Episode 33: Facebook Creator App Review

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Stephanie Liu Hey, what's up, you guys? This is another impromptu Facebook Live. I just had a chance to go ahead and play around with the Facebook Creator app just a little bit more.

I wanted to show you guys what I learned about the Facebook Creator app because there were a couple of things that I missed out on the first time.

If you guys are tuning in, go ahead and let me know where you're watching from. I am here in San Diego. It's a Sunday night. Hence the get shit done bun. The little one is in bed. I will be whispering throughout this broadcast. If you guys are watching, go ahead and leave a comment, let me know where you're watching from. If you're watching the replay, go ahead and leave a comment #replay just so I know where you guys are popping up. Let me go ahead and pop in into the actual broadcast. All right, cool.

Here's what I have for you guys today. Today, or tonight, tonight I actually wanted to go ahead and talk to you guys about the Facebook Creator app, and how businesses can use them to go ahead and live stream from their mobile device.

Now, you could have gone live on your mobile device before, just using the regular Facebook app or the Pages app, but now the Facebook Creator app has a couple of cool things that you should be aware of. Let's go ahead and get started.

Let me first go ahead and show you where you need to go in order to get access to the Facebook Creator app. The first thing that you want to go ahead and do is head on over to facebook.com/creators. Then scroll down to the part where you could go ahead and sign up to be a part of the Creator community. Where is that? Let me go ahead and pull this up for you real quick. One second. Did I miss it? Ope, there it is. Join Facebook for Creators. The application is pretty straightforward. It's pretty easy. I think most people should get accepted into it. It didn't really seem like there's gonna be a lot of barriers to it. Once you go ahead and you join Facebook for Creators and you get your acceptance, go ahead and scroll up. You could actually go ahead and download the app. Where are we here? Do-do-do-do. Get the App. You could download it for iOS. Then Android, it's coming soon.

Now, if you already had the Facebook Mentions app on your phone, then Mentions should be now converting into the Facebook Creator app. Cool. Having said that, let me go ahead and show you the actual Creator app. There are a couple of things that. Oh, Brigette, you're here again! Yay! Jane, you're actually watching the live portion of this. Walking you through the app again 'cause there is a couple of things that I missed out the first time around.

When I was playing around with the app today with my daughter, I noticed a couple of other things. First things first, this is the actual homepage right here. You could see that it's very video focused because it starts to show you what the video views are that I've had, I guess, last week. Then from here, I could go ahead and tap in to see the Video Insights, the video view insights that I had for a previous broadcast. My daughter and I actually went live earlier today, and Brigette was there. You could see the video duration, total number of views, as well as the engagement. This isn't something that you would actually see in the Pages app. That's completely new there. The other thing that you could see in here are, of course, your notifications. These are gonna be notifications, whether it's on your page or if you've actually connected your page to a group. I actually have a couple of groups, and so when I posted in there, I'm now getting notifications onto the Facebook Creator app.

This plus icon is pretty straightforward. This allows you to go ahead and put a post on here. You could say what's on your mind. You could do your Camera, Photo, Live Video, Check In, Feeling. I also thought it was really interesting that they have this 360 Photo. I think what you could do is you could actually just go ahead and take a photo. Let's see, let's just do this right now. I shoulda done this when I was in a really nice area. I'm taking a 360 photo. Ooh. Keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going. Did I get it, did I get it, did I get it? Am I there yet? Am I done? That's a 360 photo. Let's see how it actually came out. It probably came out funky because I had it on my arc come out. It says there's a problem with it, but anyway. I think it's actually cool that you can now take 360 photos on the Creator app without actually having to purchase a, what do you call it? A 360 camera, which, by the way, I already have 'cause I'm pretty nerdy about that. Let's see here. Oh, Jane, you don't have to be sorry about that. That's all good. It's all good. That was the 360 feature. Let me go ahead and cancel out of that, discard that for you real quick. Go back to the plus sign.

Other things in here that I thought was really interesting was the Q and A. You could start a Q and A with your fans, and then questions will appear in the comment to the post. Then you could answer by tapping reply below them. I don't know what that is exactly. I think I'm actually gonna go ahead and play that, play around with that a little bit tomorrow. If you're around and all the sudden you get a notification from me again, try to hang out so you could go ahead and test the Q and A feature with me. That was interesting. Let's see here. Then that was it, in terms of the plus sign that really just kinda drew my eye. Then I have the updated inbox, which is the unified inbox. It gives me notification from Instagram and Facebook. That's nothing new if you had the Pages app.

