How Live Video can show You and Your Brand in a New Light

Welcome to the video age. But haven’t we been through all of this before?

Remember the days before Netflix, when rewinding your grainy VHS version of The Lion King was a familiar routine? Switch the context and video is more important than ever before. In 2014, an average U.S. consumer spent 413 minutes accessing online video services every month on their mobile devices. The platforms we watch content on have changed and the capacity for brands to use video to their advantage is immense.

Cisco Visual Networking Index estimates that 90% of web traffic in 2019 will involve video content, so you’ll have to make a concerted effort to avoid it! The ascendancy of video content is full-throttle and it perfectly complements the move towards conversational marketing, which thrives when it gives brands the room for personality exposure and more humanistic ways of connecting with consumers.

It disrupts traditional forms of pre-planned content that get pushed towards an audience; live-video opens up a conversation and invites consumers to the party.

But how do you stay productive and still stream? This post is about how to cut through the clutter and build your streaming repertoire so you can be more productive in building awareness around your brand.

The Players

Periscope is arguably one of the most popular live video platforms. It doesn’t have a niche, anyone can use it. This makes it stand out from platforms like Twitch that cater mainly for the gaming market. Periscope joins sits amongst the likes of Facebook Live, Youtube and Snapchat as powerful live-video tools.

One of the most exciting things about live-video tools is the experimental content that can be created. With 40% of consumers set to be part of Generation X by 2020, your brand needs to speak to digital natives that expect eclectic, entertaining content.

Engagement

Live-video invites a two-way exchange between your brand and consumers. Your audience can help you to shape your content, essentially urging a crowd-sourced approach. It’s an adaptive way to market and means that you can change the direction of your video content in response to live interaction with your audience. If something isn’t working, you can bet that your audience will let you know about it.

The spontaneity of your content creation and the rapid-fire response of your audience can help you to show off your brand and let people know that you’re not faceless corporate drones. Brands can relax.

Giving Your Brand a Face

Giving your brand a face means that your decisions, ways of working and overall brand voice are more accessible to consumers. Researchers such as Sherry Turkle think that we need to be mindful of the digital age and think about how our connections with each other are shaped.

Essentially, will we turn us into people that lack compassionate and hide behind a screen? Fingers crossed the future won’t be like Black Mirror. Brands have the chance to stem this by using live video to interact with consumers, create content together and connect with others in a meaningful way.

Fun and Impulsive

The fun, impulsive side to live-videos helps your brand let its hair down. If things go wrong then so what? Being able to roll with the punches (figuratively of course, hopefully not that wrong!) and adapt to a changing situation with humor and personality gives the audience what it wants, a more human element to marketing. Your presenters should embody your brand, as a live-video is a physical representation of your brand identity.

It’s important to have trusted brand ambassadors who’re passionate about the brand and aren’t afraid to improvise. What will you achieve? An authentic brand voice that isn’t afraid to laugh at itself. You only need to look at the success of Vlogging and the driving force behind it, which are the vloggers and influencers themselves.

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Types of Content

So, what kind of live video content can you create? The great thing is that it offers up lots of ways to be creative. You can disrupt traditional marketing strategy and host special announcements, live events, behind-the-scenes exclusives, Q&As and interviews.

This is especially effective for smaller brands because it makes them more accessible and you can build up a consumer following fast. Your audience wants valuable content and they want to it to provide them with something worthwhile. If you get this right then they’ll come back for more.

Tips and Pointers

Let’s think about a couple of pointers before you launch any live-video ideas. Being consistent with your timing is key. There’s no point dropping a video every now and then, with no follow-ups or related content. If you don’t commit and create consistently engaging live video content then it’s easy for consumers to forget about you in a busy and increasingly loud marketplace. Love your audience and they’ll love you back.

Promoting your videos properly is crucial too.

Think about the type of content you need to create for certain platforms. Long-form content is great for interviews, but if you’re on Snapchat then your videos need to be short, snappy and immediately entertaining. Always analysis your videos after completion.

Facebook Live’s audience retention tool is just one example of the ways you can assess markers like how many people are watching your videos, leaving your videos and at what time. This can help you to plan your content and experiment with particular times of the day, new guests and styles of video. Never stop testing your content!

Key Takeaway

There’s no doubt about it, live-video is a really fun marketing tool and the opportunity to get creative with it and have fun should be embraced by brands.

Give your brand a face, add personality to your content and create live video become an important part of your digital marketing strategy.

There are also more resources than you can imagine for staying productive on topics like this at Microsoft’s Small Business Academy. They are on the forefront of an evolving, modern workplace and Microsoft has committed to delivering experiences that rethink the entire notion of what it means to be productive.