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When people think of livestreaming they often picture the occasional shaky cell phone video of a toddler dancing poorly on a stage. The truth is that the internet has drastically evolved since then, and now there are ways to monetize your videos without much hassle or time investment, even if you’re not ready for prime time just yet. Livestreaming can be used as an effective tool for building up an audience over time with content that will attract viewers.
How to use livestreaming for business?
Before live streaming can become a valuable tool in your business, it’s important to know how to integrate it into your social media strategy. It is intimidating, but the more you use livestreaming and become comfortable with it, the more natural and easy it will become. Here are a few tips for getting started:
1. Plan ahead – Before you get started, plan out your content and be sure you have everything set up in advance before you start your stream. You don’t want to be rushed or miss any opportunities that may arise because you weren’t prepared.
2. Be interactive – You don’t want to just talk at your viewers, you want to engage them and have a conversation. Ask questions and respond to people who are commenting on the stream.
3. Keep it visual – If you don’t have a webcam capable of livestreaming, you can get a USB camera that clips onto your computer screen for around $20. Webcams can also be found for much less than this, but are usually not as high quality.
4. Don’t forget people watching on video – Be aware that while you want to live stream as much as possible, doing a video stream is also important. This allows people to watch the whole thing or get a look at your workspace if you’re using a webcam with sound.
5. Set up your website so that viewers can find it easily – You don’t want them searching around for your website, which could be hard to find and does not give you the chance to properly advertise it and present yourself in an organized manner. You can use social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter and include your livestreaming link in your posts there, letting people link back to where they found out about it.
6. Use a scheduling tool – If you have to frequently broadcast, it’s best to use a program that allows you to schedule when you want to do your next broadcast. This way, your Livestream will be scheduled for the day/time that works best for people, rather than just whenever it works for you so that is does not interfere with business.
7. Know your points of view – This can be used for both a live broadcast or as part of your YouTube channel. It might be helpful to choose a particular angle of the screen or at least a section on the screen from which you are broadcasting from so that viewers can get an idea of what they are seeing and what they’ll be hearing while watching.
8. Share your Livestream with people – This is a great way of promoting it and drumming up interest in your business. People will share things that catch their attention, so by showing others what you are doing, they may take notice and schedule a viewing for themselves at some point.
9. Plan out your content and create an editorial calendar – This way, you can ensure that no one sees the same video or article twice, or views it before it has had time to rundown on their feed. It also ensures that you have content for live events or streams where you will have empty space that needs to be filled and don’t want people to see something off-screen while you wait for things to get started.
10. Don’t be afraid to experiment and play around – This can help you learn the ins and outs of livestreaming, how to edit your videos, how to make them look better, and what is working best for getting viewers. The more you know about all of it, the more creative you can be in using it as a tool in your business.
11. Get some extra viewers – This can help you get extra exposure and exposure to your new stream. You can use a tool like Crowdfire or Livefyre to find people who are interested in your stream and mention them on Twitter as a way of promoting the fact that you are live streaming.
12. Create a YouTube channel – This will allow you to put promotional clips from live streams onto your YouTube page, which could be beneficial for building an audience for your videos. When this is set up, it is something that will allow people to come back because they want to see what happens next or what happened before.
13. Get a Facebook page – By having a page, you can promote your broadcasts on it or have viewers follow you on your personal account. This is useful if you want to get people to come to your website or social media account, which they can do by clicking a link in the post.
14. Use RSS feeds – Some tools will even pick up the feed of your Livestream and add it directly to their own websites so that people can find out more about what you are doing online and connect with you through search engines like Google.
15. Track the data – If you are using a program to schedule your streams, this would be the best way to track who is coming back for what, what people are watching, how long they watch and why, who is not replying to you or asking questions, and other statistics. This can help guide your marketing strategy so that you don’t get distracted from tactics that are working well.
16. Use social media – Live streaming allows you to interact with people in real-time as well as using Twitter in a very visual way like taking questions from viewers on the fly and sharing things that appeal to them.