How to Engage Your Audience with Live Streaming
Are you missing out on a huge section of your target audience? If you’re not using live streaming to engage with your followers, then you might be.
The numbers behind live streaming are impressive, and if you’re not already, you should be incorporating this medium into your marketing strategy. Here’s how you can leverage live streaming to create crazy levels of engagement with your audience.
What Is Live Streaming?
Live streaming is a powerful way to connect with your target audience and personalize your message in a way that’s unique compared to other marketing mediums. It’s a simple process to send a live feed over the internet to your audience, but it can have big results.
By utilizing your social media reach, you can stream live footage to a huge audience and give your followers a unique glimpse into your company.
The growth of live streaming has been exponential, with the market increasing from $30 billion in 2016 to an expected value of $70 billion in 2021 and $184 billion by 2027. That’s a huge amount of growth, and it’s something that’s forcing marketers to sit up and take notice, with 28% starting to invest more in live streaming.
Why Your Company Should Be Using Live Streams
Live streaming is a great way to connect with your audience in a genuine, personalized way. It allows your audience to see the faces and voice behind the brand in an unfiltered medium that drives brand association and loyalty.
When it comes to the reasons your company should be using live streams, the numbers speak for themselves:
- Live streaming topped 1.1 billion hours in 2019 (Livestream)
- 80% of audiences prefer to watch live video than read a blog (Livestream)
- Enjoyment of video increased brand association by 139% (Livestream)
- Consumers are 39% more likely to share video content (99 Firms)
- 82% of audiences prefer to watch a live video over standard social media posts (Hubspot)
- Live broadcasts account for one in five Facebook videos (Facebook)
People use live streaming to create a deeper connection with your brand, and through your social media presence, it’s likely you already have a platform to leverage it.
Which Social Media Platforms Have Live Streaming?
One of the good things for businesses that aren’t already utilizing live streaming is that it doesn’t take a lot to get set up. For the most part, you can live stream from platforms you’re most likely already using, such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and many others.
Each platform offers slightly different features and the opportunity to reach a different audience. If you’ve already got a big presence on these platforms, then you will find you can immediately reach a large audience through live streaming, but even if you don’t, it’s a great way to build your presence.
Facebook Live Streaming
99Firms states that 52% of live streams happen on social media, and with 2.7 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most popular. Facebook Live has been around since 2016, and in those years, has made a big impact on the platform.
Live videos get 10x more comments than regular videos and 3x longer watch time. This shows the power of live streaming on Facebook and is why 42.7% of businesses use live streaming on this platform.
Instagram Live Streaming
Instagram (1.15 billion active users) might not be as big as Facebook in terms of monthly users, but it does allow your business to reach a different demographic. Popular with people aged 18-34, Instagram Live allows you to make use of one of Instagram’s biggest benefits – being a very visual platform.
Although you’re limited to live streaming from a mobile device, this allows you to offer a very personal glimpse into your brand and tailor your content to your audience.
YouTube Live Streaming
In many ways, YouTube was the original video-based platform, and today it plays a big role in live streaming for marketers. With an active audience of 2 billion monthly users, it’s second only to Facebook as a social media platform and is widely considered to be the second biggest search engine in the world behind Google.
This offers huge potential for marketers, and as you might expect, live streaming performs particularly well on this platform. To put the numbers in perspective, Red Bull’s live stream, “Stratos Jump,” had 2.3 million concurrent views. When you realize that the average NBA game in the 2017-18 season attracted 1.93 million viewers, it’s easy to see the potential of live streaming.
Periscope Live Streaming
Periscope is a live streaming app that allows users to broadcast live events to Twitter. We often think of Twitter as being a more text-based platform, but this certainly isn’t the case anymore, and video (live video in particular) creates a huge amount of engagement.
Video has seen huge growth on Twitter in recent months and attracts 10x more engagement than regular tweets, making it a great way to boost your Twitter profile.
Conclusion
Live streams are growing in popularity, and it’s not by chance; this is a technology with an amazing ability to engage targeted audiences and boost your marketing. Businesses around the world are eager to make the most of it.
Thanks to tools like Restream, getting started with live streaming couldn’t be easier, and you’ve got lots of ways to engage a large audience. It’s important to remember it’s not just the live stream itself that matters though. To make the most of this tool, you’ve got to be focused on growing your following, and this requires good social media marketing.
Live streaming is a powerful tool to work into your social media marketing plan, and it can help expand your brand’s profile, so it’s time to embrace it.
