In early March 2020, faced with lockdown, we stopped all face-to-face activities and moved our delivery online. We delivered our first Facebook Live session in week two of lockdown and we’ve run two a week since then, with a mix of singing and signing and sensory music. The videos stay on our Facebook page afterwards and we upload them to our YouTube channel too, so young people who can’t access Facebook can still watch them. They’ve been viewed over 10,000 times in the past 5 months!
Here are our top tips for creating engagement and building a community online:
- Spend a few minutes at the start of each session to give everyone time to get online and say hello, in the same way that you’d wait for people to arrive before starting a face-to-face session (this feels a bit odd to start with, as you’re essentially talking to yourself, but you get used to it!).
- Facebook tells you how many are watching the live session but doesn’t tell you who they are. Remind people to let you know they’re watching by using comments – you can then give them a shout out.
- Build in opportunities for young people to have a say in the session. Our session warm-ups often end up hilarious, thanks to the suggestions that come in via the comments!
- We weren’t sure how much use our young people would make of the comments function but we’re averaging 70 – 150 comments a session – some by the young people, some by parents who watch with them. We’ve loved seeing a new online community grow, with lots of positive (and funny!) chat between young people who didn’t all know each other before lockdown.
- Remember that a lot of people might not watch the session live, but catch up afterwards. Keep an eye on the comments/messages, in case they comment while they’re watching.
- Routine and consistency are important for young people with SEN/D so we run our Facebook Live sessions at the same time every week.
- We’ve found it really helpful to have additional team members available during Facebook Live sessions. One moderates and replies to comments and another’s on hand to call participants who are struggling to get online and talk them through how to find the live session. We also email out the direct link to our live videos channel on Facebook.
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