Tips for Live Social Streaming
The functionality of live social platforms has enabled brands to move away from live videos delivered by smartphone to professionally produced multi-camera interactive streams.
At the outset it’s important to consider what types of content will work best as live social streams. The key thing to remember is: just because something is happening live doesn’t mean it has to be a live stream.
There are only three reasons why content should be live-streamed:
1.The event or content delivered via the live stream is of such importance to your target audience that they’ll want to see it as it happens – for example, a major new product launch or a unique live event.
2.The content of the live stream allows the audience to interact live, such as asking a well-known expert a question.
3. Content is delivered over social but connected to traditional broadcast channels, for example an advert on TV which directs users to view a live stream for more interactivity.
“The data we’ve gathered from producing hundreds of live video streams for Facebook Live has shown that if content does not come under one of these three categories it is unlikely to deliver a large viewership,” says Jake Ward. “Therefore, it should simply be delivered as on-demand content, as this reduces risk and allows the content to be more precisely crafted.”
Regardless of the content, Groovy Gecko suggests that, contrary to the accepted wisdom that social content should be short, with live social streaming, longer content is actually much more effective.
“The core audience who have liked and engaged with your brand page are more willing to watch content for longer if it’s interactive, or it can deliver a unique live experience,” says Ward. “Additionally, the nature of sharing and liking of live video posts means that longer streams work more effectively. Live streams also feature more prominently in user’s timelines when they are live.”
Groovy Gecko data suggests that streams lasting over 20 minutes reach a much larger proportion of audiences.
This article originally appeared in the March 2018 issue of FEED magazine.
