To say that live stream broadcasting has taken off is probably the understatement of the year. It has opened up a whole new avenue for businesses to connect with their customers. While a live stream broadcast is great while it is occurring, you also want to take into account what can be done with the broadcasts after they are complete.

At the time of this writing,
Giving away free information has always been a great way to attract customers into your sales funnel. People still do it because it works. What is important when giving away information is to make sure is over-the-top quality. Otherwise, people are not going to read it and let it collect digital dust. Live stream broadcasts by contrast, present a higher level of interactivity than a standard PDF report. Of course, it needs to be said that if your broadcast is boring or does not offer high quality information, you will lessen the chance of achieving your intended results of getting eyes and ears on your broadcast. You message will be lost.

An effective idea on what to use your broadcasts for, is to set up a membership for the broadcasts. You can choose to charge members, or you can keep the membership free and monetize in other ways, like affiliate marketing or advertising. The broadcasts can be the foundation of the membership but you are certainly free to add more to it. In fact, you could set up a hybrid membership that allows free members to view the broadcasts but the premium members will get extra content.

Another possibility is to set up a YouTube channel where you will add each broadcast after they are complete. Then, it’s simply a matter of getting people to your broadcasts and asking them to subscribe to your channel. Again, it all has to do with quality so if you keep your broadcasts at high quality, people will gladly subscribe.

A third possibility is to network with other broadcasters and put together a mashup of related broadcasts. This can be done via some kind of Joint Venture (JV) relationship. This can then be sold as a larger package and all the JV partners will send traffic to this mega-product.
You could also offer an affiliate program where the affiliates keep a high percentage of the profits. In return, you get to keep the customers that they send you, on your list.

These are several ways that you can reuse the broadcasts that you create. The one thing you should not do is let your broadcasts sit idle. Always find methods to put them to use so that they can keep working for you.

Live video streaming is not a completely new concept. It’s just that it really took hold in the marketplace in 2015. Twitter saw the value in this and bought Periscope before it even released its product. For most people, where this concept is new to them, feel confused as to what to broadcast. This article will give some ideas as to what you can use for your material to broadcast.

Repurposed Content
If you have been doing online marketing for a long period of time, there is a pretty good chance you already have a blog or website and have been actively filling it with content. If so, you can use the content from your website as material for your broadcasts. In fact, you can set up a weekly broadcast and discuss one post each week. The key to doing this correctly is to make sure you are consistent with your broadcasts. Do them the same day and same time every week. Make sure to have a question and answer period at the end as this is how to get people coming back. One way to entice them to join the broadcasts is to offer to give something away but only to those who attend the broadcast. The freebie will be announced at the end. It’s a good idea to make the freebies valuable so they will want to get one each week. A list of great tips is one idea on what to give away.

Content from Private Label Rights (PLR)
PLR has gotten a bad reputation and for good reason. For a while, most of it was low quality and has flooded the internet. But that is all changing. There are providers of PLR who are committed to producing quality information and products. The landscape is changing which is great for people who need to consume content. Broadcasts are a great way for this to happen.
Keep in mind that if you use PLR you should change it up to make it your own. This will help you stand out as an authority which builds the trust needed for your audience to keep coming back.

Tutorials
People love to learn new skills. By using broadcasts to teach them something new is going to bring them back over and over again. This is a great method for engaging your audience with valuable information.

The topics that you can broadcast about are only limited by your imagination. This is definitely one of those situations where you want to think outside the box to come up with ideas that others are not.

Part 1 of this series covered some sources that you could use for your broadcasts. Here in part 2, you will discover how to find more content sources for your broadcasts.

Roundups and Industry News
People often don’t have time to find information online or don’t know how to do much more than a simple Google search. If you provide regular broadcasts containing information about the key companies within your industry, you will find your audience to be quite receptive to this.
You want to make yourself the authority in your industry. Be the person that everyone goes to for information surrounding your niche or market. Scan for news stories and interesting facts about the people in the industry. This can also be a great way to network with these people by letting them know ahead of time that you plan on talking about them in your broadcast. They may even invite people in their own network and lists to sit in on the broadcasts.