Yeah, Brigette, the 360's pretty cool. Let's see here. Then you have the analytics, which, again, is pretty straightforward, in terms of mostly video views, minutes viewed, yada, yada. If you're video focused, then it's super helpful to view that information. You could see your demographics, you could see the breakdown between men versus female, and then you could see your top countries. Here's the part where it gets really interesting is if I go into. Oh, oh, two Stephanies. Ooh. If I go into the actual camera piece of it. This is the normal. Normal is pretty straightforward. You could see all of the different frames that I could go ahead and play around with. But if I wanted to go live, I swipe over here. Then, I don't know if you see it, but on the bottom right-hand corner, let me see, yeah, bottom right-hand corner, it says Live Creative On. You could actually see this frame that I created for my actual broadcast. This is the part that I was missing. I was like, "Where is this live video "creative kit that everyone was talking about?" TechCrunch was talking about this, but I didn't see it in the app. How it actually works is you have to go into your business page and create that setting. Let me go ahead and show you guys how I did that.

First off, some of you cannot. Let me go here real quick. If some of you can't get your business page connected to your Facebook Creator app, here's something that I did that seemed to really help out. I went in. Do-do-do-do-do. I went in and I went over to where it says About. I went it and I went over to where it says About. I'm sorry it's taking long for that to go ahead and load. Double-click, let's see if that gives me some love. All right, cool. I went there. Let me see if I actually have this other window up just because that way I could see your comments at the same time. Forgive me. I'm a little. Brigette says, "Have you done lives "using captions yet?" I usually add my captions at the very end. I don't usually have the captions on. I don't do live captioning, but that would be really cool. If you have more info on that, Brigette, I would love to know. Okay, cool. From here, I would go to edit page info. Once I'm in edit page info, I actually went ahead and I added the category video creator. Then, that allowed me to also have access to my business page on the Creator app.

Now, some people, they had done that, too, and then they still weren't able to get access to it, so they tried another trick, was to actually go ahead and change their profile photo to an actual image of a person. Then that actually worked out for them.

Now let's talk about the live video creator creative kit, and where you can find it. You head on over to Settings. Click on Settings. Then from there, you click on Videos. When you're in the Videos tab, what you'll see is that Live Creative kit for your page. You could go ahead and click on Edit. This is where I went ahead and I dropped in my actual image, or my frame.

Forgive me right now. I just heard my husband running upstairs because apparently my daughter just woke up from her bedtime. Yeah. Let's see.

Mandy is saying, "So this is just for your phone?" Yeah, Mandy. The Facebook Creator app is just for your phone. It's a nice way for people that are live streaming from their mobile device on how they could do something a little bit more branded and a little bit more differently. Here is how you could go ahead and adjust it. I created this. First, I went ahead and I created a PSD file in Photoshop. I did my branding, all that stuff. Then I wanted to make a little Bitmoji, and I just dropped that in there, as well. You could go ahead and do whatever it is that you want. You could go ahead and preview it to see how it's actually going to look like once you add in your frame. Then when you click on Next, you could add your intro, your intro video. The video will play before your live broadcast starts. It can't be longer than 180 seconds, and it's recommended to be under 90 seconds. I could upload an intro video. Let me go ahead. Where did I have it? Let me go ahead and see where I had this real quick. Let's see here. Forgive me while I try to figure this out. Okay, cool. Go here. Then I have my creative assets. Head on over to Facebook Live. Oh, you can't see this because it's just showing my screen. Let me go back real quick. I do have the video intro. This one is 5.8 megabytes. I'm gonna go ahead and upload it, and see if there's any issues that I have with it. Encoding video. Let's see what happens. Waiting, waiting, waiting. While that's uploading and processing the video, let me go ahead and upload the outro video, as well. Let's see here. Ope, doesn't look I could do two things at once. One's here. Oh, Ariel, so good to see you. Yeah, I'm totally whispering right now. I think my daughter woke up from her nap. Let's see. Ariel says, "It sucks that I can't "use this with Urbanist. "It's only allowing for personal pages." Ariel, what I did is I went in. I changed my page to video creator, and then a couple of my other friends, they changed their profile photo to actually show their face. I think maybe if you try that out, that might work for Urbanist. Let's see, the video in this landscape mode is not supported. It will appear stretched. Okay, cool, whatever. I'm not too worried about that just because this is a test for now. Let's see here. Let's do the same thing for the outro video. Then there's this thing here called Live Stickers. "Live Stickers will be available for use "by your viewers when they watch your live video." I haven't had a chance to actually create a live sticker yet. I think I'm gonna do some more Bitmoji stuff just to see how that turns out. Then we'll see how it looks like. I think I might have a robo Steph or something. Ope, let's see here. Let me see in my downloads to see if I have something kinda. Mm. I'm just trying to see if there's something in here that I could just share with you guys just to test out. Let's see, let's see, let's see. Nope, okay, well, whatever. I'll mess with that later. I guess that means for you guys, you'll get another video from me. All right, cool. Then I click on Next. This is the frame and this is the stickers. This is how it's actually going to look like. This is the outro video. Ooh. It is a little stretched right now. That's interesting to see that that's how the outro video's going to look like. Then if I click on intro video, same thing. I could see how that looks like. You guys seeing all this? This is all, this is pretty much what you could do with your mobile device. Okay, cool. Then I'm gonna go ahead. I'm just gonna go back. I'm gonna remove this. Mm, should I remove this right now? No, okay, whatever. I'll just leave this in for now. I hit Submit. Wait for that to process. All right, cool.

