How to Share a YouTube Live Stream on Facebook

Getting more viewers for your YouTube Live stream often means looking beyond YouTube itself. Sharing your stream on Facebook is a powerful way to tap into a different audience and funnel them over to your content. This guide will walk you through exactly how to share your YouTube Live stream on Facebook, from the simplest methods to more advanced strategies that will help you maximize your reach.

Why Share Your YouTube Live Stream on Facebook?

Before we get into the "how," let's quickly cover the "why." Cross-promoting your live stream is not just extra work, it's a strategic move to grow your audience and brand. Facebook has a different user base and a completely different discovery algorithm than YouTube. By sharing your stream there, you can:

• Reach a Wider Audience: Your Facebook followers might not be subscribed to you on YouTube yet. This is your chance to introduce them to your video content and convert them into subscribers.
• Leverage Different Networks: People who follow your Facebook Page are often more personally connected to your brand or journey. Tapping into that community can bring highly engaged viewers to your stream.
• Boost Initial Viewership: The first few minutes of a live stream are vital. Driving a wave of traffic from Facebook right as you go live signals to the YouTube algorithm that your content is valuable, potentially increasing its visibility to new viewers on YouTube itself.
• Build a Multi-Platform Brand: A strong digital presence isn't built on a single platform. Consistently appearing on both Facebook and YouTube reinforces your brand and makes you more visible to your target audience, no matter where they spend their time.

Method 1: Manually Sharing Your Stream Link (Before Going Live)

This is the most direct and common way to get your YouTube stream in front of your Facebook audience. The idea is to schedule your YouTube Live in advance, grab the shareable link, and use it to create announcement posts on Facebook. Planning ahead is the key to making this method work.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Schedule Your Live Stream on YouTube: Inside YouTube Studio, click the “Create” button in the top-right corner and select “Go live.” Instead of starting immediately, choose the “Schedule stream” option. Fill out all the details: a compelling title, a keyword-rich description, and a custom thumbnail. Picking a date and time in the future creates a placeholder page for your stream.
2. Get the Shareable Link: Once your stream is scheduled, you'll be taken to the YouTube Live Control Room. In the top-right corner, you’ll see a share icon (an arrow). Click it, and you'll get a direct, permanent link to your upcoming live stream. Copy this link.
3. Draft Your Facebook Post: Head over to your Facebook Page, Group, or profile. Start creating a new post and paste the YouTube link directly into the text box. Facebook will automatically generate a preview of your video, usually pulling the thumbnail, title, and description from YouTube.
4. Write a Compelling Caption: Don't just paste the link and hit publish! The text you write around the link is what will convince people to click. Tell them why they should watch. What problem will you solve? What will they learn? Who are your special guests?

Best Practices for Your Facebook Announcement Post:

• Ask a Question: Start your caption with a question related to your stream's topic to spark engagement. For example, "Struggling to grow your audience on TikTok? We're going live in one hour to break down the exact strategies we used to gain 10,000 followers in 30 days."
• State the Value Clearly: Use bullet points to highlight the key topics you'll be covering. People are more likely to commit their time if they know exactly what they're getting.
• Use a Strong Call-to-Action (CTA): Tell your audience what to do next. "Join us live at 3 PM EST!" or "Click the link and hit the 'Set Reminder' button so you don't miss it!"
• Create a Custom Graphic: While the YouTube link preview is good, a custom graphic designed for Facebook (sized at 1200x630 pixels) often performs better. It looks more professional and stops the scroll. Include the stream title, your face, your guest's face, and the date/time. You can then paste the YouTube link as the first comment to keep the post clean.

Method 2: Sharing While Your Stream is Active

Sometimes you decide to go live spontaneously, or maybe you just want to give your Facebook audience an extra nudge once the stream is already rolling. Sharing while you're live is all about creating a sense of urgency.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Go Live on YouTube: Start your stream as you normally would.
2. Grab the Live Link: Once your stream is active, you can find the shareable link in a couple of ways. The easiest is to open your own stream page in a separate browser tab, click the “Share” button directly below the video player, and copy the link.
3. Post Immediately on Facebook: With the link copied, quickly jump over to Facebook. This time, your caption should reflect immediacy and excitement. Instead of saying "We're going live later," your message is "We're LIVE RIGHT NOW!"

Pro Tips for Sharing While Live:

• Have a Moderator or Team Member Help: Trying to manage a live stream while also sharing links can be distracting. If possible, have a teammate or a virtual assistant handle the cross-promotion as soon as you go live. Their job is to post the link on Facebook, in relevant groups, and even other platforms like X (formerly Twitter).
• Use Facebook Stories: Facebook Stories are perfect for in-the-moment announcements. Post a quick vertical video of yourself talking to the camera, telling people you're live and what you're discussing. Use the "Link" sticker to add a direct link to the YouTube stream. This is often more effective than a feed post for grabbing immediate attention.
• Pin the Post: On your Facebook Page, pin the announcement post to the top of your feed. This ensures that anyone who visits your page while you're live will see it first.

Method 3: The Advanced Strategy - Simulcasting

While the previous methods focus on sending Facebook traffic to YouTube, simulcasting (or multistreaming) is a different approach altogether. It involves broadcasting your live video to both YouTube and Facebook at the same time. Instead of choosing one platform, you meet your audience on both.

This method requires third-party software, as you can't natively stream to both platforms from YouTube or Facebook alone. Popular and user-friendly tools for this include:

• StreamYard: A browser-based streaming studio that makes it incredibly easy to go live on multiple platforms, add branding, invite guests, and manage comments from one central dashboard.
• Restream: Another powerful tool dedicated to multistreaming. Restream allows you to broadcast to over 30 platforms simultaneously and offers features to unify your cross-platform chat.
• OBS Studio with a Plugin: For those who prefer a free, open-source solution, OBS Studio is fantastic. By itself, it can only stream to one destination, but with the "Multiple RTMP Outputs" plugin, you can send your stream to YouTube, Facebook, and more. This method is more technical but offers total creative control.

Pros and Cons of Simulcasting

Pros:

• Maximum Reach: You are live where your audience is, which can dramatically increase your total live viewership.
• Content Repurposing Built-In: After the stream ends, you have a native video already uploaded to both YouTube and Facebook, ready to be viewed as a replay.

Cons:

• Fragmented Engagement: Your viewers on YouTube can't see the comments from Facebook, and vice versa. This can make it feel like two separate conversations are happening. While tools like StreamYard and Restream combat this by pulling all comments into a unified feed for you to see, your audience remains siloed.
• Potentially Lower Quality: Streaming to multiple destinations requires more upload bandwidth from your internet connection. A weak connection can lead to a lower-quality stream on all platforms.
• Algorithmic Considerations: Some creators believe that platforms (especially YouTube) may not promote a simulcasted stream as heavily as a native-only stream, as the goal of the algorithm is to keep users on its own platform.

Final Thoughts

Promoting your YouTube live stream on Facebook is a straightforward tactic that significantly expands your potential audience. Whether you schedule your streams and build hype with announcement posts or prefer the urgent "we're live now" approach, consistent cross-promotion will drive new viewers to your channel and help you grow a stronger, multi-platform brand.

While you're planning your next big live stream, keeping all your promotional content organized can be a headache. That's why we built Postbase with a visual calendar to help you schedule out all your announcement posts for Facebook, Instagram, and more in advance. You can plan your entire promotional campaign - from teasers to 'going live' announcements - in one place, so you can focus on creating an amazing stream for your audience.