Unless you’re a big brand, your paid live stream or social media event can get lost in the shuffle. Marketing your stream is an essential part of the growth of your audience and your business. I have been involved with live streams that were well promoted and had great viewership, as well as other streams with little to no promotion that left organizers asking themselves why their viewership numbers were so low.
Here’s the thing: the more you promote your stream, the larger your audience. Check out these tips on marketing your live stream.
Get the word out about your upcoming event
Start promoting at least one month in advance. We know sometimes production services are one of the last things on a to-do list, so start promoting as soon as the decision is made to craft a live stream production and contracts are signed.
Get your promotions machine working to get the word out about your live stream.
Find the best audience for your event
Find the people who would be interested in your social media live streaming event and let them know what you are doing. What are their interests? What information are they looking for? How can you help them? Once you know the answer to those questions, you can tailor your approach and pitch. Meet them where they are.
Use media resources that you already have
If you have video or media of previous events, use it in the promotion. Create a sizzle reel to stir up buzz and help promote the upcoming event. If you don’t have these assets, do yourself a favor and capture some going forward. If you have a budget, hire someone who can capture the spirit of the event for future marketing efforts. In a social media-centered society, if there are no videos or pictures, it didn’t happen.
Engage with your social media platforms
Utilize every one of your social media event marketing platforms to get the word out about your event. Whether you’re streaming to your website and/or streaming to one or multiple social media sites, post updates about the event and direct your followers to when and where it can be viewed.
Post on all social platforms and let them know you are live streaming. Cross-promotion works well.
- Create a hashtag for your event and use it everywhere.
- Pin upcoming events in Twitter.
- Engage your audience through video, photos, polls, surveys and updates about the event.
- Give your followers just enough to keep the event on their minds but not too much to overwhelm them.
- Live update during your live stream. Update on the same platform you’re live streaming on and to the others to drive them to your stream.
Use your email marketing lists
If you have an email list, use it to keep your audience updated. With an email list you can speak directly to your core audience. Don’t rely solely on social media sites to get the word out about your event. The sites could change their algorithms and what was working for you before may not be hitting the same marketing channels. Send an email blast to let your audience know about your event. If you have a great idea for an event stream, make sure you capitalize on it by communicating the who, what, when, where and how to your target audience!
Make sure your follower are in the know.
Keep your marketing efforts going
Keep the momentum of the event going after it is over by uploading replays or highlights to your social media platforms.
Monetize the event for the future
If the event is a subject that is marketable, think about monetizing the recording of your live stream. Say your event was a seminar, use the footage to market the information. People who missed out on the initial seminar could gain access to information, for a fee. You can even offer replay access to the people who attended the event at a discounted rate.
How Igigo Communications can help get you more live stream event views
Here’s a marketing schedule I suggest to my clients to increase live streaming attendance:
- Send your initial email blasts and social media posts a month out.
- Every week leading up to the event, send out one update.
- The week before send out two updates, one at the beginning of the week and one at the end.
- The week of the event send out an update the day before and the day of the event.
All updates should have the time and the platforms the live stream was be broadcast on. Don’t be afraid to cross promote your stream on all channels.
When we produce live streams, we do tests of a venue’s internet, encoding, and live stream system tests to your sites the day before and the day of the event to make sure everything is working properly. For the social media site, Igigo Communications creates a short teaser video to test your site; it also acts as a promotional update for your live stream. (The teaser video looks better than a typical video and audio test that would be the empty room before the event.) We use motion graphics, cleared music and voice over track telling the viewer when to join the live stream. These teasers work very well and look awesome.
Click image to check out example of a social media teaser.
Fill out the form below or contact us directly when you want to help increase viewership of your next live stream and webcast. We offer an array of live stream services to fit your needs and goals. If you do the work ahead of time in promotions you will reap the benefits when your analytics come in. Promotion of an event starts before the last one is complete.
