Why this beauty creator with over 10M followers went all in on Facebook Live

Roccibella got started on Facebook in 2015 “while looking for new opportunities for myself,” she said. “I’m an accountant, but as an immigrant to the US, I was faced with a new reality and forced to reinvent myself. I started off recording simple makeup tutorials with my phone, and since it seemed to get some interest from my small and growing community, I kept doing it.”

“Today, so much has changed but the foundation of it all is the same: I’m still shooting content for my community and fostering the beautiful connection that we have.”

STRATEGY

Prior to her strategy shift in late March of 2021, Roccibella went live on Facebook sporadically. Since then, however, she goes live at least four times a week to share an authentic, unfiltered version of herself with her fans. Some of her videos are over an hour long but her live streams have the highest average interaction rate of all content types for her Page, according to CrowdTangle.

Tip 1: Show the whole process, mistakes and all

“As of April of this year, I made a big shift in my content strategy because I felt my community really wanted to see more organic content without so much editing or planning. Just me, no filter,” Roccibella said.

“This realization made me shift towards a live video-focused strategy, because it really made me feel so much closer to my audience; it’s real-time, no filters and with lots of authentic mishaps. I felt like this was the most important thing for my community, to really show them how to actually fix makeup mistakes in real-time, versus showing them a perfectly edited process.”

Tip 2: Remain authentic

Roccibella attributes the success of her Facebook Live videos (they’ve garnered more than 11M interactions over the last year) to being authentic with her audience and fearless about connecting.

“I think the engagement is high because I show myself exactly how I am, how I live my life, the reality of any sort of changes that I’ve made to my body, my family and just everything in the most authentic way possible,” she explained. Notably, Roccibella comments on many of her posts and responds to her audience, keeping a two-way dialogue open with her community.

Tip 3: Respond to comments

“Responding to comments is really important because that’s how relationships are built,” Roccibella said. “It’s how I thank my community for all their love and support, and it’s also where I find ideas for new content types that they want from me.”

With the new Live Comment Moderation tool on mobile, creators can control who comments on their live broadcast, the speed of the comments and whether or not they’d like to allow viewers to share links. “It’s a great option,” Roccibella added, “because it’ll allow me to read more comments, see who sends Stars and provide a more efficient way for my community and I to connect.”

Tip 4: Live can be fun, spontaneous and special

“I love that I can go live at any moment, no matter the time or place,” Roccibella said. “I can show myself the way that I am and my community can watch it whenever they want. They can connect with me and know that they’re always going to watch something unique.”

“My community is continuously growing, and with that growth, I feel that my connection with them also intensifies. I strategically try to create content that’s different from what I’ve seen online so that I’m able to get to new audiences, and honestly I’ve seen really good results from that tactic.”

Tip 5: Nurturing a community can reveal business opportunities

Roccibella admitted that her growing community (she’s added over 2.6M followers to her Facebook Page over the last 12 months, a 34% growth year-over-year) has also resulted in business opportunities. “Lots of brands reach out to me to collaborate and it’s all been really positive,” she said.

The result of some of these collaborations appear on her Facebook Shop, where she curates her favorite beauty products.

When Facebook Live adds Featured Links, she said, she’ll leverage them to drive her audience to her favorite beauty blogs, fashion articles and to some of the causes near and dear to her heart. The new feature enables creators to share multiple third party links to things they care about (e.g. tipping, donations, merch) in the Live player.