Greetings my dear friends! 🙋🏻
Last year, I published an article about how to create a Facebook Live poll in 15 minutes with a help of Video React. That article received a lot of interest. However, there is now a much better alternative available for those who want to truly master the Facebook live poll function. The service I will cover in this article is called Go UpLive.
Introduction
UpLive is by far the most sophisticated Facebook live poll service I’ve encountered. The best thing about UpLive is that it goes beyond the reaction poll videos: it also features templates for live videos that let your Facebook fans play word search together, guess what pictures are hidden and work together to reveal an image hiding behind a wall of reactions. In this article, I give you instructions on how to use these features, together with a short review of each function.
But first, let’s take a look at Facebook LIVE and how it is doing. Ever since Facebook launched Facebook Live feature, live videos have been exponentially growing in popularity. Not long ago, Facebook mentioned that each 5th video shared on the platform is a Live video! So it seems that the hundreds of millions of dollars invested by Facebook in promoting the LIVE concept is starting to pay off 😁
Are Facebook Live Poll Videos Good For Your Page?
Facebook LIVE poll videos—in other words, videos with an interactive voting element using Facebook live reactions—have been growing in popularity. Last year, five of the ten most viewed videos were either Facebook Live polls or live countdown videos. Many page owners have realized that the interactive Facebook live videos are great for increasing reach and engagement on their pages. You probably already know that only a small fraction of your audience actually sees your posts. But when it comes to videos on Facebook Live, some of your fans would receive a notification that your page is live, which will make people interested in going to check out what you are up to. In addition to this, the Facebook algorithm gives a boost to Live videos while they are on air. This makes them a more competitive post format in comparison to simple photos, links and videos. I work with many small business owners and we have seen a much better interaction on FB Live Polls comparing to usual page posts.
To show just how well a live poll video can perform, I will share with you an example from a Facebook page (a makeup salon) I help manage. In the example below (see picture) you can see how and organic Live video outperforms any other post made on the page. Whereas most posts got a reach between 217-1000 fans, the live poll video reached 4.7K people! The video also got 1170 views and 103 reactions, comments and shares, which compares very favorably to the other posts on the page. Most of the other recent posts got 1 to 20 comments, reactions or shares, so the increase is considerable.
And remember, this is not one of those funny entertaining pages where you might think it’s easy to get people interact. This is a local business offering make-up services to women (eyebrows shaping, makeup and so on).
The poll we used in the example above was a simple “like or heart” poll. These simple polls are great and efficient, but there are other, more creative ways available.
Creating Facebook Live Poll Videos Easily With UpLive
Today, even small businesses can easily create their own, professional-looking live polls on Facebook thanks to services like UpLive. UpLive is a company that specializes in creating new types of engaging interactive videos using the Facebook Live function. They have been making it possible for small businesses to create professional content on Facebook quickly and easily. According to their website, their services have been used on almost 20,000 FB pages, including pages for large companies such as Huawei, Pepsi, Nivea and MTV. I love the fact that they are releasing updates and new services relatively often: it is a service that feels “alive”. UpLive is in many ways a front-runner when it comes to new Live poll functions and features.
Currently, they have published no less than eight (8) different types of Facebook Live video templates, or plugins, as UpLive likes to call them. Whereas the first Facebook Live poll videos were quite simple, the new templates by UpLive offer much more variation — more than any other service. In addition to offering variety, it doesn’t hurt that their prices at least currently are very affordable: 20 USD buys you around 50 hours of streaming, which is more than enough for most companies.
Here are my top reasons for choosing UpLive:
- No need to download any software (you can use it without OBS Studio or any other software).
- Videos and images are hosted on their servers, not your computer. You won’t need a powerful computer and you won’t encounter any firewall problems.
- They get results. According to their website, the live videos of their average customer gets 527% more user engagement, +401% post reach and +302% post interactions.
- New templated/plug-ins are being developed and you always have access to each template.
- It’s very easy to use: the preview function helps you re-position elements they way you want them.
- You can schedule your live video to start when you want and it doesn’t matter if your computer is offline or online when it starts. You can even send a notification to your fans when your video starts!
So now that we’re done with the basic facts, let’s move on to the template plug-ins and learn how to use them efficiently.
