Livestreaming is an amazing approach towards spreading brand awareness, promoting a product, or securing brand loyalty. In a way, you can use it to allow your users to get to know you a little better and create a more solid bond with them.
The best thing about live streaming is that it increases engagement, considering how you can use it to attend a particular event without having to leave your home. Basically, it’s your personal live television.
All of the major social networks have embraced the art of livestreaming, which opened up a whole new playing field for business owners.
So, if you want to take advantage of this technology, and boost traffic to your website or blog, here’s what you need to take into consideration.
Setting Up Your Livestream
A few years ago, you’d have to go through a lot of trouble to set up a quality livestream session.
Now, technology is far more sophisticated and there are more providers that offer free services, so it’s incredibly easy to broadcast your content. In case you are looking for providers that offer free streaming packages, you should look up Livestream or Ustream.
As far as equipment is concerned, the most important thing you need to have is a quality webcam.
You will obviously need a good internet connection, and it is recommended that you make a switch from Wifi to LAN, since the latter is far more reliable in terms of stability.
Another thing you should consider using is a content delivery network. It is in your best interest that your users or viewers have the best experience possible.
With a content delivery network, your livestream content will be uploaded to numerous servers, so the delay that occurs due to server proximity is strongly negated.
If there is no lag on your stream, users will likely stay and enjoy the show, so a more positive experience will be forged with CDN.
Web Hosting is another factor that can influence the quality of your stream. In fact, a good web hosting service should offer CDN as a part of its package. Server uptime is another component that is of crucial importance.
These days, convenience is what users want; if your stream or page in general takes too much time to load they will leave, and all of your efforts will be for nothing.
So, look into the reputation of the hosting service, see if they offer quality tech support and site backup. Once these criteria are met, you can proceed with organizing your livestream.
What to Livestream
Well, if you are going to have a live feed, you need to plan ahead what your stream will be about. It obviously needs to be something niche related, and something interesting at the same time.
Regardless of your line of work, there is always a tutorial for something that you can do and make it interesting.
For example, if you are selling some sort of beverage, you can livestream a DIY project that users can mimic.
In your DIY project, you can use bottles or bottle caps for your product and give them a reason not to throw it away.
Another thing that you can do is organize a livestream Q&A session where you will interact with your users and answer some of their questions that are either product related or personal.
You can have a live promotion of a new product and make it even more engaging with a live feed. Finally, you can use this opportunity to hold webinars, and have a Q&A session as part of the webinar.
Using Social Media
There are a couple of ways you can use social media profiles, to increase engagement during your streaming sessions, and to gain even more subscribers.
First of all, you can use your profiles to update the users, by telling them when you are going to hold a livestream session. This way, more people will be reminded, and you might even inspire interest in those who haven’t heard of you so far.
There is always an option to pay and boost your post, so that even more people will hear about you and attend the stream.
Lastly, minutes before your stream begins, you can share a link that leads to the livestream, so that anyone who sees it can jump in and join anytime.
Another way to use social media for streaming purposes is to use their own service. Twitter has “Periscope”, Facebook has also introduced a streaming feature, and YouTube has had it for quite some time.
Choose a network that has the greatest engagement rate and use it for streaming your content. If you opt for YouTube, it can even archive your video, so that it can be accessible later in the future, which is really great if you are making tutorials or how-to videos.
Work On Your Schedule
If there is one thing users love, it is punctuality and consistency. In other words, you should make a habit of livestreaming and determine a particular day of the week during which you will have your livestream sessions.
When you are deciding on a date, do not think that Friday or weekends are a good choice. People want to use that time to unwind and socialize, so they are highly unlikely to make time and prioritize your stream.
During Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, is the ideal time to have a stream. Make sure you hold it after work hours, around 6pm or 7 pm, when your viewers are at home. Since it’s in the middle of the week, your viewers are highly unlikely to have made plans for the night, so they will most likely see your feed.
Of course, if your target audience are teenagers or kids, then after school hours are a good time for the stream, or even during morning hours, before they go to school.
Think about these factors when you are trying to schedule your stream. Keeping your stream regular and on a weekly basis will help users form a habit of watching it, which helps maintain healthy traffic.
Work On Your Engagement Tactics
User experience has great impact on traffic, so if users are appreciated and entertained, they will keep coming back, and positive feedback will draw more people in.
In other words, the top priority is satisfying user experience, which means that you’ll have to show them that you care about them.
Answer as many questions as possible, and address as many comments as possible. As long as your viewers feel noticed and as long as they feel like they are participating, there is no reason for them not to come back.
Another thing you can do is organize some sort of contest during a stream, to incentivize participation.
If people have some benefit from following your livestream, they are more likely to do so. Additionally, you can ask a question and see who gives the best response or the correct answer. This is an amazing way to motivate viewers to participate and have a good time.
Learn From Your Mistakes
There is no exact formula what will work 100% as the best method of engagement. It depends on your audience and what they like and expect. Do not shy away from experimenting and trying to implement different engagement methods during your stream.
Once you figure out what your users like the most, just stick with it. Moreover, remember to freshen up things as well, especially if you stream frequently. You need to avoid monotony, otherwise, engagement will start to drop.
One thing that is certain is that all viewers love to see that you are a family person, so do not worry if your kids pop up during your stream, or if your pet (cat or dog) enters the room.
The author is highly qualified and writes blog posts weekly.
