USING LIVE VIDEO TO ENGAGE CUSTOMERS

If you’re looking for ways to boost engagement with customers, followers, and potential prospects in your community make sure you include live video as part of your marketing communications plan. Consumers are engaging more with live videos and are being significantly influenced by them. According to a Livestream survey, 80 percent of brand audiences would rather watch a brand’s live video than read their blog posts. Plus, 67 percent of live video viewers feel more compelled to come to visit a business or attend an event after they watch it on a live video.

These numbers only point to one thing – new home communities can effectively leverage live streaming videos to engage and influence their target audiences. The question is how? Take a look at some of these useful tips on how you can successfully use live streaming to promote your community.

1. Quality Video Creates Positive Engagement – The quality of live streaming that is so appealing to viewers is that it provides unfiltered access to your brand. All too often, social media content can come across as scripted and reads as a sales pitch rather than focusing on creating a meaningful conversation with the audience. Studies have shown that potential clients are more likely to spend money with brands they trust. While traditional social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook have helped to bridge that gap; live streaming provides an unscripted, un-edited glance into what your brand is all about.
2. Don’t go Live Without a Plan– Live streaming has a huge potential for new home community marketing, but it’s going to require some diligent planning to ensure your live stream is as flawless as possible. Remember that you’re broadcasting live, so there is little room for error. The best way to avoid any issues is to prepare. Create a video storyboard to help you create the broadcast to organize your thoughts and to create a sequence for your video. During your broadcast, you can follow along with your storyboard to stay on track.
3. Get to Know Your Platform– Also, it’s a good idea to get familiar with your video streaming platform, i.e. YouTube, Facebook LIVE, etc. before you press that record button. The process is slightly different on the mobile and desktop version of the various platforms so get comfortable with both. Facebook provides a preview of your video, so you can check how your lighting and framing looks before you broadcast to the public. Keep in mind the preview will not necessarily match the quality of the final broadcast so a solid work is creating a temporary (fake) Facebook page and broadcasting there to view how a final broadcast will look
4. Get Techy – Make sure you have the right tech for the job. This really depends on the complexity of your video. But for starters, your internet speed is key to your success. Since a live broadcast requires a lot of bandwidth, make sure to have a fast connection. If possible, try for a connection through an ethernet cable instead of WIFI for stability. Now if you’re simply shooting straight from your mobile phone, you can skip ahead to the next tip. But if you’re looking to ramp up your game, you can stream from a laptop and use software likeOBS or Wirecast that allow you to switch between multiple cameras, audio sources, overlay graphics, and much more.
5. Get Talking– Just like any online content, you need to spread the word to grow your audience. You should create a promotional strategy for every stage of the broadcast — before, during, and after. Use Facebook and other social media channels to promote the live broadcast two-to-three days before, one day before, and the day of the event for best results. You can post about your upcoming broadcast on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn or you can schedule the broadcast on Facebook to generate an announcement and allow people to sign up for a reminder.

During your broadcast, you can continue to promote your broadcast with social media. Encourage your team members to share with their networks as well. When the broadcast is finished, you can choose to save the video and create a post on your Facebook page or you can keep it private. Going live on Facebook is not as simple as posting an edited and polished video, but fortunately, Facebook has made it a pretty seamless process. If you needed another reason to go live, Facebook actually favors live video content on its platform, so you will get much more exposure on Facebook than other content like images or links. If you need assistance putting together a live video strategy and plan, we can help!