Facebook Live coverage of flats being demolished in Blackpool scored 445,000 views for the Johnston Press North West digital media team and became an “international event” .
The video of Layton Flats being demolished in Blackpool on Sunday reached a total of more than 1.2m people through the Blackpool Gazette Facebook page.
The video broke records for the newspaper group 17,000 likes, 10,000 comments and 7,000 shares in just over 36 hours.
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Digital editor Colin Ainscough and reporter Danielle Hayden filmed the day in sections, from the build-up to the clean-up, and included live interviews with watching residents.
North West social media editor Iain Lynn said: “It was a huge team effort which was weeks in planning. The live broadcast exceeded all our expectations and shows the power of Facebook Live”
“This story was the talk of the town – but by exploiting all our social media tools in conjunction with our more traditional products, we turned it into an international occasion with viewers watching from across Europe and Australia, and even someone watching from their yacht in the Bahamas.
“We achieved an incredible level of interaction with our readers, and viewers, with many returning to the site to thank us for for providing such a comprehensive service.
“From a multi-technique approach we can learn what works best and what our readers want, enabling us to deliver much more of this targeted content”
The Gazette’s Facebook page grew by 2,000 page likes over the weekend.
Facebook Live is subject to a Facebook algorithm that sees live video content promoted above video that is no longer live in the News Feed, which itself uses a ranking system to show users content deemed most valuable to them.
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