The next thing that I'm gonna do for you guys, I'm gonna go back to my iPhone. You could see here that I have my. Let me go ahead and get out of this real quick because I want it to start over. I'm hoping that it's going to refresh, and it's actually gonna go ahead and show the intro and the outro video stuff. I'm gonna go back over here. I'm just gonna say Test. Ooh, it's said Loading Effects. All right, cool. I'm just gonna say Test. This is gonna be kinda weird because, to all my fans, you're probably gonna get two notifications that I have two lives going on, but what I want to see is what's gonna happen if I actually click Live. It says starting intro video. It's playing. It's playing the intro video. That's kinda cool, you guys. I don't have to worry about multitasking. There I am, hey, hey. That was the intro video. Oh, for those of you that are watching this one, I'm totally doing another live video that references this. It's kind of like super meta right now. I click on Finish. Then this is what happens. Doo, and then it's starting the outro video. Then that's gonna go ahead and wrap up, too. It'll be really interesting to see if the audio comes through for the intro, too. That'll be interesting. I obviously now have to go in and figure out how to do an intro video. If anything, I think the intro video will be more, I'll have to make it. What's it? 1280 by 720. It'll most likely have to be 720 by 1280 to be more in portrait mode. Okay, cool. I'm just gonna download this video. Then I'm not gonna actually have it posted on my page, just because it's gonna be weird.

But, yeah, you guys, that's pretty much, that is the Facebook Creator app. What questions do you have about the Facebook Creator app right now? Jane says, "Does it do horizontal?" You mean like in landscape form? Yeah. Usually you could go live in landscape form. You just have to hold your phone that way and keep it that way, meaning you can't flip your phone from portrait to landscape, and then expect it to change mid-live stream. That's something to keep in mind. But I'll go ahead and I'll test that for you, too. Yay. Jane. Jane, Brigette, any other questions? Ariel, any other questions for me while I'm trying to go back into the comments to see who popped in here? I'm also trying to be very mindful of my husband, who just ran across the room upstairs to tend to our two 1/2 year old toddler who just woke up. Yeah, she must have had some type of Spidey sense of like, oh, my gosh. Mommy's on camera again. I need to go tell everyone what I ate for dinner. Let's see here. Brigette says, "It's not in the Play store just yet." Is the Play store, is that for Android? If it's for Android, if that's what you mean by Play Store, I'm just not familiar with that term, then from what I've read, it says that it's coming soon. Oh, yeah, Mandy, Mandy. The Facebook Creator app is gonna come to the Google Play Store a little bit later down the line. Cool. Well, you guys. Thanks for kicking out with me again pretty much over the weekend. This was totally impromptu, hence, the mom bun. Sorry, that is not a dab on any moms out there. This is how I live on the weekends. For those of you that have ever watched me on Lights, Camera, Live, my hair is usually down. This is my get shit done bun, especially on a Sunday. Thanks, Jane. Thanks, Brigette. Brigette, I hope I'm saying your name right. Ariel, thanks for hanging out, too. I hope that you're able to get the Facebook Creator app up and working for Urbanist. I'm also curious to hear your thoughts on the 360 feature that they have in there. I will be doing additional test this week on the whole. Oh, oh, oh, oh. I forgot to tell you guys. Let me go back to my phone real quick. Hold up. When you choose to live stream, there's this thing that you could do where if I click on the three dots on the bottom right-hand corner, I could go ahead and I could click on Comment Mode. Then you could choose three different comment modes. The first one is Follower Only Mode. You only wanna get comments from your followers. That's really interesting. I'm kinda curious to see how that would actually impact engagement. Yes, Ariel, there's a 360 feature. It's more of a 360 photo feature. I'll show you in a little bit, or if you wanna watch the replay, I totally go through that. They also have Slow Mode, in terms of the comments. Commenters will only be able to comment every 10 seconds. I think that that kinda makes sense. I do have a couple of students where, when they're live streaming and they see everyone just saying hi, it kind of freaks them out. I think if you turn this on for Slow Mode, then you won't feel so frazzled. Then there's a Discussion Mode. Discussion Mode is only comments over a hundred characters will be shown. I think that's pretty cool 'cause then I think generally when people type more than a hundred characters, they're most likely asking you a question. That could be cool, but I don't know. I don't think personally I would use any of these comment mode features for now. I think generally when people want to go live, they wanna try to get as many comments as possible. If you were to limit them by followers only, delaying the 10 seconds, and then requiring a hundred characters in order for your comment to pop up might be kind of funky. Yeah, Ariel. Really interesting, isn't it? What else is here? You could add the donate button. That's actually not new. If you've ever live streamed before on your mobile device, you could add a donate button. If there's a charity that you're involved with or a charity that you want to work with, then you could add a donate button that people can go ahead and donate towards your charity.

