Last updated on March 3rd, 2023 at 08:41 pm
Livestreams are all the rage these days, with every social media site getting involved in streaming.
Today, Jeremy welcomes Dane Golden from VidActionTV to talk about the best practices specifically for brands who want to improve their social presence through livestreaming; the challenges and pitfalls, but also the benefits of engaging in real time with their audience.
Enjoy, and please share if you find this episode valuable!
Transcript:
Jeremy Vest: Hey everybody this is Jeremy Vest from vidpow.com. Today I have Dane Golden.
Dane Golden: Hey what’s up Jeremy.
Jeremy Vest: How’s it going Dane?
Dane Golden: It’s going great.
Jeremy Vest: All right. Today we’re going to be talking about brands and live video. One thing you’ve probably noticed is YouTube has updated their live app. Facebook is all about promoting when people are live, you get an actual notification. Why and how should you go live with your brand? Dane Golden, how are you doing today? I’m just good. We already had the-
Dane Golden: I’m doing good, but you know the thing is, I think I should be asking you the questions, because you’re the one who’s really doing a ton with live video and brands. I’ve got some questions for you. I know you’ve been doing live video. I’ve been doing Facebook and YouTube, or what?
Jeremy Vest: Yeah, we’ve been expanding-
Dane Golden: For brands.
Jeremy Vest: -with Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram, live.
Dane Golden: For brands?
Jeremy Vest: Yes, for brands specifically.
Dane Golden: I didn’t even know Instagram live was a thing.
Jeremy Vest: Well yes, you can go live with Instagram now.
Dane Golden: Well, let’s ask you this question. When should you use one platform over another for a brand?
Jeremy Vest: It really comes down to your audience, and how you’ve developed your audience. One of the brands we’re working with is Car and Driver Magazine. They have over 2 million likes on Facebook, and not a whole lot of subscribers on YouTube. So it kind of makes sense that those 2 million plus people that have liked the Facebook page, are going to get notifications when you go live, it makes more sense to spend more energy and time on the platform with your bigger audience.
Dane Golden: So go with your audience as far as live?
Jeremy Vest: I would way start with your bigger audience. Other things we’re starting to do now, is we’re multi-casting to Facebook, Twitch, YouTube, all at the same time, with technology.
Dane Golden: There’s some sort of software switcher that allows you to do all of those at the same time? Simulcast?
Jeremy Vest: Absolutely.
Dane Golden: Let’s talk about some reasons as to why live versus on demand?
Jeremy Vest: When we’re talking about Facebook specifically, the main reason you want to go live, versus just having a video post, is right now, every person that that has liked your page and hasn’t changed the settings, will get a notification. With Car and Driver, too many people get notified that you went live. The power of that actually does trump most of the time, the ability for you to organically, a video to appear and show up in someone’s timeline.
Dane Golden: It’s like before they really started doing EdgeRank in the newsfeed on Facebook, where they said, “You know what, we’re only going to show your posts to some of the people, some of the people who are following a brand.” That’s what they do today. But if you’re a brand today, and you post a live video, they say, “Well forget all that, we’re notifying every single person that has liked your brand, that you are live.”
Jeremy Vest: Absolutely.
Dane Golden: That’s a huge advantage.
Jeremy Vest: It is. You can turn off notifications of someone that’s liked a page, or always show notifications. So there’s a lot of preference. As more people start going live, more people are going to start figuring out those preferences, right? Because if you follow 100 pages, everyone goes live everyday, you can get 100 notifications.
Obviously I think there is a threshold of how important this is. I think the best content’s going to ultimately surface. But right now it is the wild wild West, and I highly recommend people going live.
Dane Golden: Before I ask you what types of content go live, I have a nuance question that maybe no one cares about but me, but when you say live and there’s a notification, does that mean people are only watching it live, or instantly after it’s live, it technically becomes on demand? And what percentage of people watch it after the fact, versus while it’s live? Or do we know?
Jeremy Vest: I can tell you from our experience, once you stop the broadcast, and you’re no longer live, it immediately is an on-demand post. It switches from live, to was live. From our perspective, most of the brands we work with, about 50% of the views come during the actual live broadcast, and about 50% of them come in the next two days.
Then by day three or four, most of the time, we don’t get anymore views. Now there has been a few cases with the new Mustang, and some really heavy hitting content, to where that’s not the rule. However most of the time we’re getting about 50% of our views during the live session, and 50% afterwards, in the last-
Dane Golden: Do we know when that notification says, “The Jeremy Vest brand was live.” Or, “The Car and Driver brand was live.” Do we know how long those notifications persist?
Jeremy Vest: No I’m not sure. Once you get a notification, you’ve got a notification. I don’t know if it disappears. That’s a good question.
Dane Golden: What I’ve seen is that Car and Driver is live, or was live recently. But then it feels like some time after an hour or so afterwards, that there is no notification, but no one’s quoted about that, and those are things that are super hard to find out.
