Chapter 3
In This Chapter
Exploring how streaming live video can enhance your business
Choosing a video-streaming application
Setting up a live-streaming application
Marketing your streaming event
Streaming distributes live video of different types of events, from college football games to company announcements. You can use streaming for branding, product introductions, and business seminars, wherever they are. It’s also a great way for musicians and all kinds of other artists to connect with their fans. Live video gives you an additional communication platform for your event; adding simultaneous real-time chat boxes can make video events even more interesting.
In this chapter, we first look at what live video can mean to you. Then we discuss some of the most popular live-streaming applications available and show you how to set them up. Finally, we tell you how to use tools to get more exposure for your live events.
Streaming adds a whole new social dimension to any event. Here are the reasons why:
Whether live or archived, videos work best when you use them with chat boxes. Viewer comments naturally encourage others to share their own thoughts.
Combining real-time comments with a live video broadcast also helps grow your audience organically during the event itself. Facebook makes it easy to build a larger, more interactive community around your event by displaying users’ chat activity on their friends’ News Feeds, which in turn links back to your site.
These real-time chat boxes (also called “live social streams”) allow thousands of viewers to interact at the same time. Chat boxes are powerful communication tools when they appear on the Page next to your live video content. Chat boxes may also incorporate Share buttons (see Figure 3-1).
Facebook is a social platform — where people come to chat with friends. In this social environment, live streaming is a tool that helps businesses get closer to their audience. With a little planning for both social media and offline promotion, businesses can cultivate interaction, create buzz (see the last section of this chapter), and expand their audience.
Given the size of Facebook and the viral nature of social media, presenting live events through Facebook can give you as much visibility as any traditional media advertising. A live chat box helps you engage a large audience for your real-time video.
For example, you do have some control of what appears in chat boxes if you use the Facebook Comments plug-in or Livestream’s chat platform. As an Admin, you can require approval before making comments visible and also blacklist specific words or users. For more information on the Comments plug-in for Facebook, see Chapter 2 of this minibook. For Livestream chat functionality, see http://new.livestream.com/plans.
You have a few options for streaming video on Facebook, which doesn’t offer its own streaming service. In this chapter, we examine two popular applications: Livestream and 22Social. To better understand third-party applications, go to Book V.
With a free account, events are deleted automatically 30 days after the original broadcast.
How do you know which application to choose? Your choice depends on what you need to do. See the following minitable.
If Your Business Needs This |
Try This |
To stream live video to your Facebook community (but the video doesn’t have to be embedded in your Facebook Page) |
Google Hangouts on Air via the 22Social app; free version of Livestream |
A robust, professional broadcasting tool and to take full advantage of your Facebook community, without audience size limitations |
Paid Livestream application for publishing videos directly on your Facebook Page |
Are you ready to try a live video event? With Livestream, you can create your own real-time broadcast and have a real-time chat box at the same time.
Any public event created with either the free or paid version of Livestream is searchable and promoted on the Livestream.com site.
Depending on your plan, your broadcast will be available by clicking a link via a tab, or directly on your Page.
For either the free or paid Livestream option to broadcast your own video, you also need a Livestream account. (If you want to broadcast from an existing Livestream account, whether that account is your own or someone else’s, you can skip this process.)
To set up a Livestream account, follow these steps:
Livestream populates the Short Name and Channel Page fields, and instantly lets you know whether the name is available. (If not, choose a new name.) See Figure 3-4.
With the premium channel, you can stream with no advertisements; however, that channel costs $399 per month. If you’re okay with ads, choose the free channel.
You need a Premium or an Enterprise level account from Livestream to embed video on your own page.
A Congratulations! screen confirms your sign-up.
Follow these steps to create an event in Livestream:
The graphic file can’t be any larger than 10MB.
You can post text, photos, archived videos, or live videos, or enhance the design, as shown in Figure 3-7. You may want to include your company logo, domain name, and other components to take advantage of this branding opportunity.
After you establish a Livestream account and create an event, you’re ready to install the Livestream application and add it to a Facebook tab on your Page, as follows:
If you haven’t installed the Livestream app, you’re prompted to click Connect Facebook to Install.
For example, Livestream requests to “post to Facebook for you” (shown in Figure 3-8). In the bottom-left corner, you can choose to whom these posts should be visible: Public, Friends of Friends, Friends, Only Me, or Custom.
