With a phone in everyone’s pocket that offers a video camera and a live-streaming app, everyone is just a few steps away from launching their own live daily talk show on Facebook Live, YouTube, Snapchat or Twitter.

On one end of the spectrum is a a tattoo artist who takes suggestions from commenters and tattoos those on willing participants while streaming the whole event on Facebook Live. On the other end is Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live, which spent a week streaming live aftershows with host Andy Cohen and his guests on different livestreaming platforms just to see what worked.

But livestreaming is yet another area where social media has become the great equalizer. An area that used to be the exclusive purview of television networks and TV stations is now available to everyone. And while you can offer a perfectly reasonable livestream with just your phone, there are some tips and tricks that will turn you from livestreaming dabbler into pro.

Kelly Michelena, production partnerships lead at Facebook, offered some common-sense ideas on how to get the most of your livestream during a panel at PromaxBDA: The Conference on Wednesday in Los Angeles.

On the mildly technical side, make sure you have a strong connection and that you turn airplane mode on, which will allow you to still stream over wi-fi but will prevent incoming phone calls from interrupting your livestream.

Even though the event is going to be streamed live, it doesn’t mean you should go in unprepared, she said. Have a general script and optimize the title of your program to entice people to come watch.

And finally, take some time to let people know about it. Pre-promote your event and while it’s happening, engage directly with fans. That might require having a friend manage the comments while you’re having your moment in the spotlight, but it doesn’t make sense to host a live event on a social platform and then ignore people who are trying to interact with you.

In terms of your basic set-up, there a few items you can add that will improve your production quality exponentially. These – all of which are available on Amazon – include a small tripod, an external light, an external microphone and adapter, an extra lens and a wide-angle lens.

Finally, set up your production correctly: Your video camera – whether it’s external or on your phone and whether it includes an external microphone or not – should be output to an encoder, which connects directly using RTMP (real-time messaging protocol) over the internet to a laptop logged into the Facebook page where you are serving up the livestream.

Once you’ve got your livestreaming production studio set up, you are ready to start experimenting. You could do something as simple as training your mobile-phone camera on yourself while you are getting a tattoo and screaming like a little girl, or you could do something more complex like Super Deluxe did in the video above. (Who knew 45 minutes of a tortoise “racing” a hare would prove so popular?)

Or you could be like Clevver and produce do-it-yourself aftershows about your favorite TV programs. http://www.clevver.com/

Currently, Joslyn Davis is hosting and executive producing True Showmance, an aftershow sponsored by Secret that focuses on ABC’s The Bachelorette and airs on Facebook Live.

“Our success up to this point has been on YouTube, not on live platforms,” says Davis. “This for us is still in the experimenting stages.”

One of the big advantages of livestreaming is the ability to connect to and engage with the fans, Davis said. “It’s been really fun to interact with them. Some people who aren’t watching The Bachelorette are now watching it just because they want to engage with us. We have gone live on Facebook frequently. Our most successful ever Facebook livestream was from Coachella with one of our hosts getting her make up done like a unicorn.”

The whole beauty of live is that it almost does better the less produced it is.

“We did a live Top Chef aftershow that was sponsored by Lays,” says Ellen Stone, executive vice president of marketing for Bravo and Oxygen Media. “[Top Chef host] Padma [Lakshmi] didn’t feel as comfortable because we couldn’t rehearse it and couldn’t cut it. But that was endearing to the fan base. Those things are so much better on a live platform.”

Fans’ attraction to live shows boils down to their desire to connect to the thing they love as often as possible.

“We as human beings just want to connect with each other,” says Davis. “With a show like Real Housewives, for example, fans are looking for anything to hold on to. Our staff and our hosts are all fans of these shows too, and that has to be authentic so you know what your audience is going to react to.”

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