How to Post a Live Facebook Video on Twitter

Finishing a great Facebook Live session feels fantastic, but that feeling fades quickly when you realize your Twitter audience missed the entire thing. You can't just share the link and expect results. This guide will walk you through exactly how to properly post your Facebook Live videos on Twitter, step by step, so you can maximize your reach and get more mileage out of every piece of content you create.

First, The Hard Truth: Why You Can't Directly Share a Facebook Live Video to Twitter

Let's get this out of the way first. Facebook and Twitter (now known as X) are separate platforms, and they don't play nicely together when it comes to video. Simply copying the link to your Facebook Live and pasting it into a Tweet is one of the worst things you can do for engagement. Here’s why:

• No Native Playback: Twitter's algorithm prioritizes content that keeps users on Twitter. A link to a Facebook video does the opposite. It appears as a plain URL, sometimes with a generic preview image, that forces users to click away to a different app. Most people just won't do it.
• Poor User Experience: Social media users crave a frictionless experience. They want to scroll and watch, not click, wait for a new app to load, and then watch. Adding extra steps creates a huge drop-off.
• The Goal Is Native Video: For your video to perform well, it needs to be uploaded directly to Twitter. This allows it to autoplay in the feed, capture attention, and get boosted by an algorithm that favors native media.

So, the challenge isn't simply "sharing" your video, it's about repurposing it in a smart way. The good news is, it's a straightforward process once you know the steps.

The Winning Three-Step Strategy: Download, Optimize, and Upload

The best way to get your Facebook Live content onto Twitter is through a simple, yet powerful, three-step process. This method puts you in complete control and sets your video up for success on a completely different platform.

1. Download Your Video: The first step is to get the original video file from Facebook and save it to your computer.
2. Optimize for Twitter: This is the most important step. You'll need to trim your video for length, reformat it for a vertical feed, and add captions to grab attention.
3. Upload Natively: Finally, you’ll upload your optimized clip directly to Twitter with a compelling caption and relevant hashtags.

Think of it less as a copy-paste job and more as translating your content for a new audience. Let’s break down how to do each step.

Step 1: How to Download Your Facebook Live Video

Getting your video file from Facebook is surprisingly simple once you know where to look. You can only do this after your live broadcast has ended and is available as a replay. The easiest way to do this is on a desktop computer.

Here’s the process for a Facebook Business Page:

1. Navigate to Your Page: Go to the Facebook Page where you hosted the Live video.
2. Find Your Content Hub: On the left-hand menu of your Page, look for "Meta Business Suite." Click it. Once inside the Business Suite, navigate to the "Content" section.
3. Locate Your Video: In the Content tab, you will see a list of all your published posts. Find the finished Live video in the list. You can filter by post type if you have a lot of content to sort through.
4. Initiate the Download: Click the three dots (...) next to your video post to open a menu of options. From this menu, you should see an option that says "Download video" or "Download HD." If available, always choose the highest quality option (usually HD).

The video will download to your computer as an .MP4 file. Now you have the raw material you need for the most important part of the process: optimization.

If you went live from a personal profile, the process is similar. Find the video on your timeline, click the three-dot menu on the post itself, and you should see the download option there.

Step 2: How to Optimize Your Video for Maximum Impact on Twitter

A 20-minute, horizontal Facebook Live video is not going to work on Twitter's fast-paced, vertical feed. To get views, clicks, and engagement, you need to adapt your video. This is where you transform a long livestream replay into a bite-sized, attention-grabbing clip designed specifically for Twitter.

Trim Your Video for Brevity and Punch

Twitter is about quick hits of information. Users are scrolling fast. Organic videos are limited to 2 minutes and 20 seconds (140 seconds). Your goal isn’t to post the entire livestream, but to pull out the single most valuable moment.

• Hunt for the "Golden Nugget": Scour through your downloaded video and find the most impactful 30-90 second segment. Look for a powerful quote, a key takeaway, a surprising statistic, a funny moment, or the answer to a frequently asked question.
• Start Strong: Don't waste time with fluffy introductions. Cut straight to the action. The first three seconds are everything.

Simple Tools for Trimming: You don't need to be a professional video editor. Simple tools work perfectly for this.