Jeremy Vest: Yeah, I mean from our experience what we found is, it just gets buried after a few hours. You have so many other notifications and things happening. One thing I can say especially about Facebook, and Instagram video and live video, is it tends to disappear a whole lot faster than, for experience a YouTube … a YouTube type platform is more of a library. You have your library of videos you’ve done on Facebook, and you can optimize them. There’s a lot of really great ways to have a strategic approach to it. But at the end of the day right now, it surfaces 72 hours later, most of the time, it’s time for your next piece of content.
Dane Golden: Let’s get into the content itself Jeremy. What types of live content win, and what’s the right duration?
Jeremy Vest: It always goes back to your audience. We work with a gaming company. What do you think people care about with live content on gaming? They care about gaming tips and tricks, following people along, let’s play, Twitch. People that want to learn how to play the game better.
When it comes to eSports professionals, they care about getting to know is able to play eSports for their profession. “I want to learn more about this person, and how they’re able to do that.”
For Car and Driver magazine, it’s pretty simple. People want to see the new cars that are coming out. The new features, what they’re all about.
I can tell you what’s not working very well, are things like press releases, and conferences, and announcements, and CEOs getting up to talk. Because unless you’re Apple, no one really cares.
Dane Golden: Okay. Good point.
Jeremy Vest: I would say the shiny stuff is really what you probably need to focus on, if you’re going to go live. Or unless you’re a giraffe giving birth. I don’t know if you’ve seen this in the last couple weeks.
Dane Golden: I had a great question for you. There’s a difference in live, for instance, if you’re teaching somebody how to do something as a brand, I’m big on how-to’s, and I feel with live how-to’s versus on-demand how-to’s, you want live to be a totally different experience, in that you’re responding to questions, or maybe calling out people. You may want to stretch it out, because at the beginning not enough people signed on, so you have not filler, but sort of a preamble before you really dive deep. As opposed to on-demand, you want it to be concise, get to the point, solve something right away. What’s the difference really?
Jeremy Vest: Yeah it’s completely a different piece. I’ve done a lot of how-to content myself. How-to content on a Facebook versus YouTube is completely different. I call it snackable sized, how-to content. On Facebook it’s like the BuzzFeed, tasty videos, where you see the ingredients going into a bowl, and then three seconds later you see like, “Hey that makes me hungry. I wanna eat.”
It’s really definitely different. When it comes to live, I highly recommend, there’s a ton of amazing types of content you can make. If for example, you’re doing a how-to live, asking questions is a great idea.
I’ve seen a segment recently, where someone doesn’t know how to do anything, and they ask the audience, and the audience teaches them how to build something.
They’re like, “Okay, I have a bicycle, and I have all the parts. I’ve never built the bicycle before. What do we do?” Then the audience … It’s a reverse how-to. The audience is engaged. What’s so brilliant about that, is the audience is teaching the expert how to do something. The engagement is what makes the velocity of the shares, and likes, and comments, more viral.
That’s a brilliant idea. Another idea is using the actual celebrities, or chefs, or what have you, the people, the experts, asking about questions, giving off-the-cuff advice. People want to see humans, not robots. The more personal and personality-driven live content you can make, the bad jokes, and everything, is the better it’s going to do. Ultimately what people are really missing with live content right now, is they’re just going live and they’re not providing value or entertainment.
As long as you have a key structure of getting through something, doing something together, making sure you interact with the audience, let them direct you, in how the show’s going to go. But as long as you’re providing value and entertainment, you’ll be okay. If you’re just going live for the sake of going live, and you don’t really have a strategy, you’re probably going to fail.
Dane Golden: What about before and/or after? Before do you want to tell people about it? Do you want to tell people while it’s going on via Twitter? You got to tell people that you’re going to have it, or maybe you don’t. Should you just go live and just see who shows up?
Jeremy Vest: My suggestion is to have a day and time every week where you’re going live the same time. I would announce it, and there’s a way to do it in Facebook where you can pre-announce it. I would tease it on Twitter and Facebook. On Facebook I would say, “Hey we’re going live today at 3 o’clock. Don’t forget.” Things like that. There are ways to pre-tease, and pre-announce it.
I do think it’s a good idea, on the banners of your artwork, I would say, “Live videos Thursdays at 3 o’clock Central.” So that’s on Facebook, and YouTube. I would broadcast as much as possible, but I would keep it consistent, the exact day and time every week, so that people can get used to it.
Dane Golden: Is this across Facebook and YouTube particularly? Is it still primarily a mobile phenomenon, or can you do it on desktop too?
Jeremy Vest: You can do it on desktop, definitely. There are various features, and some differences. For example, YouTube has the new live app, or it’s part of the app, where you can go live. It is a little bit different. You now have to have 1,000 subscribers. It was 10,000. So there are a little bit of differences, but ultimately it’s the same thing on desktop and mobile.
Dane Golden: All right. That’s how brands can win with live video on Facebook and YouTube now. Jeremy, this is your podcast. How can people find you?
Jeremy Vest: People can find me at vidpow.com, or vidpow bam everywhere.
Dane Golden: My name’s Dane Golden, from vidaction.tv, I’m @danegolden everywhere. So until next week, keep talking tube!