How To Use The “Voting” Features on UpLive
There are three different voting templates. Companies can use these templates to have people vote on their favorite: cat vs. dog, Spiderman vs. Superman, Real Madrid vs. FC Barcelona, and so on. This is the by far most popular Facebook live poll type: it has been tried and tested—and it works.
So, on UpLive, this plugin is called simply “Voting”. In it, each reaction is calculated as a number. In the screenshot below you can see that the heart reaction stands for pizza and the thumbs up-like stands for hamburgers. By reacting with a heart, you vote for pizzas over hamburgers and vice versa.
Many FB pages are more creative with this feature. Below is a screenshot of an awesome live poll video from Levi Chambers’ Facebook page.
Here is a fine example of how the live video with reactions can be used for sports, in this case, football (Real Madrid vs. Atletico Madrid) 
Also fan pages can use the “Voting” template to great effect, as shown in the example below.
Finally, a simple, but effective picture that makes me smile 😀
As seen in the examples above, a simple voting live poll can be used in a multitude of ways — you can be as creative as you want. National Geographic Books used the simple voting mechanism (shown in the video below) to help them choose the right cover for an upcoming book. In the end, the book cover with the owl got over 1100 votes, whereas the one with the parrot only got a bit over 500. In this example, the poll function actually might have given National Geographic Books some very valuable information. Who knows, perhaps this information will lead to a higher number of books being sold?
Another, similar template is called “Voting with Bars”. In this template, the votes are being shown in a bar like in the picture below.
The “voting with bars”-function can help people visualize the current standings in the poll and it also makes the contest a bit more exciting. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of the voting with bars template, but this doesn’t mean that you couldn’t use it for great effect in your live poll on Facebook.
The third voting plugin type offered by UpLive is “Voting with Hashtag”. This is something that is rarely used, since it requires the Facebook user to type in a hashtag in the comment section in order to vote, for instance #cat, #Superman or #RealMadrid.
How To Use The “Guess What?” Feature on UpLive
The “Guess What?” template (or plugin, if you prefer the term used by UpLive) is something quite new and intriguing. This template lets your audience engage with your live video just for fun. As you can see from the video below, it’s not really even a poll. Instead, it uses Facebook Live to let Facebook users participate in a game of “What’s the Picture?”, where everyone tries to figure out what is hidden behind the wall. Here is how it works:
As you can see from the video, this template can be used for simple entertainment. However, if you want, you can also use it more strategically. I would recommend using pictures related to your Facebook page; be it a company, a website, organization or a page just for fun. This way the Facebook Live video won’t feel off-topic or irrelevant. Here are a couple of examples of what a company could “hide” behind the wall:
- McDonald’s: make people guess what hamburgers are hidden in the pictures.
- Nike: display your sneakers, or perhaps a new clothing line.
- Local fish markets: make people recognize the fishes in the pictures.
These were some examples, but the possibilities are naturally almost endless 🙂
How To Use The “Reveal” Feature on UpLive
This is perhaps their most interesting template so far. The “Reveal” live video uses reactions, just like the voting templates do. However, here the end-goal is to reveal, not guess, the picture hidden underneath a picture filled with reactions: sad face, angry face, thumbs up, love, haha and wow. Each reaction removes one of these reaction-filled blocks in the picture. It works like this:
- You choose the resolution for your Facebook LIVE: 4:4 or 16:9. The 4:4 is perfect for mobile users, while 16:9 is mainly for desktop users.
- Now, select what images or videos you want to hide behind the wall. For the images, UpLive supports JPEG, GIF and PNG formats. For the videos, you can upload videos up to 800MB in the formats MP4, AVI, and FLV. And now to the best part: as you upload, you can see all the changes in a live preview—this feature is a real time-saver!! Together with the image, you can even play music. This feature is, however, only available for those who have bought their Elite package.
- Choose the reactions used for uncovering the secret image/video.
- Choose how many tiles you want to cover the image/video. These have to be uncovered, so choose wisely!
- Now, choose how many reactions are needed to uncover one tile. You can choose any number between 1 and 10.
- Launch your Facebook LIVE video!
