a battle between live platforms lately with Periscope, YouTube live and now Facebook live. With Facebook taking a serious interest in live video and making it the centerpiece of its current strategy this is bad news for everyone else. 

Facebook has been paying some media publishers to produce live content in order to increase the awareness of its live platform, get more users engaged and using the feature and it has prioritized live in its news feed. Kobe Bryant's last game was featured on Facebook live! Now there will be a live button that replaces the messenger button at the bottom of the Facebook app and Facebook will be introducing a video search feature to make it easier for people to search for videos like they do in YouTube. If that isn't enough Facebook is going to be adding filters and drawing on the screen during live videos. Hello snapchat? Er Facebook? 

This is a huge indication companies should be working toward going live to build awareness and offer a unique piece of your business that is raw, real, unedited and unscripted. People love to see this! It adds the human piece to your brand in a world of boring non personalized marketing, where consumers feel as though they are just numbers and companies don't care about them. 

How should we use live effectively? We should start by thinking about what people are asking and what they want to see in behind the scenes, funny or unique content. If you see everyone else doing something do something different. Create a small mini series that you put up weekly that covers something people are actually asking about or interested in. This means you actually have to LISTEN to your audience and react from what they say. When you're recording live be sure you have someone to respond to the comments and engage with your viewers. Chances are you're going to have a lot more comments from the viewers in your live video. Finally ask the viewers questions during the video. People love to be interacted with and will comment back with a response on what you're asking them. 

With Facebooks improved embedding you can now put your live videos that are saved as recordings on your website or anywhere else you'd like to showcase them. Though the most important thing for Facebook is keeping people engaged on their platform. In addition to improved embedding you can use live to record from a GoPro, drones and similar items. 

If you're interested in continuing to be relevant in social and digital marketing you're going to want to, at the very least, produce some live content and see how it does in terms of who watches it and how many people you get engaging with you on that video. Don't ignore this, you'll regret it later when everyone else is doing it and it's much harder to build that engagement. Those who jump in early are the ones who build the biggest following and achieve the greatest success!