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Live Streams Are Huge Marketing Boons
Have you heard of Twitch, IGTV, or Facebook Live? These are live streaming services that connects content producers, business owners, and influencers to an active audience.
Live Streams are becoming an important marketing tool for small businesses and influencers who want to grow within their industry and get more clients, customers, or followers.
But what do you need to do to get started? It’s not as easy as setting your iPhone to selfie mode and hitting the record button.
There are three areas of focus that can ensure that your live streams will grow as you become more consistent and technically comfortable with the idea of streaming yourself to an audience.
So what should you know about before you begin? In this article, we’re talking about selecting a streaming platform, growing your audience, and creating a strategy.
So let’s break this down into chunks so you can feel more comfortable with the idea of hosting live streams.
Live streams can help you connect virtually with your customers and supporters. Designed by vectorjuice / Freepik
Pick a Social Media and Live Streaming Service
Every social media platform has its niche, which means you should know what platform you should focus on for your content and your audience. Each social media platform has its appeal for certain industries.
There’s no standard set in stone, but certain platforms work best for people in specific industries.
People in the visual media and arts typically gravitate towards TikTok or Instagram. These platforms are perfect for short-form videos and eye-catching art or products.
Organizations in the news and entertainment industry have found their home on Twitter. The platform has a powerful system that tracks trends and keeps people on top of current events.
Gamers and hobbyists have connected with their followers on Twitch and Youtube. These platforms have cultivated a “hang out” atmosphere where streamers and their fans can interact via chat.
Businesses and communities thrive on Facebook. Thanks to their powerful ad platform, it’s easy to attract customers and fans who are interested in what you offer.
It’s important to do a bit of research ahead of time for this step.
We’ve seen lots of businesses jump into social media without considering where their audience may actually be, and that can be damaging to their growth.
Grow Your Audience
The next method you should focus on is growing your audience. This means creating an online presence with social media and keeping that presence consistent. It’s tough to grab attention for your live stream if you’re unknown.
There are several ways you can grow your audience, and this can be a blend of active and passive promotion.
First off, word-of-mouth marketing is always effective because it creates a personal connection between your business and your customers. If you let people know about your online presence, they’ll be more likely to look out for your content.
On the passive end, you can also promote your social media with business cards and flyers. Having social media logos with your @ alias will help people find you.
There’s another avenue for connecting with your audience passively and that’s with organic growth services.
Kicksta is a company that helps businesses grow on Instagram with tried and true methods that can help you gain followers by helping your business get in front of real people.
Kicksta is like having a social media hound who helps you find followers because they put people in charge of interacting with Instagram users for you.
It’s not a bot service that artificially inflates your numbers. Those kinds of services can run you afoul of Instagram’s terms of service and potentially get you banned.
A third way of growing your social media audience is through paid advertising. Most social media platforms have a paid advertising platform that charges pay-per-click (PPC) ads for their platforms.
Google Adwords, Youtube, Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter all offer a PPC advertising service.
These days, you need a combination of these active and passive methods to grow your online following. It takes a bit of effort, but consistent work will help you grow. Then you can move on to making your business-oriented live streams.
Live streams are for more than entertainment. They can be informative for conference goers, students, and employees. Designed by pikisuperstar / Freepik
Create a Schedule and Marketing Plan
We are big fans of planning and strategizing. If you’re going to stream yourself, you should create supporting content that helps clue people in on your streams.
If you’ve done the work of picking your platform and growing your audience, then you need to create some hype for your streams.
An easy rule that I like to follow is that if you’re going to launch a live stream, you should announce it at least 4-5 days ahead of time, remind your audience a day or two ahead, and then remind them again on the day you steam.
Lastly, if there’s one piece of advice that successful streamers will have in common is that consistency is key.
If you plan on producing live streams regularly, then you should have a set day and time when your audience can expect to see your content.
Happy Streaming!
We have worked with clients to market their live streams and have had great experiences live streaming ourselves. For example, we helped GSB Fundraising conduct their first-ever virtual conference.
They needed to adjust their annual conference to work around the COVID-19 pandemic.
It was new territory for GSB, but we assisted them with getting the word out, creating an event space, and assisting them with their technical needs before, during, and after the event.
We also utilized live streaming for our publication, Aberdeen Magazine. For example, we needed to announce our #GreetingsFromAberdeen contest winner, but we didn’t want to do it the normal way.
So we planned a live stream event for the announcement, which included several social media posts announcing the time. Thanks to our planning, we had over one thousand views for the video.
If you’re interested in finding out how live streams can help your business, we’re here to help you plan a fantastic event.
Contact McQuillen Creative
McQuillen Creative has been in the marketing game for over 25 years and we want to help your business. Do you need help with live streams and online conferences?
We offer marketing packages that scale with the needs of our clients. GIVE US A CALL and let’s see how we can create a strategy for your digital marketing goals.
McQuillen Creative Group, Inc | 423 S Main St, Suite 1
Aberdeen, SD 57401 | 605.226.3481