How to Maximize Reach for Your Live Streaming Clients
Learn more about live streaming production at Streaming Media East 2022.
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Robert Reinhardt: A lot of people think live streaming is just this awesome thing that's going to generate lots of new viewers that they hadn't had before. And I know from experience with a lot of the government and nonprofit work that I've done on a paid level, too, that if your social media coordination, if your marketing and advertising, isn't there--again, I'm sort of going into business requirements--I need a social media coordinator at times with small-to-medium-size events, because they don't have people that are familiar with live streaming. They may not even know social media that well, even though they're the social media coordinator. They're in government or they're in an NGO where they they might have a different day job.
Again, Corey brought this up: Education is such a big part of what we end up doing with live streaming and just like first contact on a Star Trek level, it's sort of baby steps. I think all of us have been in a situation and maybe, maybe not Jef or Corey with bigger enterprise events, because that's not part of their business offering--necessarily, is helping the client understand how to bring eyeballs to their professional events. The eyeballs are there. But when it comes to a lot of the work that I'm doing, people would think, "Oh, we'll have at least a thousand people there." And I can matter-of-factly just tell them, "I think you'll probably have 100 to 150." And they'll go through all this work and they don't do their work on the marketing end of it. I don't want to stray into this too deeply because it's not really the core of this panel, but it is important.
You don't want all of this effort around live streaming to necessarily be something that was all for naught. Luckily, we all know, VOD gives life to all live streams. Maybe not as much in the sports arena as it is with other more informational events or award shows. But it is one of those things that you want to keep in mind with how your budget is going to play into that. What are you doing to actually make this whole livestream worthwhile, so that, at the end of the day, you're not disappointed with the demographics that I ended up giving you at the end.
Corey Behnke: That's a really good point. I just want to say one thing on that because it goes to the optimization. So, for instance, we're doing a live stream about vMix Boot Camp next week--a little bit of pub--you gotta do the scheduled posts on LinkedIn. Not only that, do the schedule post on LinkedIn, do scheduled posts on YouTube, send the newsletter. And then it's like, "Hey, Jef, can you invite all your friends from this to the LinkedIn post?" You've got to do that. To Robert's point, it seems like that's obvious. And so many of my clients don't do those steps, when I say, "Here are the 10 steps. And if you just do this, you're going to at least have a core audience that already likes your content. That's going to watch your content." So, a hundred percent, I just wanted to throw that out there. People think thumbnails don't matter. Thumbnails matter. Or scheduled postal don't matter. Those things are huge. They seem small, but they're actually really, really huge.
Robert Reinhardt: Please make this as much of a conversation as we can. That's what this is about. Thanks, Corey.
Shawn Lam: And it's interesting, too, that our workflow, our job as producers, doesn't start at the front of the lens and end in the transmission. It's pre-production, event marketing, and then the follow-up. You mentioned demographics already. The reporting on the analytics of the viewership and then working with our clients on what can they learn from these productions that they can apply to the next time. And a lot of times, those learnings are centered around their marketing efforts and better reach. It's almost like we're having to make sure that the investment that they make in us is worth it, so they can continue to produce these events with with positive returns and strong viewership. So it is neat how that, how that ends up working.