Live streaming video is a great way to interact with your audience in real time.
Share Live Events
Sharing live events with your audience can make them feel more connected to your company or industry. The key here is not just showing the event, but also letting users be a part of it.
Create stories for your viewers. If you just show what’s happening in one location, viewers are likely to get bored quickly and disconnect. Instead, walk around to show them the event.Be your audience’s eyes and ears.
Keep an eye on their comments too, and when possible, reply to them. Ask viewers what part of the event they want to see and whom they’d like to meet.
Host Interviews
Brands and companies are centered on people–and in fact, “people” is one of the seven Ps of the extended marketing mix. However, companies sometimes forget this and become too promotional.
Do short live interviews with employees or clients to increase engagement. These interviews not only show the human side of your company, but also offer personal ideas and opinions.
Show How You Create a Product
Your audience typically can’t see how your products or services are created. With live streaming video, you can show them what it takes to go from concept to product completion. This is a great way to give your audience a glimpse of what is involved in building your brand.
Give a Behind-the-Scenes Look
Another way to use live streaming is to show users behind the scenes of something they normally wouldn’t have access to.
Keep in mind that you can go beyond just your company location. Anything that is typically off-limits–or provides a different point of view–will interest many users.
Conduct Training
Most people are avid learners if the content is interesting to them. Use this to your advantage by becoming your audience’s go-to reference for a particular topic.
Live streaming from mobile is obviously limited when compared to desktop, because you can’t share your screen and include additional content with the stream. However, this doesn’t have to be a roadblock for live streaming training sessions.
The key to training is repetition and interaction.Make your sessions ongoing by scheduling them daily or weekly.
Host Q&A Sessions
Organize sessions where you let the audience ask you about their concerns or areas of interest. This is a great way to increase engagement because you’re showing people that you care about their thoughts and opinions.
Acknowledge questions that are interesting and can provide value to your viewers.Mention the name of the user asking the question to further increase engagement. If you get comments from trolls or abusive users, simply ignore them.
EXTRA: What Behaviors Drive Engagement
The key to successful live streaming videos is understanding what behaviors drive engagement:
- Curiosity: Human beings are curious by nature and eager to discover new things. Live streaming shows the audience content that they may not otherwise see.
- Desire for recognition: Being recognized is important to many people. Viewers of live streams are not anonymous, and the broadcaster can call individuals by name (or user ID).
- Sense of belonging: Due to their limited duration, live streaming videos usually don’t get thousands of viewers simultaneously. Seeing the number (and IDs) of users subscribed to a stream makes viewers feel connected to a group.
- Control: Live streaming allows users to interact and be part of the show. Their comments can affect the broadcast, and the broadcaster may respond to them.
- Exclusivity: The content of a live streaming video is unique in that only those connected can interact with it.