If you ever just wanted to turn off the Live Creative Mode, you just go ahead and tap Stop Using Live Creative. Ariel, so Ariel's question. Ooh, that's such a good question. Ariel's asking what feature do I think is needed in the app. I would love, love, love to post-edit, if possible. Maybe there's a flub in the beginning, maybe just kinda tighten that up a little bit. I would also love, someone had just asked me earlier, I think it was Brigette, who was asking me if I've ever done live captions. I think live captions would be great just because there's a lotta people out there with disabilities that want to tune in and want to take advantage of live streaming, as well, but they have to wait for technology to go ahead and come up to speed and to support them with their needs. That's a little interesting right there. Ariel, since you're still here kicking it, let me go ahead and show you that 360 thing that I was talking about. From here, you're gonna go ahead and click on the plus button. Then if I scroll down, there's 360 Photo. If I click on 360 Photo, then here's the actual screen itself. You could totally see the ladder behind my desk. You would just hit that blue button. Then you could pan around the room, just kinda like you would do for a panoramic photo. Mandy says, "I have no disabilities, "but I like to watch them at home "and not disturb others." I'm the same way, Mandy. Sometimes I put my daughter to bed, and I'm just laying right beside her, and I wanna watch videos, too. Not everyone does captions. But I did read this really wonderful, or I was listening to this wonderful podcast by my good friend Mitch Jackson. He was talking about disability laws and all that stuff. I think it really is important for us, as live streamers, as content creators, to also make our content accessible for those with disabilities.

Anyways, so that's that. Thanks, you guys, again. I think I've pretty much covered everything in here. If you guys have any other questions about the Creator app, please feel free to go ahead and drop them into the comments because I would love to answer them. I would love to even go ahead and test it out, and then give you an update on what my thoughts are for the Creator app. All right, thank you so much. I'm gonna go ahead and bounce out. I hope you guys are enjoying your evening. Take care and enjoy the rest of your night. Bye.

ABOUT THIS EPISODE

The Facebook Creator app offers content creators a Live Creative Kit to add intro/outro videos, custom frames and so much more to their mobile live streams. Take a look at the enhanced fan engagement tools that you can find on the app.

ABOUT STEPHANIE LIU

Stephanie Liu is one of the most sought-after speakers on Facebook Live video, known for her dynamic stage presence and cutting-edge Facebook engagement tactics. As an ad agency veteran, Stephanie has helped Fortune 500 companies and small businesses skip the guesswork on how to build their brand online with social media. She has spoken at Interactive Day San Diego, Social Media Day San Diego, Social Video Con and coaches small business owners on how to leverage live video in their own business.

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU'LL LEARN

  • How to Join the Facebook Creator Community
  • 2 Tricks to Connect Your Business Page to Creator (fingers crossed, it worked for me + friends)
  • How to Add Your Intro/Outro Video
  • Easy Steps to Create Your Frame + More!

RESOURCES

STEPHANIE LIU'S LIVE STREAMING SETUP

MUSIC

  • Rollercoaster by Tobu
 
 

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Stephanie Garcia

Stephanie Garcia is the founder of Captivate on Command™ and the host of Lights, Camera, Live® where she helps brands succeed on camera. As a Master Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) Practitioner, Trainer, and ad agency veteran, Stephanie combines her marketing experience to help individuals communicate with confidence so they can ignite their ideas and be brilliant for prospects and customers alike. Named as one of the Top 50 Digital Marketing Thought Leaders by University of Missouri St. Louis, her work has been recognized and awarded by Forbes, Online Marketing Media And Advertising, PR Daily, Forrester, and Gartner 1to1 Media.

Stephanie is the host of Lights, Camera, Live and the co-founder of Leap Into Live Streaming Bootcamp. She has spoken at Social Media Marketing World, VidCon, Podcast Movement, and many more. Stephanie is the co-author of the forthcoming book, The Ultimate Guide to Social Media, due out on bookshelves in August 2020 by Entrepreneur Press. She lives in San Diego, CA.