7 Powerful Benefits Of Live Streaming
Live streaming hasn’t been with us for too long, but it’s quickly gaining traction and attention for those who are always on a lookout for new and innovative ways of delivering content. With the help of early adopters like Gary Vaynerchuk and other high-profile influencers, the industry is projected to skyrocket in the coming years, flipping the whole content production and consumption process on its head.
In this article, I discuss the real power of live streaming and its effectiveness.
1. Users Consume Content On Your Time, Not On Their Time
The biggest and the most powerful advantage of live streaming is that viewers consume content on your time, and not on their time. That means that you are only engaging with people who care about you, your brand, and people that find your content extremely useful. You are automatically targeting content at the people who are more likely to convert and follow you further.
No other content marketing channel is capable of doing what live streaming does.
2. It’s Not Yet Overcrowded
History repeats itself. Like with any other digital marketing channel, live streaming will become over-populated very quickly. Although it hasn’t quite reached that point yet, it is quickly gaining traction, and more and more people are using it on a daily basis.
Take Facebook’s organic post reach drop as an example.[1] Timelines became over-competitive, so Facebook had to make tweaks to their algorithm, leaving only a tiny portion of people who get to see your organic posts. The same could happen to live streaming.
Hence, if you wish to reach the necessary audience via live video, you should act now.
3. Reaching Highly Targeted Niches
As we’ve learned previously, viewing live streams requires more commitment from your followers, simply because they need to tune in on your time, regardless of whether it’s the best time for them or not. Consequently, this determination applies an automatic filter that keeps unrelated audiences away.
Moreover, it’s very unlikely that people who are not interested in your topic will join the conversation.
4. It’s Cheap
If you think about it, live streaming is incredibly cheap. In fact, it’s completely free. You don’t need any special equipment, software, or hardware. All it takes is a smartphone or laptop with a camera and an active account with a chosen platform, be it Facebook Live or Periscope.
While traditional blogging and content production would usually require a set of properly configured software programs (e.g. hosting & platform), live streaming is accessible to anyone in a matter of a click.
5. Takes Less Time To Produce
According to research conducted by Hubspot, it takes approximately 2 hours to write a 500-word blog post, and anything between 4-8 hours to produce a 1,500-2,000 words article.[2] While a 500-word post would not be regarded as a comprehensive piece of content and would not generate a lot of exposure, it can be easily read in 3-4 minutes.[3]
The data varies when it comes to traditional video production like vlogs. According to Make Use Of, it could take 2-3 hours to create and edit a simple vlog.[4]
Do you guess how long it would take to produce a 4-minute live video? You’re right, 4 minutes!
6. Real-Time Engagement
One of the biggest reasons why live-streaming is continuously making a dent in content marketing is its ability to offer real-time user engagement and join a direct conversation with the influencer.[5] Whenever you are reading a blog post, you are reading the work of the past.
Not only does it provide real-time engagement benefits to users, but it also gives an opportunity for businesses to offer live support, Q&A sessions, and office tours.
7. The Ability to Repurpose Content
Although this point applies to pretty much any kind of content, live videos can be easily transformed into other forms of content, be it a published video transcript on your personal blog, an infographic on Visual.ly, or a reproduced video on YouTube.[6] Your choices are limitless.
Nevertheless, it’s always advisable to repurpose content in order to broaden the reach of your message.
To Conclude
As you might have noticed, live streaming is an extremely powerful channel for delivering content. But, just like with any other marketing mediums, it comes with its own share of pitfalls and challenges. Hence, before you jump headfirst into live video, carefully weigh out all the pros and cons and decide whether it’s suitable for your needs.
References
[1] Hubspot: Why Don’t My Facebook Fans See My Posts? The Decline Of Organic Reach
[2] Hubspot: How Long Should It Take You To Write A Blog Post?
[3] WPKube: 5 Tips to Help Get Your Blog Posts Loads of Real Attention
[4] Make Use Of: Life as a Vlogger: What’s It Like? We Asked 10 YouTubers
[5] Marketo: Real (-Time) Engagement w/ LiveVideo
[6] Solvid: The Whys & Hows of Repurposing Content (and where to publish)
https://www.lifehack.org/534461/7-powerful-benefits-live-streaming
