Want a cool interactive "push to play" facebook "photo" on your business page that works on mobiles like a live photo? Take a look at this example below.
If you are viewing via a mobile device, then you can actually hold the image down to make it play a short video. It's a novelty and people want to see if it works.
What You're Actually Doing
This is technically a photo. It actually leverages the same technology as the "live" photos on your phone.
You're essentially stuffing together a live photo by putting a video inside a live photo and then giving it a custom first frame, then extending the duration way past what your normal live photos should be. A hack in a way, I guess. None of this is interesting though, other than to a maybe a few.
How To Do It
The video below shows you the steps after you have made your "hidden video" as well as the custom first frame (what is essentially the "push to play" image). Please note these steps are for apple devices. It's likely possible on android using another app called "video live wallpaper", but I have not tested this.
The app is called "live into pro" here: https://itunes.apple.com/…/intolive-live-wall…/id1061859052…
It's actually designed to make cool wallpapers.
It's important to remember that you must use the facebook app on your phone to upload the photo. It will not work with facebook pages app (or anything else). It's really designed for personal photos on your own timeline, there's no support for it in the business app. This is one of the things that makes it so cool, it's unusual to see, a gimmick.
When you have uploaded it, you must ensure you enable the live part. By default it's disabled.
This will also only work on mobiles. On desktop computers it will look static, so making the cover photo meaningful to both can be tricky.
The video doesn't cover making the video, importing sound/music, making the cover photo etc.
There's so many different apps to make video and images that there's no right way.
Things You Need to Know
I made the movie using windows movie maker. This is now un-supported and microsoft nolonger releases the windows essential bundle it comes with. There's tonnes of other movie making software programs though, check then out here: https://www.techradar.com/…/the-best-free-windows-movie-mak…
There are so many different ways to make the movie and first frame, but the important things to know are:
Make the video a max of 30 seconds. There's a limit to how much you can stuff inside a live photo and also how much the app can save out. So keep it to a maximum of 30 seconds.
The custom front frame must clearly explain that they need to push and hold the image for it to work. This is what will appeal to people "does it actually work? For real?!".
The custom front image and the video must be the same size. You'll get weird black edges and cropped stuff if they do not match. I found making the video in HD 1920x1080 and the first frame the same size worked perfectly.
When you are making a slide show instead of a real video, take the time to resize the photos first, before you import them into your movie making software so that there are no strange black boundary edges.
You need the video and custom front image on your phone. So if you make it on a PC you'll need to email it to yourself and save it using your phone.
It's quite a bit of effort, but the engagement is really good and it brings some real ORGANIC boost.