For the details of Livestream’s Terms and Conditions, visit www.livestream.com/terms/generalterms.
If you already have several Facebook Pages, all are listed below My Pages on Facebook, as shown in Figure 3-9. If you’ve created only one Page, you see only that Page listed.
Tah-dah! Your event is being promoted on your Page, as Be Inspired Films’ video event is promoted on its Facebook Page, as shown at the top of Figure 3-11. The event itself will appear on the Livestream site (see the bottom of Figure 3-11). If you upgrade to a Premium or Enterprise account, your Livestream video will be shown on your Facebook Page itself.
Hooking up Google Hangouts on Air with the 22Social app is much simpler than it sounds! Google Hangouts lets users stream video in real time. 22Social lets you embed that streaming video on your Facebook page. Voilà! Free live video.
We recommend creating your Hangout on Air before installing the 22Social app. That way, you will have the embed code ready to paste in.
For the video stream to appear on your Facebook Page without any problems, leave the audience default to Public. That way, Google+ followers who have you in their circles will be able to view the stream as well. Viewers can see any public Hangout on Air on YouTube.
Your YouTube account must be connected.
You are redirected to your Google Hangout on Air Event page.
You need this bit of code to insert on the tab that you will create in the next section using the 22Social app.
For now, keep that code in a safe place by pasting it into a file on your hard drive or on a stick drive.
After you have the Google Hangout ready, install the 22Social app on your business Page. Follow these simple steps:
The page reloads with a video about the 22Social product and what it can do for your business.
A new page offers a Pro version, which you can try for 30 days for $2. If you don’t want the Pro version, navigate to 22s.com/account, which will then direct you to the 22s dashboard for Facebook. Otherwise, you will be required to sign up for the Pro version.
The free version is all you need for adding a Google Hangout to Facebook. The Pro version offers many other marketing tools that your small businesses may find useful, but which are not needed for live video streaming.
You may want to use a show gate that requires users to like your page before they can view the content on the new tab.
A pop-up allows you to add your Google Hangout on Air, as shown in Figure 3-13.
The pop-up disappears.
Congratulations! You’ve added your Google Hangout on Air to your Facebook Page. When it’s installed, the hangout will be ready to view by clicking the standard play triangle, as shown in Figure 3-14.
After you have your live stream up and ready to run, you want to get people interested in your live-streaming event both in advance and during the event. This is where your Facebook marketing skills come into play.
Before your live-streaming event, remember to post an update on your Facebook Page to let your audience know what’s coming:
You can also create a Facebook event and promote your upcoming event there. To read more about Facebook Events, go to Book VI, Chapter 1.
While your event is going on, be sure to let the audience on your Facebook Page know what’s happening live, and give them the link. Different streaming options have different sharing methods.
For instance, Livestream makes it easy for viewers to share your event, by clicking on the Social Sharing option, as shown in Figure 3-15.
By comparison, if you’re using 22Social, the Facebook Comments plug-in is included automatically. For comments to appear on a user’s Timeline, the user must select the Post to Facebook check box before creating a comment. Figure 3-16 shows how comments look when using 22Social.
It’s easy for viewers to share their comments and your event on multiple social media.
Livestream users can quickly share an event via their Share button to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, or e-mail, as shown in Figure 3-17. Depending on the social network, users can personalize a comment or tweet with a link back to the event.
A similar process applies to users who want to share a real-time video event from the 22Social app.
Calls to action are extremely important during a live-streaming event. Remember, the link generated when people use these social buttons sends people back to the live-stream chat box, bringing in more viewers and facilitating even more interaction around your event.
One cool thing about live streaming is that you don’t actually need to have your own live-streaming video to chat about it. You can create a live-stream chat to talk about someone else’s video content, if you want.
Look for interesting upcoming live-streaming videos on the Livestream new event listings at http://new.livestream.com/home. Check out these events to find content that your audience would love to see.
If you create your own videos, find people who have audiences that are interested in your content, and partner with those people. Your video broadcasts will reach wider audiences, and you’ll build an interactive community experience around your event.
As you look for opportunities to bring content publishers and communities together, remember the opportunities that mobile devices offer. It’s easy to access Facebook on all mobile devices, and it’s also easy to record videos on many of those devices. With so many possibilities, you’re sure to see more live-streaming events.