So I did 25 or so of those Facebook Live videos the other night…

Not just on a drunken whim. It was strategic.

Sort of…

I announced I’d be touring the Epcot Food and Wine Festival, and doing a series of Facebook Live posts from there, discussing the various countries and foods and wines.

All of the posts went to my homepage and then I turned around and shared them on my author page.

Throughout the night, as my wife and I made our way around the world, I took 60 seconds here and there to tell you about succulent mint pesto lamb chops from Australia, delectable meatballs from New Zealand, bold Oktoberfest beers in Germany, and wines whenever I remembered. Which was a lot. Because Epcot Food and Wine Festival.

Oh, man. Tasty stuff. I should have gone twice.

Anyway, when you go to look at the Live posts – or, when I do, I should say – Facebook is giving me viewing stats like you would see on YouTube.

That’s… kinda cool.

Each of the videos got anywhere from 18 to 20+ views over the first 24 hours, many that night. Now, most of those were one individual going through and viewing all of them, OK? So each video got viewed once by one person. And that obviously happened a few times. Susan Dinger watched them all and then Mrs. Hingsbergen watched them all and then Fernando watched them all. Like that.

But that still adds up to 450 views between my personal page and my author page of those videos, over about four hours (or more likely inside of 24 hours).

In other words, most of the views happened that night once people figured out what was happening, but other people watched them the next day or the day after that, and so on. (A fair portion of them got watched the following morning when I announced I was wrapping things up at Epcot.)

So anyway, 450 views so far as of this writing, which, if that was one video, that would be my highest viewed video ever as far as anything writer oriented.

Food for thought, gang.

You need traffic to your author page, and once people go there the FB gnomes put stuff on the visitors’ radar screens more often. Like announcements about books. FB loves them some interaction.

You can still go to my FB author page and watch them if you want. See what Epcot’s like, Dan style. (BTW, doing a blog post about your FB author page traffic kinda boosts traffic to your FB author page traffic, too. Especially if you tell people to go check out the FB Live videos there.)

My take away is, people may be tuning in for the train wreck or just to see their friend or just to have fun, or possibly to learn something, but apparently these are popular for some strange reason and it will theoretically get your author page a lot of traffic for doing them.

Think about it. I don’t normally have 450 people visit my author page in 24 hours. Do you?

So there is something to this.

Thoughts?