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Live streaming is becoming a popular tool be it for promoting your product or service or for engaging with your audience. There are various types of live streaming from IP-based live streaming to streaming on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, etc. The use of live streaming has increased lately. Most organizations host live streaming sessions for conferences, presentations, demos, promotions, and for launching products or services.
Additionally, there are now more platforms offering live-streaming services. Live streaming has been enticing for marketers because it allows them to create brand stories, and authentically present their goods or services.
Going live offers more potential for audience interaction than practically any other kind of programming, but only if you employ the proper engagement-boosting strategies. So here are a few ideas that can help you engage with your audience during the live-streaming session.
Ideas To Boost Engagement During Live Streaming
1. Choose The Right Streaming Platform
Choosing the best live streaming platform is essential for any live stream. There are various live-streaming platform options available in the industry. According to the size of your audience and event, you will have to choose a platform that will serve all your needs. For instance, you can go for Facebook live streaming, Instagram live streaming, LinkedIn live streaming or even Youtube live streaming if you want to engage with your social media audience. These platforms offer a wider reach without any cost.
If engagement is the only motto then these social media platforms can offer you wider reach but these platforms lack privacy and anyone can join your live stream and that is not the case with other paid live streaming platforms.
There are live streaming platforms that offer various features like customization of the platform, a strong CDN, safety and security, 24×7 assistance, Parallel Multi-Platform Streaming, and many more. If you are hosting more private and professional live-streaming sessions then you should always go for such platforms.
2. Use Social Media Platforms
Social media is the best tool to encourage interaction and you should always take advantage of different social media platforms. Few live streaming service providers offer parallel multi-platform streaming which means you can host live streaming on different platforms at the same time, so if you are hosting hybrid live streaming or virtual live streaming on any platform you can also share that live on social media platforms. If your audience is active on social media you should always share your live streaming on Facebook and other social media platforms.
Social media platforms offer various engagement tools and the plus point of using different social media platforms is that you will be able to engage with different audiences on different platforms but with the same interest at the same time. Additionally, you can also use social media platforms to promote your live-streaming session in advance. You post about the topic of the live stream or you can mention the speaker of the live stream to create buzz about your streaming session.
3. Host Engaging Q&A And Polls
You can engage your audience in different ways during the streaming session. Question & answer sessions, polls, and surveys are the best way of engaging your audience during the live-streaming session. These polls and question-and-answer sessions usually bring out positive results and offer several benefits.
Most of these platforms offer chat features on the sidebar, make sure you are using that chatbox to include your audience when doing a Q&A session.
Polls and surveys are proven to increase engagement with your audience during live sessions in addition to Q&A sessions. Surveys are another excellent tool for learning how your viewers feel about the content and your live-streaming session. Live streaming services can help you build engagement in different ways for instance through survey forms, emoticons, and reactions during the live stream. You can get extra data from your audience and create a list of leads by gathering their contact information including forms and surveys in the live session.
4. Ask For Feedback
Asking for feedback is one of the best ways of engaging your audience during the live session.
Either you can ask your audience for feedback at the end of your live session or you can send them a feedback form later in the Email but make sure you are sending the feedback mail maximum in 48 hours so that the event is fresh in mind. But asking for feedback at the end of the session is better because in that way you can get feedback from the maximum number of people and you don’t have to wait much for the feedback, you can make reports and use that feedback for your upcoming live streaming sessions. Asking the audience themselves is the most reliable method of determining audience engagement. Additionally, you can gather more demographic data about the viewers of your stream.
5. Stick To Your Topics
Most of the organizers host the live streaming session on a particular topic and they promote the live stream through that topic, if you are hosting an on-demand live streaming session on a certain topic make sure you are sticking to the topic during the sessions. Sometimes speakers in the sessions can lose track and can shift from the topic to avoid that from happening. Consider making key points in advance; this also helps you track the time. Additionally, when you get away from the topic your audience can lose interest, so to ensure that your audience is engaging well during the live sessions stick to your topic and key points.
6. Analyze Your Live Stream
Evaluating the performance of your live-streaming session at the end is essential. Most of the live streaming services platform and social media platforms provide you with statistics features. This feature can help you a lot in knowing what works and what you can do better by watching your live-stream videos after your session. These statistics can provide you with helpful information on how your content is doing, the devices that your audience uses to watch the videos, the many live stream formats that are effective, consumption by region, etc. These statistics can also provide you with information as to how your audience was engaging during the live session.
The Bottom Line
Live streams are becoming more common and have a huge potential to raise brand awareness and increase engagement with your target audience. It has also become simpler to generate live streams because of live streaming features in well-known social media platforms and the emergence of live streaming platforms. Follow the above ideas to increase viewer engagement for your live stream.
