Are you live streaming for your small business? What live video tools do you use and need the most for social media growth?
How Live Video Features Help Increase Your Business’ Visibility on Social Media
Do you want your business to be noticed on social media? Live streaming will get you the coverage you need to help you grow your brand and bring in sales. But is it enough to just click on that Start button and begin talking to the camera?
Cold audiences respond better when they see a well-presented and put-together video. And thanks to technology, several tools and software have made it possible to create a professional-looking video. BeLive, in particular, went above and beyond to give users well-rounded solutions to assist their live video marketing efforts.
What live video features will help you shine in the midst of all the marketing and advertising going on in social media?
Basic BeLive Features To Make Your Show Look More Professional
BeLive has made it a mission to arm small business owners with the ammunition they need to engage with their target market in the easiest way possible. Thanks to several of its existing features, you can create a visually-appealing live show that also functions as a powerful communication tool for both warm and cold audiences.
Split-Screen Interviews
Instead of having just one host on screen, the split-screen feature allows you to invite up to 4 people to join you during the show. With it, you can hold a one-on-one interview with a famous person or a panel discussion of experts for a particular topic.
Organizing a multi-person show is easy with BeLive. All you need to do is share the guest link to the person you’re inviting to admit them to the show. Then, you just have to push your guest to staging when it’s time! Follow more detailed instructions here.
Inviting people to your live stream will definitely get you noticed on social media, especially if your guests have a lot of clout. Their followers will be introduced to you and you’ll also be advertised to a wider range of people.
Custom Overlays
Building your brand is important if you want to stand out on social media. Simply showing your face on the screen won’t cut it. You need to have a recognizable brand that your audience will see every time you go live. To do that, you need to show your logo, brand colors, and images everywhere, that includes your live stream.
With BeLive, you can customize your shows with your own frames and logo. Your brand collaterals will be right on the screen with you every time you go live.
Here’s a tutorial on how to edit your frames on the studio.
Media and Screen Sharing
Got a presentation to share or a video ad to play? The media and screen sharing option in the studio can help you there!
There are several ways to share media with your viewers:
- Screen sharing – as implied, you show your entire screen, a tab, a presentation, or a section of your desktop to your audience.
- Photo sharing – you can upload photos, posters, infographics, and even GIFs and show them on the screen when you’re live.
- Video upload – if you have a pre-recorded video that’s less than 100mb, then you can upload it into the studio and push it into staging to play it during the broadcast. This can be an intro or outro video.
- Play YouTube video – on the other hand, if you have a longer clip to share, then simply upload it on YouTube and input the link in the studio’s sharing section.
Comments Highlight
One way to build a following on social media is to make your viewers feel special. Highlighting their comments and responding to their questions while live will certainly make them feel important.
Incorporate your audience’s thoughts into your live streams by showing their comments on screen, even if they just want to say hi. With BeLive, you can easily do that with a click of a button. Follow this tutorial to know how to highlight viewers’ comments during your live show.
Onscreen Updates
Aside from showing your audience’s comments and questions on screen, you can also flash other important text through the onscreen updates. With text on screen, viewers who just tuned in can easily follow the discussion.
- Title – Set up the title to define certain sections of your show.
- Crawler – Doing a contest? Share your mechanics through the crawler so you don’t have to repeat instructions all the time. This will save you a lot of time!
Agenda
When you go live, do you prepare a script or do you wing it and just talk about anything under the sun? If you’re the type to just ramble on during a live broadcast, viewers may eventually get tired of watching your show. Remember, people on the internet have a shorter attention span. They can easily move on to another video if they can’t get any value from you.
So it’s important to set an agenda for your show. And with BeLive, you can set your right in front of you through the Agenda feature. You can also flash each section on the screen if you need to and write private notes under each item to remind yourself of important points.
More BeLive Features to Help You Expand Your Reach Beyond Streams
Aside from the live streaming functions mentioned above, BeLive has also added exciting new features to help entrepreneurs earn from streams aside from just marketing your brand!
Live Sales Link
Though it’s called Live Sales Link, this feature does more than just sell items. With it, you can share links to your product, e-books, forms, donation drives, campaigns, polls, and more.
Some great examples of live sales link usage include retailers selling their products live, coaches sharing their courses, bookstores offering free e-books, and even direct sellers playing games through a link.
Find out how BeLive’s Partners Manager Irene Chan earned $500 in affiliate sales using the Live Sales Link in this blog post.
Widget
Widgets aren’t just a fun addition to your broadcasts. This year, BeLive added some cool widgets to improve your live streaming experience. Now you can add your current temperature, days in quarantine, notes via the sticky notes, and a timer.
- Temperature and days in quarantine: This widget is great for daily live blogs of those monitoring their health.
- Sticky Notes: You can use the sticky notes to share information, links, and other data that you want to edit throughout the live stream.
- Timer: You don’t have to edit, download, then upload timer videos into the studio anymore. You can create your own live countdown with the timer widget with its editable text and branding colors. It’s also great to use when playing time-bound games with your viewers, demonstrating a recipe, and more.
Simulcast
If you want to get noticed on social media, then you should consistently go live on more than one social media platform. Simulcasting on both Facebook and YouTube saves you a whole lot of time! You’re basically working on two shows without doubling the stress of preparing and producing your material.
Of course, if you want to go live on each platform separately, that’s totally fine! But having an option to broadcast live on two sites at the same time is a huge advantage for business owners with limited time. Learn more about simulcasting and how it can help your business in this article.
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1080p HD Streaming
One of the gifts that technology has given us is high definition videos, which has become an important factor for viewers when watching clips. A live show with a pixelated video will turn off potential viewers.
A full HD stream, with custom frames, clear sound, and a topic with value will surely catch the attention of your target audience. BeLive is currently the only live streaming platform that supports 1080p resolution so you won’t have to worry about downgrading to 720p during a broadcast. Learn more about full HD streaming here.
Video Editor
Growing your business on social media doesn’t end when your live show does. Now you have a recording that can be repurposed into hundreds of other marketing assets!
Most small business owners lack the time and skill to edit and transform an existing live stream into a short clip for IGTV, Facebook stories, or LinkedIn. Fortunately, the BeLive team took that issue seriously.
With the Video Editor, you can trim, add text, change the background of a clip from your video, and download it as an edited clip without all the hassle! This process helps you save time and effort, especially if you’re not skilled in video editing as are most self-made entrepreneurs.
Check out this blog post about Video Editor and how it can change the way you market your small business.
What live video features do you think will help you build your brand on social media? And how will you utilize them in your business? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!
Want to learn more about live streaming for small businesses? Sign up with BeLive now and schedule your first live to know what it’s like. You can also join our online community consisting live streaming enthusiasts, content creators, and entrepreneurs!
Pam Amantiad is a Content Writer in BeLive’s Marketing Team. With a degree in Creative Writing, she has nearly a decade of experience in digital marketing, particularly in content creation as a copywriter and a freelance blog writer. Not contented with producing written outputs, she dove into the world of live video marketing in 2019 and hasn’t left since.
