By Amanda Smith
Summary: In case you haven’t noticed, social media live streaming is quickly gaining momentum. But how can you use it to revolutionize your marketing strategy?
Social media streaming has made its shift from a trend to necessity. An increasing number of brands are adjusting their social media strategies accordingly. Audiences like live videos and the reasons are very evident. Live streaming, in general, adds a human touch to live videos that traditional videos or images can’t compete with.
In this blog, we have put together how to use live streaming in your social media strategy by creating a step by step plan that details how to execute the strategy.
Step 1: Determine your live streaming needs
Even before you start thinking about live streaming, the first thing you need to ask yourself is why you want to live stream? Find the real inspiration behind your decision to live stream. Is it because you want to gain new followers? Do you want to increase the engagement of your viewers? Or do you want to increase your sales? Understanding your specific broadcasting needs will help you to choose the type of live streaming setup you need for the best results.
Step 2: Create a live streaming strategy
To begin your successful journey towards live streaming, create a live streaming strategy that compliments your business. Just like a content strategy or a social media strategy, you must have a unique offering like a theme. For example, if you are a local clothing brand, you can live stream your customer reactions to new designs right in your shop. Whatever business you are doing, choose a strategy that goes along with your business goals. Give your audience something that they want more and more from you as a brand.
Step 3: Get the right live streaming setup
The next important step is to learn how to set up live streaming video. Streaming from your mobile phone is simple, but the quality won’t be that great. If you are serious about using live streaming for the benefit of your business, you are going to need a few essential pieces of equipment. Let’s explore the essentials you need to create the best quality live videos. Invest in a high-quality webcam or a DSLR that captures and streams clear HD videos for more polished looking live streams.
Choose a dedicated video camera designed for long term use, but it is not wise to spend a lot of money on high-quality camera if you don’t plan to use it frequently. It is recommended to choose a camera that can broadcast your live streams, indoor blogs, and smaller events. To stream big events in large venues, you will need a multi-camera setup to capture live video from different angles. Whether you are planning to use a smartphone to stream or to use a camera setup, it really helps if you invest in a tripod to stream hands-free.
Microphone
A pro tip would be not to rely on the audio from the camera if you don’t want to compromise on the audio quality. After video quality, audio quality is the most important and overlooked aspect of live videos. You can use condenser mics as they don’t capture much background noise. Alternatively, you can also use clip-in lapel mics if you are streaming events where there are a lot of distractions.
Audio mixer
Producing good quality live videos is impossible when the audio quality is not up to the standards. In a simple setup, you just need an external audio source connected to your camera. However, if you are using multiple cameras and several audio sources, you need an audio mixer to convert audio to digital form to broadcast, the audio mixer also helps to have control over the audio tones and volume of all the audio sources.
High-speed and stable Internet connection
For broadcasting live videos, you will need a secure and high-speed internet connection that’s both fast and secure. Connecting to a common internet connection used by others is not a good idea as it would slow down your live streams. The best way would be to use a WI-FI router that provides stable Internet connection throughout your stream.
Live streaming software
The live streaming software is the secret to create live videos that look and feel professional. Good software allows you to control audio and video settings, add multiple video and sources, integrate transition effect, and to live stream to multiple platforms simultaneously. If you are on a tight budget, choose software that features a built-in encoder so that you can save on purchasing a separate encoder to stream to different qualities.
Step 4: Choose the Live streaming platform
Once you know how to set up live streaming video, the very next step is to choose the best live streaming platform to broadcast live to your audience. There are a lot of social media platforms that allow you to live stream and every platform comes with its own advantages and disadvantages. Facebook Live and Instagram Live are the two biggest live streaming platforms followed by Periscope.
In this section, let’s discuss a few live streaming platforms.
Facebook live
Facebook is arguably the most popular live streaming platform with many advanced features to make your streaming easy. Broadcasting live on Facebook Live is as simple as clicking ” the “go live” option. You can modify the privacy settings to customize your live videos to publicize or set your exposure to private.
Instagram Live
Instagram is another live streaming platform that has amazing features to grow your audience. Instagram live works similar to Instagram stories that last up to 24 hours. Instagram Live works like a normal live streaming service, but the only difference is that it is greatly optimized for mobile devices.
To start a live stream on Instagram, you just have to swipe right on your feed to start the camera. Once the camera opens, you can adjust your camera settings and tap on “start live video” to begin streaming.
YouTube live
YouTube is one of the platforms that revolutionized the way people watch videos online. YouTube has a live streaming function called YouTube live that is both available on desktops and mobile phones. You can choose the ” Go live” option to start streaming live on YouTube and fill in the title and modify the privacy setting.
Periscope
Periscope is Twitter’s live streaming platform that allows you to share live streams directly from your desktop or smartphone. Earlier it was required to have a Twitter account to live stream, but now you can use either Google account or Facebook account to live stream. Periscope Live either can be public or private based on your preferences.
Step 5: Start your live broadcast
When you are ready to broadcast live, choose your live streaming platform and go live. Depending on your target audience, you might have to choose one platform over another or consider live streaming to many locations at once. Diversifying your platforms is a great way to reach potential customers on multiple channels. Advertising in advance will help you drive in more viewers to your live streams.
To gain a regular and reliable audience to return back to watch you, stream entertaining content to engage and build a user base. The longer you are live, the more time your viewers will have to discover your videos and engage with it. Each live streaming platform recommends the minimum time you need to stream to gain more viewership. For example, Facebook says, you have to broadcast for a minimum of ten minutes to gain user attention.
Add a catchy title and description that will make it easy for your audience to find your video in search. The description is especially important as it will appear along with the video in your timeline and when the video shows up in user feeds.
Step 6: Do this after your live stream
Once you are done live streaming, you can repurpose your live content later. Share your live video link to your feed so that your users get an opportunity to view your live streams even long after the real broadcast. Alternatively, you can also repurpose your live streams to podcasts so that people can listen to your content while on the go.
After live streaming, capture metrics, if you can, to know how well your live videos performed. This is one of the best things about social media live streaming. It allows you to plan and track the performance of your live videos in a single platform. If you want a deeper analysis, pick a live streaming platform based on the analytic tools it provides.
Conclusion
Live streaming is an efficient marketing tool to reach a broad audience, spread your brand message, and build a personal relationship with your customers. If you are just starting out, don’t expect to get a huge amount of audience right away, but as you get confident with live streaming, you will gain more traction. Always focus on creating interesting, informative, and engaging content to keep your viewers on their toes. Do you have any tips on streaming the best quality social media live videos? If yes, do share it with us in the comment section below.