Every live stream video offers a huge opportunity to increase your brand awareness and engage your potential customers to drive greater business results. If you truly want to succeed with live streaming and grow a loyal follower base, you cannot afford to ignore the importance of social media for live streaming events.
Earlier, social media used to be a cakewalk for almost any business, you just had to upload engaging videos and your job is done. However, today as marketing is undergoing a rapid change under the influence of technology, you need to work really hard to spice up your social media marketing. There is no better marketing tool than live streaming.
Live streaming in social media
Live streaming has been one of the hottest trends in the past decade in social media with all popular platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter launching their own live streaming services. Facebook Live, Instagram stories, IGTV, LinkedIn Native, Twitter’s periscope- the list goes on.
If you are yet to harness the power of live streaming, you must start it right now. According to studies, 80% of what we consume online will be videos by 2019. We are already past 2019 and in 2020 now. Now more than ever it is important to embrace live videos in your social media marketing strategy. Live videos give your brand a voice. A voice that is real, authentic, and human.
Integrating live streaming to your social media marketing
Learning how to set up live streaming to deliver successful live videos in a way it benefits your business and viewers is an art by itself. Start with investing in decent live streaming set up and a well-planned strategy to stream live broadcasts.
To make the most out of live streaming, promote your live stream events on social media beforehand. If you are on Facebook, you can share the details of your event on your feed about a month before. In addition, continue to post reminders as the live event approaches until the final hour of the event. But, make sure you don’t overdo your reminders. Ensure the reminder content is visually compelling as social media posts with appealing images and videos get 40% more engagement.
Here are some effective ways to leverage live streaming to power your social media marketing campaigns to benefit your business in unique ways.
Run competitions
Just like exciting offers, competitions also attract masses when executed in the right way. There are several reasons to host a competition on your live stream with the growth of the user base being a priority. When you host live competitions, make sure you also have planned about tracking the growth. Analyzing the user growth before and after running the competition is an effortless task, but take your analysis a step ahead for checking whether you can find any similarities between the old and user groups.
Collaborate with a brand
Collaborating with other brands is a great way for businesses that are not competitors to grow together. Partner with a brand that is not your direct competitor to get introduced to their user group as well. This way you will capture the attention of two sets of user groups which is pretty amazing.
Run a live poll
Live polls are excellent when you have to generate great engagement with social media. This is one of the trending things in social media as users enjoy sharing their thoughts and having their voice recognized. Additionally, beyond using polls to facilitate interactivity, you can also leverage it to derive insights that can be beneficial in different areas. For instance, if you are a brand that sells beauty products, you run a live poll to find out which product in your new launch they like the most. Once the final results of polls are out, you will know which product has a high chance of success when promoted in your new marketing campaigns.
Share behind the scenes
Behind the scenes of any popular events is a growing trend and is very well worth giving it a go if you are looking for live streaming ideas that work. By offering a glimpse of behind the scenes, you are offering exclusive footage for your audience. This live streaming idea gives you an opportunity to introduce your brand to your followers making your brand look more real and human.
Host live interviews
Your viewers follow your business on social media for a reason. There is a great chance that your audience has a great affinity for your brand. There might be a strong reason why they are interested in your brand which is why they spend money on your products and services. How to use this interest in your favor?
Host live interviews on social media. Live interviews with popular influencers or celebrities allow taking a deeper dive into aspects that your potential customers will be interested in. When hosting interviews, focus on a blend of popularity and experience. This will help you to attract a crowd and also produce live interviews that your audience will find beneficial.
Once you have hosted several interviews on your social media, you will be able to tell how effective this type of content is for your social media marketing strategy. You can also repurpose these live videos by publishing them to your feed and website later.
Create how-to videos
Anything that is informative and instructive always trends in social media. Unlike popular belief, it is not limited to just make up or cooking videos. You can create how-to videos that share information about your products or your business in general. For instructional videos, it is recommended to create a well-planned script so that you won’t miss out on valid points. You can make a bullet list of key points to refer to during your live streams in case you need that extra help.
Actually respond to viewers
This one is easier said than done. The larger your follower base gets; it becomes harder to respond to all of them in your live videos. However, while you are still growing, make sure you take time to interact with the viewers who reach out to you. Before starting your live sessions, make an arrangement for this. A creative response that makes them memorable goes a long way that you actually imagine.
If you are ignoring your followers and neglecting their questions it hampers your credibility considerably. Be smart about what you respond to and how often you do so in your live streams. Once you start getting in the habit of responding to your viewers in live videos, you will find the sweet spot of how many comments are just enough.
Host an ask me anything session
Online audiences love ask me anything sessions. Moreover, it is a great way to bring in the personal side of your brand to your target audience. Ideally, when you host an ask me anything session, your hosts must be people who have the knowledge and expertise in the specific industry to answer the questions of customers.
Most people think that a question and answer session only fosters engagement. But Q&A sessions are not just beneficial to creating engagement, it also offers opportunities to improve your ROI. For example, you can announce a special offer along with your live Q&A session. Keep the promotions front and center as the Q&A live stream runs.
Host a social exclusive deal in your live streams
Run a live social media exclusive deal to generate ROI. To power your social media marketing, make your deal exclusive to your audience. To run this type of live stream, have a clear offer that you know your potential customers would love. To make the most out of your promotions, make sure you promote it before you run to generate maximum interest. Also, create supporting posts in social media around the deal and your live stream to draw your potential customers to it.
Place your viewers in the spotlight
Who doesn’t like to receive special attention, especially during live streaming? Appreciating your viewers has a greater impact than you imagine on social platforms. It makes the business more appealing to potential customers. If you are thinking about how to integrate customer appreciation to your live stream campaigns, here are some of the effective ideas.
- Storytelling
Make a script for your live streams that focus on your potential customers along with the great user testimonials you have.
- Plan your live streams
Make sure you devise a live streaming strategy and plan to stream a few live videos based on your strategy. You can also announce it on social media to bring in more views and engagement.
- Integrate a call to action
Consider integrating relevant calls to action in your live videos to increase clicks and engagement. Make it a practice to keep your call to action text sweet, simple, and attractive enough to catch the instant attention of your audience.
- Share brand milestones
Brand milestones must be celebrated along with your target audience and potential customers. When you do it, make it relevant to your viewers to have a great impact and benefit your business. Celebrate both brand and product milestones on your live streams. You just need to have the creativity to do it the right way.
Use intuitive and trending hashtags
Every live video from business events to sports will have a hashtag along with it. The hashtags you use must reflect the event and your business. By using hashtags in your live streams, you not only create a buzz around the event but also makes it easier for your viewers to interact with your business, further amplifying the live sessions.
Conclusion
While live videos are greatly powerful and beneficial for your social media marketing, producing successful live streams can be quite challenging. Busy schedules and the need to match the interest of your audience makes it equally hard. However, it is possible to produce great live content through a little planning and preparation. Learn how to set up live streaming video to compliment your business goals and the requirements of your target market. Plan your live videos beforehand. Planning allows utilizing live streams as an opportunity to collaborate with your viewers and create content they cannot refuse to watch.
What do you think of integrating live streaming into your social media marketing? Where have you been successful in using live streaming and where has it not worked? Share it in the comments and tell us what you think.