When businesses find themselves looking for innovative ways to connect and engage their clients and prospects, leveraging a live streaming application can become a valuable outlet for interaction. We will have a look at how streaming live video and audio coverage of an event can bring our consumer behaviors into a business to business (B2B) setting.
Live streaming applications (apps) have become incredibly popular for personal use in the mainstream, which means more and more businesses are looking to incorporate these apps for business purposes. Live streaming as a technology tool, enables creative ways for your team to interact in real time, build a community of invested followers and gain their trust. Our technology consulting team has examined the latest in these content creation tools and shows how incorporating streaming into your marketing efforts can add real value to your brand and the creative people behind it.
Integrate live streaming to meet specific business needs in multiple ways:
- Give a “behind the scenes” look at services performed, processes, office space and executive boardrooms, or event highlights
- Schedule training, interactive Q&A sessions with customers, highlight new product features or services being offered
- Host and show contest results, throw giveaways, showcase employees, broadcast webinars
Connect where it counts:
According to comScore’s Paul Rich’s interview with CBC, there are now 1.3 million Canadians that in the course of a month will only use a mobile device to access the internet and won’t use a computer at all. Since mobile devices are where most people spend their time searching and sharing content, live streaming apps provide a way to broadcast a video and have its content consumed where it is created—on your mobile device.
A free live streaming application (available only for iOS users) that lets you stream from your mobile device to anyone who follows you on Twitter. Because your video will run live, there are no reruns but you can schedule your stream in advance and tweet that information to your followers. Since everything you do on Meerkat will become a tweet to your followers, your chance of increasing engagement and in turn a potential increase in re-tweets is high.
This Twitter-owned streaming platform (available for iOS and Android devices) gives users the option to save their broadcast and replay the stream for 24 hours. When you start streaming your followers are notified via a tweet with link to your stream.
The reporting capabilities of Periscope differentiate it from alternative apps. Once your stream has gone live, you will get a list of users that viewed it, how long it was viewed and retention rates through Periscope’s post view metrics.
For those looking for a B2B streaming experience, Microsoft’s Office365 users can make use of a component of Skype for Business. Hosting a Skype Meeting Broadcast allows your audience to view power point presentations, share your desktop or just view the presenter. The broadcast is recorded automatically and is available to download at a later time.
Skype Meeting Broadcast is accessible to your audience via any browser, on any device. Set the meeting to be viewed by only those who have been personally invited by the organizer, invite only people from within your organization, or open it up to the public by publishing a link so external audience members can be a part of your audience.
Meeting organizers will have the opportunity to manipulate their meeting content based off of audience members’ ability to vote on questions asked during a meeting.
Engage and Participate:
Integrating live streaming into your marketing efforts can satisfy your audience’s need to interact instantly. Using streaming applications can turn a rather lackluster service or product into an experience that bring onlookers a sense of excitement and anticipation. When content creation, sharing, and collaboration are imperative to your business success, leveraging video content expands your reach with prospects and clients.