Any good marketer knows that having a unique and strong social media presence is crucial. It’s a great place to have one-on-one interactions with customers and to increase awareness about your brand. Social media live streaming on Facebook and Instagram is one of the newest tools that marketers can use to create a deeper connection with their customers.
Benefits of Going Live
Going live on social media allows your company to actively engage with followers. People are able to comment on your stream while it’s happening, giving you a chance to directly respond and hold a conversation with viewers.
Live streaming is timely and helps you stay on top of the latest trends and news in your market. For example, if a new technology comes out, you can go live to talk about the pros and cons of it before anyone else. The timely aspect of live streaming makes it very exciting for viewers to watch. If they happen to be browsing Facebook or Instagram while you’re going live, they can hop on to see if the topic you are discussing is interesting to them.
Although streaming is “live,” you can still save your stream for others to see once it’s over.
On Instagram, you can re-share your stream as a story, or save it to the highlights on your page. This allows people who may have missed the stream to be able to go back and watch. Although the timeliness aspect will be gone, you will still have a piece of valuable video content you can share with your audience. On Facebook, you can download your live video to put on Youtube, Vimeo, and your website!
The last benefit to live streaming is the ease of use. Social media is free to use, and live streaming requires little to no preparation. Live streaming is often very informal and can be done right from your smartphone. Plus, the informality makes the video feel more personal to the audience, like a conversation in your living room.
What Kinds of Things to Live Stream
Q & A
Live streaming is great for Q&A sessions because you can gather questions both ahead of time and during the stream in the comments. Ask your audience what questions they’ve had about your organization, whether it be about the services you offer, products, pricing, employees, or anything else.
Having an executive level employee answering questions gives you credibility and builds up trust with the audience. You can also pull in interesting people from outside your organization and do informal interviews about topics your audience may find fascinating.
Events
Have a cool event coming up? Stream it! Those who weren’t able to make it can still get in on the action. Show people around and interview a few attendees about what the event is like. This is good for everything from nationwide conferences to the office holiday party.
Tours
Have a fun office you want to show off? Going live and going on a tour is the perfect way to do it! Especially if you have a service that requires customers to come into the office. A tour can be a great way to show your audience what’s happening behind the scenes. This is also a great way to attract future employees. Show them where they will be working and how great your office is!
Demos
Any kind of video is great for demonstrating how to use a product or service. However, the advantage of doing this over a live video is that if viewers have questions while you are performing a demonstration, they can get their question answered right then and there in the comments!
Overall, live streaming is a cheap and easy way to ramp up your audience engagement and to build personal relationships with your customers. There are endless ways to use live streaming to your advantage, and it’s worth it to every business to give it a shot!