Product Reviews
Most people look for reviews when they are researching products online. Doing so in a broadcast takes it to a whole new level. People will pick up on your emotions as you tell them what’s good or bad about the product being reviewed.

Product Demonstrations
It’s one thing to read about the features of a product, but another altogether to see it demonstrated live. The difficulty here is that you need access to the products being demonstrated. But guess what? You can reach out to the product creators and ask if they will send you the products for free. They may be quite receptive to doing this, especially if you are showing the features of their products live on a broadcast. Don’t expect them to be receptive if you don’t have good things to say about the products, though.

Interviews
People love to hear from industry experts via interviews. If you can manage to invite someone who is an expert, this can make for a great broadcast. You will probably need a selfie stick or some way to pass the camera back and forth. The logistics make this one a bit trickier. Because of this, it’s doubtful others will copy it so you can be the pioneer if you figure it out.

As you can see, the only limits on what to broadcast are the ones you put on yourself. Use these ideas as well as others to become a leader in the live streaming space.

You find out about a great new product thats about to launch soon. You want to get a review of it to see if it’s worth all the surrounding hype. Then, you find someone who has reviewed the product, but it won’t be available for a couple of days. Bummer.
A friend of yours calls you up and tells you that he is seeing a live review of the program, streaming to his phone. You ask him is it on YouTube. He says no! It’s on Periscope!

Welcome to the world of live video streaming. If you haven’t heard of streaming platforms like Periscope, Meerkat, Blab.im, etc., you will soon. The concept is taking off like gangbusters. There’s a good reason for this, too! It’s quite an effective platform for getting your message out.
This message could be just about anything you can imagine, although if you are looking to truly connect with your audience you may want to keep the promotional messages to a minimum. Think value rather than sales. Value wins every single time.

The major platforms for live streaming are easy to use. If they weren’t the whole craze would not have caught on. You can sign up using your Twitter account, create a profile, and then start broadcasting live by hitting the record button.  You can enter a title in Periscope. Then, you just start talking into your camera and all those that join the broadcast will see what you are creating. On  Periscope they can interact with you via text.

There is a relatively newcomer to the live streaming scene and is changing how the game is played. It’s called Mirrativ. This platform allows you to share the screen of your mobile device in real time. It’s kind of like Camtasia (screen recording software) meets Periscope. If you have a cool app that you want to show friends, simply use Mirrativ and have your friends join in the demonstration. Gamers have taken to this platform as they love to show how they are doing with their gaming sessions. Twitch actually started that trend in gaming but requires users to be tethered to a PC in order for it to work. Mirrativ is standalone without any tethering requirements.
Mirrativ is not just for games. It can broadcast whatever is on the screen. This is going to make it easy to create tutorials for apps that exist on smart devices.

As marketers, we are told over and over again to connect with our customers. We have subscriber lists of people that have bought products from us before. However, they don’t really know who we are. Unless we are constantly bombarding them with emails and annoying them with offers, they are likely to forget about us. That is until you start to introduce live stream marketing into the mix.
With live stream marketing, you have a way of speaking directly to your customer base. You can give them tips and tricks about your products, or you can simply use the medium to keep in touch. Ask them if they have any questions or concerns about the products they bought from you. It can even be used to let them know about up and coming events.

Using a Personal Touch
There’s not too much in the marketing world that gets as personal as live stream media. Unless you plan on contacting every person on your list, one-on-one via phone, broadcasting via video is the next best thing. Customers will appreciate this kind of engagement because they see it is an actual person running the video. It turns a cold customer into a warm one and a warm customer into a hot one. This increases the trust factor of your customers by a wide margin. The hotter your customers are with respect to trust, the easier it is to get them to buy from you.

Are You Afraid of the Camera?
If you are camera shy, you still have options when it comes to live stream. You can outsource the broadcast. The person you choose to do the video should be on board with what you are trying to accomplish. This could present a problem if the person is unknown and has no real connection to your business. The best way around this is to find people that you have worked with on a long term basis who are as comfortable with you as you are with them.

