It was in 2015 while launching Facebook’s live streaming platform ‘Live’, the Founder Mark Zuckerberg said “This is a big shift in how we communicate, and it's going to create new opportunities for people to come together.” He further added “Live is like having a TV camera in your pocket. Anyone with a phone now has the power to broadcast to anyone in the world.”

5 years later from the time of his statements, i.e. ‘Now’ (in 2020), we are a witness to the growth of live video streaming. According to the statistics, live-streamed video is more appealing to the brand audiences. 80% of the people mentioned that they would rather watch a live video than read a blog from the brand and 82% are said to prefer a live video to social posts.

Hence, it is obvious that live streaming has found a place in the marketing strategies of several companies.

While live streaming comes with several advantages, there are certain challenges in the execution. Let us discuss them here:

Advantages of going Live for the brands:

According to TechJury, the online live streaming industry has grown 99% from April 2019 to April 2020. The growth is massive and there are several reasons you might want to adopt live streaming into your organization. Below are some of the advantages of the same:

1. Increases the reach:

As a brand, one of the core objectives you would look for is expanding the reach. It will help you acquire more customers and many more people would know and recognize the brand. Live streaming facilitates a better reach through the diversity of the audience available on various social media platforms. You can choose, according to your analytics, on the platform you want to go live; the time at which your audience would be available, so that they not only participate but share it across in their networks.

2. Creates brand awareness:

Live streaming being the new in-thing, the focus on it is high. The live streams are given a higher priority. Your audience might receive notification of live stream and even get your live stream on the top of their profile. You might not want to miss out on capitalizing on this offering.

3. Economical and Affordable:

Live streaming equipment & set-up includes a camera for capturing your video, a microphone & led ring light. These requirements can be fulfilled with the available accessories. Like, you could use your phone’s camera (the latest models have high definition cameras) to capture the video. The cost of the internet might be minimal as well. If you are a starter, these should do. If you are looking for better quality, you could purchase the equipment like a quality camera and camera accessories required for shooting.

4. Builds a trusting relationship with the audience: Direct Engagement

A live stream helps build a trusting relationship with your audience. People look for authenticity and a live stream gives you the opportunity to be authentic (79% of the marketers agree with this). With a live stream, you can keep it raw. Unlike the produced videos, you can be authentic, candid, and realistic and your audience would love it. It builds trust and reliability among your audience and they are more likely to do business with you and give the word-of-mouth to your brand in their network.

5. Analytics and Data:

A live stream facilitates the data of the audience who are happy to get engaged with the brand. The data, if analyzed well, would help in the understanding of what works and what doesn’t and in the decision-making of user-engagement strategy for the future live streams.

6. Can increase the engagement of your brand:

The audience that gets connected through live streams is more likely to have a better brand recall and would be interested in following your work and updates. If executed well, live streams can be a great source of lead generation and sales for your brand.

Reasons to go live on multiple social media channels:

There is more than one reason to opt for going live on multiple channels. The leverage that you can pull out will be much higher. Here are more reasons:

1. Overcome the limitations of an individual platform:

Going live on a single platform comes with its limitations concerning the possibilities, audience availability, and features. Hence, going live on multiple platforms helps overcome these limitations of one with the pros of the other.

2. Needs just one marketing strategy:

Live streaming on multiple platforms around the same subject would not need multiple marketing strategies. One marketing strategy would serve the purpose. It saves time, efforts, and reduces the risk that is otherwise involved in going live on a single platform.

3. Maximizes the reach:

Live streaming on multiple platforms helps you reach a wider audience at once and thus maximizes the reach of your brand.

4. Better presence on all social media channels at once:

Managing social media presence on multiple channels is difficult. Live streaming on multiple platforms also facilitates an activity on our profile on each of them and thus reduces the effort of the management.

5. Better analytics at one place:

The data available through going live on multiple channels is vast compared to going live on one channel. It provides us with diverse data points for effective decision-making.

Challenges of Live streaming:

While there are innumerable benefits of live streaming, the execution of the same poses some challenges. Let us discuss them here:

1. Network issues:

Who hasn’t faced this? If you have been a live-streamer yourself or through the brand page, it is less likely that you haven’t faced network issues ever while going live. A stable network even in the locations where it is unstable is a challenge.

2. Interrupted internet access:

This generally occurs to the people or brands going live for a longer duration. There are chances that the internet network might get interrupted.

3. Errors related to caption:

The set-ups and other arrangements before going live might be overwhelming. In a hurry, many a time, you might tend to make some errors including missing to give or a wrong caption, and generally, we have a limited scope of those corrections once the live streaming has begun. Tell me about it!

4. Availability of audience:

You might have a limited audience available at the onset. A decision of the time of going live is pivotal for the same reason. Also, your followers do get a notification but they might not be available to join then.

What is the solution?

With the advancement in technology and the boost in live streaming especially Facebook’s launch of ‘Live’ in 2015, some of the technology brains spotted these challenges and brought in their innovations in the form of live streaming solutions. OneStream Live is a reckoned platform for live streaming. More than 50,000 businesses worldwide have used OneStream Live for their live streaming.

Features of OneStream Live:

1. Enables social media streaming of the pre-recorded videos as a live stream on 40+ platforms simultaneously.

2. You could schedule the pre-recorded videos for live stream 60 days in advance.

3. It doesn’t need any software installations or set-ups.

4. Integrates with your cloud storage like Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, etc. to save your internet bandwidth.

5. You can not only share videos recorded using a camera or even the screen capture.

6. Allows team-collaboration and management.

Hence, if you wish to connect to the followers of your brand, you could do so without any hassles. Since the videos are pre-recorded, it helps you face network issues or interrupted internet access. Scheduling the videos for live stream enables you to select the time of availability of your audience. We wish to see more brands capitalize on live streaming to increase their reach. If you have done so, do let us know in the comments. Also, if there are any additional challenges you face with live streaming, as a marketer; do let us know in the comments below.