Obed Hernandez, unsplash.com
When churches hear the f-word (FREE), their ears perk up. A friend of mine says, "If it's free, it's for me." So, discussions of live streaming often include the advice "just use Facebook" (or YouTube because it's free, too).
The lure of FREE is so strong that people miss the potential costs of using something with this price tag.
So, you may be asking, "What are the costs of something that's free?" There are more than most people think.
Getting your live stream seen
First, start with the positives. Of course, it's free.
Facebook has another advantage: people. On any day, most of your attenders and members visit Facebook. While your church website is as necessary today as a listing in the phone book in the 20th century, most of your people aren't going there daily. Even with the costs listed in this article, some will choose to use Facebook for this reason alone.
Even if 100% of the people who attend your church like your Facebook page AND they're on Facebook when you're live streaming, only a fraction of them would see your live stream.
One thing you should notice is that we're not talking about people in your community. We're talking about people who are already connected to your church ... and not all of them. Even if 100% of the people who attend your church like your Facebook page AND they're on Facebook when you're live streaming, only a fraction of them would see your live stream.
Facebook page owners noted that when it first changed the algorithm, 25% of people who'd liked their page would see updates. Later, it changed again, so that only 25% of the remaining number of people would see updates. That's 6-7% ... unless you pay to boost posts.
Live streams have better viewership, but nothing like the old days when a "like" meant you'd see content from the page you'd liked.
So, the "go where they are" strategy just doesn't work.
If you see Facebook as an outreach tool, you're probably wrong ... unless you pay for it.
Back to the other people in your community. If you see Facebook as an outreach tool, you're probably wrong ... unless you pay for it.
So, in order to get your free live-streaming in front of your congregation (or those outside your church), you'll need to pay for advertising. That's not free.
This isn't a scientific study and it is only anecdotal, but Sunday mornings in the U.S. seem to be a time when Facebook live streaming fails more often than at other times.
The cost of reliability
The Facebook motto "Move fast and break things" applies to their live streaming capabilities, as well. As a more mature business now, when would they want to do that though? They have a global audience, so during the middle of the night isn't an option. It's prime time somewhere, always ... except on the weekends.
This isn't a scientific study and it is only anecdotal, but Sunday mornings in the U.S. seem to be a time when Facebook live streaming fails more often than at other times. Perhaps this isn't the case, but if you watch church tech groups on Facebook, on Sunday mornings, you'll often see, "Is anyone else having trouble with live-streaming on Facebook today?" Sometimes, it's just one person who's having a problem, but often it's regional or nationwide.
The cost of support
Closely aligned with this is the lack of support. Paid live-streaming hosts have the edge here because you're their customer. If they don't help you when something breaks, whether it's on their end or on yours, you might leave.
Priscilla du Preez, unsplash.com
For Facebook (and YouTube, as well), you're the product. They aren't as motivated to make sure that you get back up and running ASAP. You're just one of billions of eyes to them. They want to keep you on Facebook, but if you don't stay, they wouldn't even notice. Live support costs money, too. So, other than a few videos and documents, they can't pay for people to help out individual users.
For Facebook (and YouTube, as well), you're the product. They aren't as motivated to make sure that you get back up and running ASAP.
While you're the product, the amount of money they sell your attention for is so small that it just doesn't make sense to pay someone to help you individually ... unless you're a large church which would take thousands or tens of thousands of people away.
The cost of complacency
Despite all these challenges, Facebook does live-stream. So, when you put your live-stream up there, and there alone (not as a part of a strategy to get it out everywhere), you might be tempted to think you've checked the "we've got a live-stream" box.
There are only so many hours in the day and only so much attention that you have. So, you might not dig into the numbers to see how few people are actually watching. You might think, "it's okay that we don't have a lot of viewers; we're still reaching people" as a way to justify inaction, even if you do pay attention to how many you have.
It's easy to get complacent. There's just so much other stuff to do.
The cost of copyright struggles
Typically, churches on Facebook don't currently face issues with copyright strikes and complaints like they do on YouTube.
With that said, assuming you have the appropriate live-streaming license (if you don't, make sure you get the one(s) you need), playing live music in a worship setting is perfectly legal.
BUT, a lot of churches play pre-recorded music before and after church. Make sure you DON'T live-stream that music. It's not covered by either the CCLI streaming license or the CCS Worshipcast license. More often than not, that's the cause of copyright complaints...and rightly so.
Tracks are another area that might give you some issues. Check with your license for the particulars to see if they're covered. If you didn't make them yourself, you're probably not allowed to, unless they're explicitly licensed for live-streaming.
Finally, (and like the other concerns listed in this section, apply to all live-streaming hosts) make sure lyrics keyed on top of your video are covered. They may or may not be the case.
Perhaps Facebook will never notice this, but they might. And even if they don't, if you think your license covers this, but it doesn't, you'd be legally liable and could face problems here.
Facebook (like YouTube) is a big target for record companies and publishers to go after. So, you'd be more likely to be found, if your ARE in the wrong than if you're live-streaming to a smaller host with that video embedded on your website.
None of this is to say that you should abandon Facebook (and YouTube) completely. As a best practice, use them to augment your live-streaming. Tell everyone in your church to go to a URL that redirects to your website or Church Online Platform site where your live-stream is embedded.
Then, use social media sites as a way to get more people to your live-stream, not as your only plan. For churches with smaller budgets, consider a service like restream.io which can take a single live stream and send it to both Facebook and Youtube (along with others) so that you always have at least one fall back live-stream destination. Ideally, you'd want more, but a single point of failure (for whatever reason) is what you want to avoid.