Another choice is to find a friend or family member that you know is not afraid of the camera. If the budget is tight, you can offer them a percentage of the sales that come from the product you are selling.

The field is wide open for live stream marketing and it’s going to be interesting to see which players come to the foreground and which get left behind. One thing is certain, it’s going to be a great ride for marketers on the whole.

Live stream broadcasting is exciting and people are jumping on it like wild fires. But there are some key challenges that people using the technology are going to run up against. Bandwidth and buffering being two that come to mind.

Bandwidth has two issues. Video coupled with audio, uses a high amount of bandwidth. If you are one of those lucky enough to have a data plan on your smartphone with unlimited data usage, you probably have nothing to worry about. Although, talk to people that have reached a high amount of usage even on those plans. They will tell you their providers complain about fair use, etc.
If you have a plan that is limited, you could end up paying some hefty overage fees if you go over the limit. This may not be a problem if you are able to monetize as a result of the broadcasts you are doing. But you will need to make more than the extra charges that your smart device is running up.
Of course, if you are broadcasting from your home, you could easily set your phone up to use your Wi Fi connection. This will circumvent any usage on your data plan, assuming that your Wi Fi usage is still unlimited. At this point, most home internet plans allow for unlimited use. It remains to be seen if that will last forever.

Buffering can occur if you have a slow connection. If you plan on broadcasting, it is a good idea to stop any background processes from running during the broadcast. Also, you may want to shut down any file sharing and file uploads while the broadcast is running. Remember, you want to make the experience for your viewers as smooth as possible. Since broadcasting is live, any buffering will cause delays for your viewers. This will likely get them to move on from your broadcasts. The idea is to keep them coming back not to scare them off.

It’s going to be interesting to see, now that live video streaming has exploded onto the scene, how that will affect data plan prices going forward. It could be just the thing needed to motivate the phone service providers into offering more robust plans. These plans may come at a higher price, at least initially. But that is certainly a better option than having to pay per minute overages any time you go over your limits. Besides, as more phone service providers scramble to get your business, the end result will likely be lower prices across the board.

With all the buzz surrounding live stream broadcasts, it may not be clear on how businesses can use this technology. There are likely to be some creative ways as time goes on. Here are some of the more common uses.

Interviews
Most businesses can take advantage of interviewing experts in their field. Perhaps the business owner himself will want to be the one interviewed. It is simply a matter of finding someone to interview you and creating the broadcast. But even that isn’t completely necessary as you can run the interview on your own. You simply come up with questions that you want your viewers to know the answers to, then you start broadcasting those answers.

Customer Q&A
Why not invite several of your trusted customers to jump on a live stream broadcast and let them ask you questions about your products and services? They can also tell you what they like about your products and what areas could be improved. This is a golden opportunity to connect directly with them and get some great feedback.

Business Tips Column
Any business can offer to give tips about the business to customers and potential customers. Plumbers could teach people how to identify leaks in pipes. Marketers can give tips about how to increase conversions in a sales funnel, etc. These are just two of many examples.

Testimonials
Testimonials help sell more products. Potential customers love to know that others had a great experience with products and there is no better way to provide this than to use testimonials. The challenge will be in convincing customers to do so via a live broadcast. The app available from Periscope has made it quite easy for anyone to create a broadcast with smartphones.

A word of caution about testimonials: be sure to ask the customers to provide an honest testimonial. Governments are cracking down on false testimonials or ones that are given in exchange for cash or awards.

Before and After Broadcasts
Any company whose business model is to transform something into something better, can easily employ before and after broadcasts. This can help show potential customers just what kind of work the business is capable of doing.

Crowdfunding
You can use broadcasting to state your case when you want to raise funds for your business initiatives. You can give information on where the money is going to go. You can also let potential funders know what kinds of rewards are available (if any) at certain levels of funding. Also, you can get people that have pledged money to state why they chose to fund your initiatives.