Live videos are a great way to attract audiences to events that are taking place around your business. They can elevate your brand presence online in several ways such as by increasing visibility, increasing engagement, building relationships and building your brand identity. You can use the live tool on several Social platforms including Instagram and Facebook. You can utilize this tool for many reasons including revealing products, behind the scenes insights, showcase a special guest, Q&A’s, Feedback, doing something outlandish or doing a review. When representing your business through live video it’s important to get the right message across and to show yourself in a professional light. Here’s some tips and tricks to help steer yourself away from the classic mistakes and mishaps, and into the light of a successful live video.
There’s nothing worse than tuning into a live video and you’re just completely distracted by shakiness, bad lighting and unclear audio. Getting some accessories to ensure that your live video looks professional and seamless is a great place to start. Try to avoid going with cheap equipment that has a short lifecycle, it’s best to invest a bit more to ensure quality and a long lifespan. You’ll only end up saving money in the long run! Here’s a small list of essentials:
- A Tripod
- A microphone that specifically works with phones, laptops and tablets.
- A LED ring light – you can get a two in one tripod and ring light.
Before going live, define the goals you have. It will help to actually physically write these down, you can always refer back to these if you get a bit stuck during the video. It’s better to put yourself in the best position to avoid freezing, preparing can help you to feel more confident. It can also be good to prepare some things in case of a technical glitch. For example, you could prepare a question for the viewers, ask them to respond in the comments section and give them a few seconds to do this. You could even go further to ask the audience to then pick their favourite response. This will give you some time to briefly concentrate on fixing an issue without losing engagement
Make sure that people know that it’s happening, it’s a great excuse to create some cool promotional content. Along with making it look effective, tick the boxes of giving an overview of who’s in it and what it’s about and make sure you put the date / timing on there. Post these on several media channels to drive traffic to you’re the correct platform. Make sure to also post these in multiple ways, such as on Instagram, create a story and grid post promoting it. It’s a good idea to remind people, a good approach could be to post it a few days before and then a few hours after. At the same time, don’t spam it as this might put people off joining it.
Make sure you give context by titling the live. If your doing this on Instagram under the ‘pin comment’ section. Input the title in the comments and tap the comments to pin it. This will help to give context to your live video and will help encourage people to join it to check it out.
Note that this shouldn’t mean typing up replies in the comments section. Your focus should be on interacting to the entire audience within the live video itself. The best way to interact is to actually pick up on a few comments and read them out on the live video. This keeps the engagement with the whole audience instead of directing your attention at only one or two. Having varied opinions and reading these out will help keep the conversation interesting. Make sure that you are only dedicating time to constructive comments, don’t get caught up with trolls, it will dampen the tone of the live, and turn it into something ugly. If you start getting trolled in the comments, you can simply press the ‘x’ button which will get rid of them, you can also completely mute them. Keep messages positive, you want to inspire people and not upset them.
Try not to get lost in the video and loose touch with your aims, this can make people feel confused and as a result become disengaged. It’s good to every now and again, try to reiterate and actually state what you're doing. This will not only help you keep on track but will also help people that have just joined the live at any point understand what’s going on and feel involved.
This will help to help further the engagement of the live video. At the end of the day, your dedicating some precious time to the audience, and they’re dedicating some of theirs. A way to enhance this could be to mention a promotion, a link to your website, links to products that you’re reviewing etc. It’s also important to not be too pushy on this, just mention it a few times and people will know where to go if they want to.
It’s only natural to feel a bit daunted on a live video, I mean, you must have seen the countless videos online of things going wrong on live news broadcasts…it happens! Make sure that you’re being your true authentic self and if anything goes wrong, keep your audience interacted by explaining what’s going on. Sometimes a bit of drama keeps it interesting, make sure to smile and not get too caught up in any issues. It’s a good idea to consider a collaboration and feature someone else within the live videos. This keeps it interesting, and if anything does go wrong you’ve got moral support as well as someone to help resolve the issue. It can also just help you bounce back quicker as you’re communicating directly with someone else. If you are feeling nervous about doing a live video, make sure to follow the previous steps to make sure you’re in the best position for a smooth-running stream.
Last, but definitely not least… save the video! Don’t let this video be a one-time thing. You can use this content for so many things. you can use it to better yourself by watching and improving or publish it on your YouTube channel if it goes well. It can be a bit cringey to watch or hear yourself on video, but it really can help you to jump miles ahead for the next one. It’s also a great idea if you’ve featured special guests, you can send it to them so that they can publish on their socials to enhance the engagement and open a gateway to new audiences.
If you’re looking for some more advice on live video, get in touch with Two Fresh today! We’ve done live videos and live streaming for a variety of businesses and for all kinds of reasons including general meetings, training days and special events. We can help ensure a professional outcome, you can also then leave it to us to work on the logistics.
