LIKE PRACTICE: How do I practice a Facebook Live without anyone seeing it?

I get it. You like the idea of Facebook Live but you just don’t like the idea of looking stupid in front of your friends. Well relax. This is for you.

The great thing about Facebook Live is that you can set the functionality so that no-one can see it. Just you can. So you can mess about and kick the tyres and no-one will see you. That has to be a good thing.

This is a trick that we include in our Skills You’ll Need for Live Video workshops (more here). But if you are looking to learn more you can do it too.

To start, pick up your device.

Step 1: Go to Facebook

Go to Facebook. You’ve seen this view a thousand times already. Tap that you want to share an update.

Step 2: Tap Go Live

Once you’ve tapped that you want to make an update you get a list of options. Tap ‘Go Live’ as that’s what you want to do.

Step 3: Set your audience

You can pick who you are going live to. See that? That’s for friends. If you want to broadcast to your friends, that’s fine. If you want to broadcast just to yourself as practice you can adjust that. Tap ‘friends’ or whatever your audience is.

Step 4: Set your audience to ‘just me’

Then you can pick your audience. Here, I’m setting it to ‘just me’ if you just want to broadcast to yourself.

Step 5: Your audience is ‘only me’ and add a title

Nearly there. You are broadcasting to yourself. Add a title. Go on. It is good practice. Make it interesting.

Step 6: Hit live, chat and then when you are finished hit finish

Keeping up? Now is your chance to shine.

Step 7: When you finish you’ll see this

A dark screen that tells you you’ve finished. Simple?

Step 8: Publish, don’t publish

Now you’ve shot your practice you can change its status from ‘only me’ to ‘friends’, ‘public’ or other settings depending on your mood. You can also download to your device.

And that’s it.