How Small Businesses Can Utilise Live Streaming

Live streaming has never been easier for businesses to incorporate into their day-to-day strategies. Where once the equipment was expensive and complicated, now brands can go live from their smartphones in professional quality at the touch of a button. It’s easy and affordable but can be hugely beneficial for small businesses to boost their visibility online and build their audience.

For small businesses who may have limited budgets to invest in their marketing strategies, live video provides an incredible amount of opportunity for generating brand awareness and doesn’t have to cost a penny.

Here are just some of the benefits of live video and how it can be used by small businesses in 2020…

Affordability

The first thing to keep in mind is how affordable live streaming can be as a strategy. If your small business is working under strict budgets, you don’t need to spend any money to create a live streaming setup. You can use a smartphone and a free online encoder to create fully streamable content to go live to your audience or opt to go live on social media for free.

There are many professional live streaming destinations to choose from so small businesses can find a platform that suits their unique budget and goals. Zidivo was designed with professionals in mind, where businesses can go live in HD-quality on any webpage to huge audiences. What’s more, the platform is completely affordable costing businesses as little as £17 per month to go live.

Reach

Brands can use live video to gain a huge amount of reach online. Particularly when live streaming on social media, small businesses can generate a large audience without having to spend a penny, simply by promoting their live stream in the right way and using relevant hashtags.

Social media now usually notifies people when accounts they follow go live, allowing brands to grab the attention of their followers straight away and benefit from the immediate visibility.

Customer rapport

By going live on a regular basis, you can build positive relationships and establish trust with your audience and potential customers. As consumers, we love seeing the faces behind a brand and there’s an immediate level of trust established when businesses go live. Live video is naturally authentic due to the real-time nature of the content, allowing small businesses to respond to viewers and customers there and then. You can interact with your audience, answer any queries and overall establish a positive reputation for your brand.

Analysis

Small businesses can even benefit from their live streams once their videos have finished. You can use all the engagement such as comments, viewer count, likes, and dislikes to measure how effective your live videos have been, how much traffic they have generated to your businesses site and more.

Live video essentially provides small businesses with free insight into how people feel about your brand and products. You can use comments and queries to educate future strategies and identify which of your products generate the most attention.

Promotion

Live video also provides small businesses with a promotional material to use to generate attention both on social media and in the search results. The nature of live video allows you to create a sense of urgency in the run up to your live stream, whether you are releasing or demonstrating a new product, hosting a live event or competition or interviewing an industry expert. By setting dates and times for your live video, you can promote them on social media in the run-up, generate interest and build an audience so your video is all set for success on the day.