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Taking Your Facebook Live To The Next Level

Taking Your Facebook Live To The Next Level

If you’ve been watching our Facebook Lives this past couple of weeks (if not, check out our latest episode), you may have noticed a few changes. We’ve been slowly switching up the hardware we use to make our videos, along with using some additional software, to improve the quality of the finished product.

The best thing about Live is that you can do it from anywhere, as long as you have the internet and a device connected to Facebook. But the annoying thing about this is that people often think more about going Live than they do about what they’re broadcasting.

With that in mind, here are a few tried and tested tips we’ve used to improve the quality of our own Facebook Lives, which you can use for yours.

Shoot In Landscape Orientation

The biggest rookie mistake we see on Facebook, is somebody shooting their videos in portrait orientation. What does that mean?

Well take a look below:


When we hold our phones, we hold them in portrait orientation. Our phone feels more natural in our hand that way.However, the majority of TV and film is shot in landscape orientation. There are a bunch of reasons for this, but mostly that landscape orientation helps to include more background in a picture which also accentuates the foreground, your subject.Since people are used to holding their phones in a portrait orientation, they often end up doing their videos that way too.The problem with this is: well, first of all, it makes you look like an amateur. But second, Facebook adds dark bars to the sides of a video done in portrait orientation to turn it into a landscape video. Meaning the majority of your video won’t contain anything if you shoot it in portrait mode.

The solution is easy: shoot your Facebook Live (and ANY video) in landscape orientation. All it takes is turning your phone on its side.

Get A New Camera

Doing a Facebook Live from your phone is great when you’re starting out. But there’s a reason Steven Spielberg doesn’t film his movies on a Samsung Galaxy.

Since cell phones are meant to be mobile, there is only so much technology that can fit into them. A high-quality lens, microphone and the parts needed to make them work effectively are hard to fit into the size of a phone.

A good quality camera needs a large lens, sensor, and room for electronics.

Since we do our Facebook Lives in office, we hook up a camera to a laptop to increase our picture and sound quality.

But you can also attach a camera to your phone to increase quality for more mobile Lives.

Internet Quality

Now, you could have the best camera in the world, connected to a super computer. But none of it would make a difference if your internet is terrible.

Facebook Live works by sending your video and audio over the internet to Facebook, who then post it up on your Facebook page for others to see.

If the quality of your internet is bad, then the video and audio you’re sending will also be bad.

If you’ve found that certain areas of your business have better internet connections. Try to do your Facebook Live from there. Or even better, connect to the internet via a network cable rather than wifi.

When doing a Facebook Live outside, you’re always going to see some drops in quality due to using a mobile network. So check beforehand that you have a good signal.

Otherwise, you may find after doing your live that all your customers saw was a glitchy mess of colors and sound.

Always Keep This In Mind

The main thing to remember when doing a Facebook Live is that it’s a broadcast. So treat it as such. The more seriously you treat your output, the more likely it is that your customers will be engaged by your content.

But creating bad quality video can turn them off instantly.

If you want to see more of us on Facebook Live, follow our Facebook page. We go Live each Tuesday at 1PM EST.

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