How do you then explain your audience what they are to do? Well, as an example, here are the instructions given by Blitz Brigade:
“Instructions:
– Use REACTIONS to unveil the hidden content below.
– It takes few votes to remove one tile, not just one!
– Unveil the pic before the LIVE ends!
– SHARE it with friends who can help you!
Now GO!”
In their case, the picture ended up not being fully revealed, so they wrote a comment in the feed, saying that the fully revealed can be found pinned down to the top of their feeds — smart thinking! In their case, the picture that was revealed showed an announcement of an upcoming sweepstakes on their Facebook and Instagram page.
When should you then use the Reveal template? Here are some examples:
Example 1. When you have a big announcement that you know will excite your fans.
Why? Big announcements are exciting — people will want to uncover the hidden announcement quickly. Note that the announcement has to be BIG in order for this to work. If the announcement isn’t considered big by your audience, they might feel let down.
Example 2. When you have a new discount code
Why? Because people will naturally want to uncover the discount code ASAP and share your video in order to make the process quicker!)
As you can see from the two examples above, the most important thing when going with a Reveal video is to make sure that the picture being revealed is exciting enough: a discount, a big sale, a product launch etc. If done right, the Reveal video can bring you real results without a huge Facebook campaign.
How To Use The “Word Search” Feature on UpLive
The latest addition to the Facebook LIVE templates/plugins by UpLive is the Word Search template. Essentially, it is a live word puzzle video: like in the game, people try to find words from a word grid and when they find a word, they type it in the comment section. Easy! The video below shows an example of Word Search from the Facebook page Fox Movies.
As you can see, when people got the hang of it (at around 1:30 into the video), they started participating actively. This is great way to give your fans some light entertainment. I would recommend it for entertainment-focused Facebook pages with active fans.
A little more info about the “Word Search” video template:
- You can choose the words yourself, or let the program select random English words (out of the 10 000 most common English words) for you.
- Duration of the live video can be anything from 1 minute to 7 days.
- You choose the number of rounds played and the duration of each round. Each round can have a different set of words (or the same words, but I would advise you not to do that)
Tip: Just like with the “Guess What?”-template, it makes sense for you to choose words related to your Facebook page, or to be even more precise, your audience. In the example by Fox Movies, they chose movie titles instead of just random words from a dictionary. I’m not going to double-check, but I am guessing the movies are all 20th Century Fox movies, which, of course, makes sense.
How To Use The Countdown Feature on UpLive
The countdown template/plug-in is made for pages that want to build suspense and excitement before a big event or launch. This is a post that you definitely should pin to the top of your page, otherwise it might not make sense, considering all the other template/plugin alternatives on offer.
How it works:
- First, select a background for the countdown. This can be a static image or a video. There are currently nice default images to choose from, but you can also upload your own images in JPEG, GIF or PNG. Video formats accepted are MP4, AVI and FLV. If you choose to go for an image instead of a video, you can even upload your own (copyright-free) music, if you have the Elite package. Videos are part of the cheaper Business package.
- Select a date, or set a timer. The clock will count down the days, hours, minutes and seconds to this time.
- Customize the clock. You can customize the color, font, font size, border radius, shadow and more. If you don’t want to customize it, just go with the default option.
- Ready to launch your Facebook Live countdown video!
How To Use The Video Loop Feature on UpLive
Do you have a kick-ass video that you want to loop for your audience? Then this feature is for you. Having a Facebook Live video on loop is perhaps not for everyone, but there must be scenarios where it is perfect. You can upload a video (up to 800 MB) in MP4, AVI or FLV formats.
Summary of UpLive’s plugins
UpLive offers a lot of functionality for basically any need. Learning how to use the program itself is not difficult, but it might take a couple of tries before you fully understand what kind of audience works with your audience. It is also good to note that many of these features are more complicated than what an ordinary Facebook user might be familiar with, so make sure not to give up directly if the results don’t please you. After all, Facebook Live videos are here to stay, as are the reactions that are used to interact with the live videos on Facebook. It’s better to be an early adopter of the possibilities Facebook Live offers, rather than a boring copycat who does the cool pages stopped doing long ago. Especially on a fast-moving platform such as Facebook, being up-to-date pays off. I wish you much success and good luck with your Facebook Live videos!