• Built-in Editors: Both MacOS (QuickTime) and Windows (Photos or Video Editor apps) have basic, free trimming tools.
• Web-Based Tools: Free tools like Clipchamp (which comes with Windows 11) or Canva's video editor make it easy to upload, trim, and download a clip without installing complex software.
• Mobile Apps: Apps like CapCut are incredibly powerful and available on your phone if you prefer to edit there.

Reformat for a Vertical Feed

Most Facebook Lives are filmed in a horizontal (16:9) format. But more than 80% of Twitter users are on mobile, where a vertical format dominates the screen. Cropping your video to a square (1:1) or vertical (4:5 or 9:16) aspect ratio will instantly make it more visible and engaging in the feed.

When you're editing your trimmed clip, simply change the project's aspect ratio. If cropping cuts out important information, you can place your horizontal video clip inside a vertical frame and add a text headline above or below it.

Add "Burned-In" Captions (Non-Negotiable)

This is perhaps the single most important optimization you can make. The vast majority of social media videos are watched with the sound off. If your video doesn't have open captions (captions that are permanently part of the video image), most people will just scroll right past it.

• Accessibility and Engagement: Captions make your content accessible to everyone, including those who are deaf or hard of hearing, and allow people to understand your message in any environment - whether they're in a quiet office or a loud subway.
• How to Add Captions: Manually transcribing can be tedious. Use tools that can auto-generate them for you. Services like CapCut, Descript, Kapwing, and even Adobe Premiere Pro have excellent auto-captioning features that do most of the work. Just remember to proofread them for accuracy before exporting your final video.

Step 3: How to Upload and Post Your Optimized Video to Twitter

Once you have your trimmed, reformatted, and captioned video clip saved as an .MP4 file, you’re ready for the final step. Here’s how to post it natively on Twitter for the best results.

1. Compose a New Tweet: Go to Twitter (X.com) on your desktop or open the mobile app. Click the "Tweet" or "+" button to start a new post.
2. Attach Your Video: Click the media icon (it looks like a small picture of mountains). This will open your file explorer. Select the optimized video file you just created. The video will take a moment to upload and process.
3. Write a Compelling Caption (the Tweet Itself): Your text is just as important as the video. It provides the context and hooks a user in before they even press play (or before autoplay kicks in).
   • Bad example: "Check out this clip from my livestream!"
   • Good example: "I see brands making this marketing mistake all the time. Here's a 60-second clip from my live event explaining how to fix it."
4. Add 2-3 Relevant Hashtags: Hashtags help with discoverability. Don't use spammy or generic tags. Instead, choose two or three specific hashtags relevant to your topic and industry. For example, use #SocialMediaTips or #ContentMarketing instead of #Business.
5. Tag People if Relevant: If you mentioned another person or brand in your clip, tag their Twitter handle in the tweet. This can increase reach if they engage with your post.
6. Post or Schedule: You can either hit "Tweet" to send it live immediately or use Twitter's built-in scheduling feature to post it at a time when your audience is most active.

Bonus Tip: Build a Content Engine

Don't stop at one clip. Your single Facebook Live broadcast is a goldmine of content waiting to be unleashed. Slicing up one 30-minute livestream can give you:

• 5-10 video clips for Twitter, Instagram Reels, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts.
• Several quote graphics for your Instagram feed or LinkedIn.
• A full blog post based on a transcript of the live session.
• An audio track you can use for a podcast episode or short audiograms.

By treating your livestream as the starting point of a larger content strategy, you turn a single hour of work into a full week’s worth of high-quality, targeted content across all your platforms.

Final Thoughts

Sharing your Facebook Live video on Twitter requires a few extra steps, but the payoff is enormous. By downloading your replay, strategically optimizing short clips for a mobile-first audience, and uploading them natively, you breathe new life into your content and connect with thousands of people who otherwise would have missed it.

Creating great pillar content and repurposing it across different platforms is a brilliant strategy, but it can quickly become chaotic to manage dozens of individual clips and posts. We actually built Postbase to solve this exact headache. Our visual calendar lets you easily map out all your repurposed video content across Twitter, TikTok, Reels, and more, all from a single dashboard. Because our platform is built from the ground up for video formats, you can upload once and schedule everywhere, making a sophisticated repurposing an organized, repeatable process instead of a mess.