How to Host an Engaging Live Stream
If you wish to integrate live streams into your events, you might be wondering, "How do I get live stream viewers?" or "How do I make my live streams more engaging?". To assist you in this, we have collated some live streaming tips and tricks. This includes how to determine the audience persona of your events' attendees.
1. What does your audience find engaging?
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This is the question you have to ask before asking, "How do I make my live streams more engaging?". You might have formulated a virtual event plan that you are happy with, but there may still be improvements to make. These improvements will probably depend upon what appeals to your audience. For instance, many institutions now transfer information via webinars. This will not be appropriate for an audience that does not take in information efficiently via static lecture slides. Consider whether they might prefer to see videos of your speakers talking at an actual venue. You could cross-fade this with other footage, to help keep their minds tuned into the content.
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Therefore, it is integral to complete market research into who your audience are, & what medium they might prefer (text, images, videos, audio etc.). You need to determine who your audience persona is, which you can easily do by looking into the following features of your audience:
DEMOGRAPHICS
Basic information about your audience's background. E.g. their ages, income levels, educational background, occupation. Is your event on a costly platform that your audience's income level can afford, or a platform that a certain age range might find old-fashioned? Is it too complex for your audience? Does your event include information that your audience are already educated in? Is the information given in your event useful to people in occupations that will be viewing it?
PSYCHOGRAPHICS
What are the attitudes and hobbies of your audience? Do they tend to partake in hobbies that may clash with the time of your event?
GEOGRAPHIC SEGMENTATION
This simply refers to the location of your audience. Does your event need to be easily accessible from certain timezones?
2. Based on this, select a platform.
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Your audience persona will inform which live streaming platform is best for you to stream to. You may want to browse our Instagram page for weekly live streaming platform reviews. CPDonline can cater to all specifications; We combine lecture slides with video content of speakers, and can live stream to any platform that is suitable for your audience. It is no use planning out your expenses for an entire livestream on a platform like Wowza, for instance, only to later realise it is better suited for businesses and enterprises and many of its features may not suit your membership association.
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3. Online Promotions
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Once you know who your audience are, it is important to pique their interest before and after the event. For instance, you could utilise Twitter takeovers or Google Hangouts. These will enable guest speakers to introduce themselves to your audience before the event. If your audiences have any pre-event questions, these could easily be answered here. Alternatively, your event organisers could increase hype and anticipation before the event to garner last-minute signups. Even between your events, you want to ensure that you are representing the highlights of your events. One method is via promotional videos that represent your lectures/seminars/conferences as innovative events. These will suggest that your event must be attended in order to learn about your industry in the most engaging possible way.
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4. How to Make a Live Stream Easy to View
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A stream that lives up to this anticipation and is enjoyable should let attendees interact throughout the event. The difficulty with online events is that audiences are not in a conference or lecture environment. This may make it easier for them to let a Webinar or Zoom passively play in the background while their camera is off and microphone muted. They may even let it play while scrolling on their phone. The key with an interactive live stream on a more sophisticated platform is to make audiences feel involved. They should be made to feel as though they are still attending a real event, while not being physically there. You can subtly achieve this by addressing attendees by name and using live polls so they can have their say or display their knowledge. We recommend not committing the sin of asking viewers to simply leave any comments in the chat at the end. This will only dissuade them from participating, and you will be lucky if they do not forget their questions by the end.
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The next step is paramount. Whatever your live streamed events' structure, make sure that it is of a high audio-visual quality. If the live stream is only 720p or someone's bandwidth makes their side of the Zoom call lag, the whole experience will be lost. This is regardless of how many engaging features you have implemented. One of the most embarrassing live stream faux pas is when the event organiser's side of the stream is on mute. This will make your team look unprofessional, and undo all your hard work to curate the content of the event. And it happens more often than you might expect, at even the most prestigious events. The key to this is to hire a professional team of live streaming specialists. This team can handle all of the technical arrangements on your behalf to the platform you have decided on. This will leave you free to focus on what you do best, and prevent you from losing attendees who may be concerned about the potential technical glitches and other perceived disadvantages of live streamed events.
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To stop potential mishaps from causing these disadvantages, make sure to hire a professional external team. It is advisable to choose live streaming specialists who are experienced in high quality event live streaming. Such a team can help you develop a live streamed event plan and advise you on the best strategy for ensuring a successful event.
Do you now know how an engaging live stream works?
We hope that our live streaming tips and tricks helped to give you more of an idea about how to make your live streamed events engaging. To hire us or receive more advice, request a quote from CPDonline. We can arrange a free consultation meeting to discuss your needs.
