Broadcasting, Live Streaming by Industry, Church + House of Worship, Hybrid Events, How To Live Stream
Once autumn has settled in and the year draws to a close, we begin to look forward to upcoming holidays and major streaming events. But most importantly, we want to help ensure you have everything you need to reach your audience and achieve your live streaming goals.
This post covers the importance of live streaming, engagement, and promoting your streams, along with some examples that show how to do it well.
This simple formula can help even a one-person crew accomplish their streaming goals during the holiday season. Let’s break down each part of the equation.
Live streams are essential. You can’t have a successful holiday season without a stream. Why? Because the majority of US states experience colder temperatures, snow, bad weather, and poor traffic conditions. Also, October through December is the busiest time of the year. People are traveling, prepping for holidays, and squeezing in those last few days off, which means they aren’t always home or available to attend events in person. So they need the option to watch things on the road or from afar.
For obvious reasons, viewership is also crucial. A live stream can’t be deemed successful if no one watches it. So promoting and preparing your viewers for upcoming broadcasts is a must. Let’s talk about promoting your streams.
Here are a few options, ranked in order of easiest/most popular to most difficult.
Promoting your streams on social media is a great way to expand your audience beyond those who are part of your organization. You can reach new viewers who search for related events or categories and stumble upon your stream.
You can also have dedicated followers of your channels who go there to know when and where the upcoming streams will be. Another way to get the word out is to create a Facebook group specifically for your organization or invite followers to a Facebook event with all the details. Both allow for a more niche way of interacting with people who plan to attend the event in person or virtually.
If you're using a broadcasting platform like BoxCast, you can automatically let your social media followers know you plan to go live. If you've scheduled a live stream in advance, your social media platform of choice will create an announcement post on your profile. This will notify your followers when you'll be live streaming on that particular platform.
One way to let viewers know when upcoming events are is to email them before they happen. A good marketing rule here is the rule of threes. This rule has a few different approaches, but we’re explicitly talking about emailing your list three times for this marketing channel.
Your email cadence can look like this:
Each email has a purpose. Email one is for awareness and planning. You should have all the details ready and available, along with a sign-up call-to-action link (if required). Components should include the event stream's date, time, and URL. Email two is a gentle nudge reminding people not to forget your event is coming up. The last email is for accessibility, and puts the link to your live stream at the top of their inbox for easy access.
Engagement is the last piece of the equation, but certainly not the least valued. Engagement can be the act of interacting with your remote audience live via chat, or the after-live exchange on social media or through conversation. We’ll break down both.
Engaging viewers during the live stream is an easy way to ensure viewers on the other side of the screen feel included. Most streaming platforms have a chat feature built into their dashboards or platforms. Here at BoxCast, we use our Viewer Chat feature. It allows the host to start and moderate conversations, ask questions, provide links or resources, and let participants react.
Engagement after the broadcast has ended is equally important. If you let viewers watch via social media, you’ll want to be sure you’re ready to respond to questions and comments. While the chat won’t be live after the recording, some folks may still have things to say through private messages, email, or comments.
Now that you know the key factors to success, you’re ready to get out there and make any holiday or end-of-year stream the best it can be!
Remember: The execution of your live stream is just as important as the actual event — so be sure to plan for your hybrid event from all aspects, not just the in-person part. Want more info on hybrid events? Watch this episode of the BoxCast Podcast:
Listen to this podcast episode instead of watching:
We've got a bevy of resources to help you put on the best year-end and holiday live stream. Check out these articles to learn more about streaming hybrid and virtual events:
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