Autodesk makes 3D design, engineering and entertainment software. With more than 80 products used by more than 10 million people around the globe, the company’s customers make stuff the rest of us use and experience every day.
With its flagship AutoCAD product, the company’s target is to reach 18- to 24-year-old designers — the heavy users of Facebook. To connect with them, Autodesk is doing all the usual stuff involved in creating a great Facebook page, but it is also experimenting with new techniques to make the page even better — such as live streaming.
At our BlogWell conference, Autodesk’s Daniel Zucker and Marielle Covington took the stage to teach us how the company is implementing live streaming on Facebook and how so far it’s generated 167,000 fans.
A few of their big ideas:
- Build up to your live-streaming event. For one of its big “Facecast” events, Autodesk created polls, fill-in-the-blank posts and art contents through multiple social channels for six weeks. This helped build buzz that the company could channel toward the live streaming event.
- Use live streaming to take your conferences to a bigger audience. At its annual user conference, Autodesk set up a booth where attendees and executives could go to participate in live interviews. This helped users who weren’t at the conference still experience it. The result? Viewers at home streamed this content for an average of 25 minutes!
- Know the basics. Covington shared a bunch of tips for anyone looking at Facebook live streaming. Her suggestions: The quality of the camera doesn’t affect the final product; you need two laptops (one to broadcast and a second as a backup to test audio and streaming); Livestream is a great tool with helpful account reps; always use a title slide and an ending slide; and prep your talent to make sure they’re comfortable in front of the camera.
See all of Zucker and Covington’s tips in their live presentation. Slides are available.