Three Benefits Of Broadcasters For Live Streaming Onto Social Media
Many broadcasters are hesitant to embrace social media due to ignorance of its huge potential. For these broadcasters, social media visibility is limited to random Facebook or Twitter posts announcing their upcoming programs. However, many other broadcasters see its strength as a broadcasting power house and a medium for audience engagement.
1. Broadcasters using Social Media to Find New Voices and Expand Their Audience:
In certain fields, social media broadcasts will outpace more traditional media sources. For example, traditional news broadcasting may be overrun by live streams on social media platforms with the average person replacing the journalist with breaking news.
For example, Al Jazeera English has published its own online community named “The Stream”, which exploits the strength of social media to broadcast news in compelling ways. Stream accumulates discussions, opinions and social media posts from various platforms to reassemble significant stories of the day for better viewership.
Social media today is no longer just here to build personal relationships, it is used to influence the decisions of millions, build brands and expand a broadcasters reach. Engaging your audience is now just as important as reaching your audience and social media provides both.
Savy broadcasters know the power of a live broadcast is not only in achieving a larger audience and more engagement but also to expose their brand and encourage audience to engage their network on other platforms (Roku, FireTV etc…).
According to Richard Weaver, Principal at Weaver Injury Law Firm, “Branding yourself with a logo and a few articles is a good idea, but people want to see more from you, and this is where live streams can help. They offer rich, tangible content that’s highly desirable and a lot of fun to peruse, not to mention very informative.”
2. Live Streaming Gives a Sense of Urgency
With a live stream you can nudge people to act more swiftly than if they were watching something that was prerecorded. For businesses it can convert viewers into paying customers….For those with their own online TV network a Live broadcast can be the preview and you can urge them to join you on your other platforms which can be monetized with ads.
3. Get Creative – Combining Social Media and Your Online Network
Some of our customers combine the power of Social Media broadcasts with their own network. For example, Creekbox is a small town online TV network that specializes in broadcasting high-school sports. They were already successful in their own niche, but got a powerful boost when they began broadcasting their live high-school football games on social media.
Not only did their social media fans increase, but their Roku, FireTV, and mobile apps saw a significant audience increase as well due to their Facebook fans downloading their apps.
They use a tool in our Channel Manager called “re-streamer” which allows our customers to broadcast simultaneously to their own website/network, and Facebook, YouTube and Periscope.
Even though they are in a rural community with slower internet connection speeds they only have to send one live feed uploaded to our Channel Manager and we duplicate it automatically to their social media accounts reducing the need for video upload speeds.
Then, when they are done with their live broadcast, our auto-live recorder places the previous live video into their media library for use as a VOD or to be included in a scheduled playlist at a later time.
No matter which way you look at it, broadcasting live to social media has nothing but upsides with no real downsides.
As broadcasters get more and more creative with ways to expand and engage their audiences through live broadcasts its clear social media will be a part of their expansion for years to come.
If you would like to get a subscription to our Channel Manager so that you too can broadcast across social media, create and schedule playlists and much much more then click here to check it out.