Liven Up Your Marketing with Live Streaming

Live stream video is becoming more popular all the time.  It’s immediate and engaging, two of the most powerful qualities a social media campaign can have.  Live video gives your audience a glimpse of the real people behind your brand.  And people like people better than images.  So how can you up your social media marketing game with some live stream video?  Here are a few ideas.

Live video is great for including your audience in big events such as product launches or awards ceremonies.  But it’s also an effective way to give people a look behind the scenes.  If you produce a product, you could do a live video to show your audience a bit about how it is made.  If you have a venue, you can use live streaming to share the buzz and show potential customers what fun they could be having as real customers.  Because you can enable live comments on a Facebook live stream, you can use it to give your viewers an interactive experience.  You can do a demonstration about how to use your product and respond to audience questions as they are posted. You could even do a question-and-answer session.

Planned Spontaneity

While a huge part of the appeal of live video is spontaneity, you’re better off planning and promoting than just popping up live on the fly.  Give people a chance to plan to watch your video.  If you just go live randomly, you’ll only catch the people who happen to be on Facebook at the time.  But if you set a date in advance and use all of your social media platforms to promote it, your followers have a chance to plan for it.  They also have a chance to tell their friends about it, building up your audience numbers.

You should also plan what exactly is going to happen in your live stream.  You don’t need a script.  That’s likely to sound staged and fake.  But you should prepare an outline or a list of key points you want to make. Think carefully about the visuals for the video.  Is the setting going to work well?  What is the lighting like?  The colours?  What will you wear?  These are details, but working them out in advance lets you put your best foot forward.  Think of it like a job interview.  You want to come across as capable and professional, but not like a robot.  This is a chance to engage with your audience person to person, after all.