Tools to Use on Facebook Live: Rooms to Live, Premieres & Live Clipping

The ability to go live to cover a breaking news story or a special report is an important engagement tool for any newsroom looking to connect with their audience, continue building credibility and foster loyalty.

Once you go live, Facebook offers additional tools that can help you enhance your live broadcast - making it more interactive and visually appealing. In addition, we offer tools to clip your live broadcast and create new snackable videos from the livestream. Below, we’ll break down the various tools you may choose from based on your objectives.

Mainstreet News wants to conduct a livestream where they interview a panel of experts - all in different locations - to discuss a recent debate for city council.

Rooms to Live is a co-broadcasting feature for Facebook Live that lets you go live with guests through a video call on a Profile, Page or Group. With Rooms to Live, a newsroom like Mainstreet News would be able to add multiple experts directly into their broadcast to host an interview panel.

With this feature you can create a Room right from Messenger or Facebook and invite everyone to join your video call, even if they don’t have a Facebook account. You can add up to 50 people into your broadcast and highlight 16 people at a time.

Real World Spotlight:



Mexico’s financial newsroom El Financiero used a Messenger Room to go live with an insurance expert.

Inspired by the upcoming election for city council, Mainstreet News is producing a new video series profiling each of the candidates and wishes to create buzz for it amongst its Facebook followers.

Premieres is a feature that allows you to upload and debut pre-recorded videos as Live moments. By scheduling the broadcast ahead of time, Mainstreet News will be able to make its followers aware of its upcoming video series and let them know when the first episode will air. Viewers are then able to click a button to subscribe to notifications about the Premiere. Once subscribed, they will receive their first notification 20 minutes before the Premiere begins.

To schedule a Premiere on Facebook:

• Click ‘share a photo or video’ on the page you want your Premiere to broadcast from.
• Select the video you want to Premiere and fill out the fields for ‘Premiere Start Time.’

Note: A Premiere has to be scheduled at least 10 minutes in advance. You won't be able to launch a Premiere immediately so be sure to plan ahead. Pages can also schedule more than one Premiere for the same time.

Real World Spotlight



Sweden’s Expressen leveraged the Premieres feature to spotlight their daily news round-up on Facebook.

Mainstreet News wants to highlight the top moments of the recent livestream with the panel of experts to provide its audience with the interview’s main takeaways.

Live Clipping is a trimming tool in Creator Studio that lets you edit and shorten your live footage. With Live Clipping, Mainstreet News can trim the beginning and the end of its live broadcast to remove any unwanted content after it has concluded and the recording has been posted on their page. In addition, they can also select and clip portions of its live broadcast and re-post as well as monetize these shorter, snackable videos on its Facebook.

To trim a live broadcast that's been posted as a recorded video on your Page, find the recorded video on your page and: