Are You Live Streaming? If Not, You Should Be!

Video has been on the rise for a while, offering marketers great way to grab potential customer's attention and keep their target audience engaged. Live video streaming in particular has become increasingly popular as a tool for companies and groups to connect directly with their users, to gain greater product awareness, and to brand themselves creatively. To learn more about how to take advantage of the live streaming boom, here are some creative ways to use products like Snapchat, YouTube Live, Facebook Live, Periscope and Meerkat to successfully market your business or group.

Snapchat

Snapchat allows you to market outside the box while having fun doing it. GrubHub saw potential in Snapchat early on as a way to get more interactive with a younger demographic. Rather than post an intern application on a standard career search site, or on less targeted channels like Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, GrubHub asked its Snapchat followers to apply using the app itself. The doodle request was an easy way for the company to assess creativity and confidence, while also tapping into their ideal intern pool. Snapchat is very popular right now with millennials and the under 30 market. Even Fortune 500 companies have taken advantage of Snapchat's huge marketing appeal. You can to!
Taco Bell managed to become one of the most followed brands on Snapchat by uploading a six-minute Snap Story "movie" in increments of 10 seconds. The short film focused on the launch of their product, the Doritos Locos Taco, but the company also took things a step further. Taco Bell coordinated their campaign to align with the MTV Movie Awards, making it relevant to the event and, therefore, gaining greater reach and brand awareness.

YouTube Live

NASA is big YouTube Live hosting live videos as a way for space-interested audience members to learn more about the organization and its recent discoveries NASA recently, showed off some perks and pitfalls of the astronaut job. Participants used the hashtag #askAstro on their Twitter or Google+ to ask the NASA crew about life -- both personal and professional -- while aboard the craft, which were then answered in real time. The Hangout provided fascinating content, but also provided valuable information to those interested in that career path. YouTube Live has replaced Google + Hangouts and has proven to be a much more effective video tool from Google.

Facebook Live

Who doesn't love a good laugh? BuzzFeed decided to try out Facebook Live with a video purely for fans' entertainment. Two BuzzFeeders explored how many rubber bands it takes to explode a watermelon, which lasted about 45 minutes.According to Facebook , at the time, more people tuned in to watch the stream than any other live video on Facebook -- reaching over 800,000 viewers at its peak. Now, the video has over 10 million views, creating a ton of social and site traffic, just for doing something fun. CES is an annual event hosted by the Consumer Technology Association to showcase innovation technologies and products from across the world. During the 2016 event, Chevrolet debuted its newest car model, the 2017 Bolt EV. But rather than limit its audience to only those able to attend CES 2016, Chevrolet live streamed the event, giving all of the company's fans a chance to tune in and learn more about the product. Chevrolet also responded to Facebook comments in real time to keep its audience engaged with the video and answer any relevant questions.

Periscope

General Electric used Periscope to launch a five-day live streaming campaign called #droneweek. GE enabled Periscope on a group of drones to give their audience a real-time, bird's eye view of their facilities, featuring not only some of their industrial machinery, but also interviews with GE scientists and tech experts. GE managed to showcase five different facilities across the country, and even created a Twitter @GEdronepilot  to provide extra commentary and interact with viewers.

MeerKat

Meerkat, like Periscope can perform very similar functions and integrates with Twitter although not quite as popular, Meerkat has various functions that Periscope does not such as record saves and such so do check it out.

Ready to Try It?
These are not the only live streaming platforms out there. Tons of applications and websites exist, and are used by millions of people every day. There's so much potential for brands and groups to use these outlets creatively to gain recognition, authority, and interest.

Roy Garton 
​FDMC Social and Digital Media