Live streams are quickly taking over our social feeds, with most platforms now notifying you if someone you follow has gone live. On top of this, the accessibility and affordability of live streaming platforms are meaning that an increasing number of businesses, influencers, and individuals are using live video across their sites to generate traffic and boost revenue.
Live video, quite simply, is the way forward when it comes to deciding which types of media to integrate into your online marketing campaigns. Why? It’s no longer expensive or difficult to break into – all you really need is a smartphone and a reliable internet connection to go live to a huge audience at a reasonable quality.
To help you take advantage of all that live video has to offer marketers, here is a simple guide on incorporating this type of video into your existing strategies in a professional and effective way.
Live events or launches
The first step to seamlessly integrating live video into your existing online campaigns is to know how to record a streaming video. Sites such as https://www.agora.io/en/blog/how-to-record-streaming-video/ can help you with this if you’ve never done it before. Once you’ve got the hang of it, you then need to learn when to use it as a marketing tool. Live video lends itself perfectly to broadcasting brand events, whether you’re showcasing a new product release, offering a new service, collaborating with another brand or breaking into a new industry. Whatever it is you’re hosting an event for, it’s likely that your audience will want to tune in and engage with it in real-time.
For example, let’s say you run a financial advisor business. You might have used a company such as LeadJig to help you set up and market a financial seminar to generate new leads. If you want to extend the reach of your even to the audiences that weren’t able to make it, then offering your live events both physically and virtually opens you up to a much wider audience. Plus, if you market it right, then it will allow you to build anticipation through promotion in the run-up to the date and time of going live. There is something more engaging and thrilling about tuning in to a live video and event rather than watching a pre-recorded video of an event that’s already taken place. Of course, there is no room for editing live videos so you will need to do plenty of planning and trialing before the big day, but the level of engagement and the shareability of your streams makes the planning stage entirely worth your time and money.
If your brand is considering starting to incorporate live streaming into your marketing strategies, you will need to work with a reliable and professional platform and not settle for the free live video features you see on social media. With Zidivo, you pay an affordable monthly fee in exchange for a huge range of live streaming and video hosting features which allow you to go live on as many web-pages as required using branded HTML5 players. What’s more, you maintain all the rights to your content and can use data to analyse how successful your live streams have been in terms of viewers and engagement.
Interview series
Another way to use live streaming in your online campaigns is to start some kind of regular series, where you go live on a certain day and time either weekly or monthly depending on the resources you have available. Having a dedicated series of live streams connects you with your audience and gives you a consistent point of contact, as your target consumers will eventually know exactly when and where they can tune into a live video from your brand.
One example of a live stream series is to carry out interviews, where you can feature experts from your industry, employees, or even customers and discuss a range of valuable and educational topics. If you’re venturing into social media for the first time, you can also reach out to well-established agencies like Unruly (unrulyagency.com) or similar others to provide you with influencers who can hold live streams for you and share your product or service with their followers. Moreover, it’s important not to consider every live stream you do as a means to boost sales, as this will only end up harming the relationship between your brand and your audience. Instead, use things like a regular series or discussion to show your audience that you’re not just there to generate sales and actually want to offer useful resources and information. Over time, you will learn how to balance sales-focused live content with solely entertaining or educational content.
Behind-the-scenes or Q&A’s
One thing that we are all guilty of enjoying is behind-the-scenes views of a company or brand. We like seeing the bits that are usually hidden away or not spoken about, like people’s day-to-day lives, how products are made and the faces behind the brand. Live video is ideal for giving people just that – you can give tours of your offices or warehouses, follow a manager round for the day for a ‘day in the life’ and much more.
Q&A videos are another way to give your audience a more personal and less corporate insight into your brand. What’s more, they spark huge amounts of engagement with your audience hoping that their question will be answered live on air by an influencer or professional that they look up to. People respond well to authentic and honest brands and doing regular question and answer videos is the perfect way to appeal to this.
