Consumer spending may reach 17 billion dollars on social apps thanks to livestreams according to an article from TechCrunch. With billions of people on social media spending more and more time, brands have seen a great opportunity to engage their audience in new ways that weren't done before.  

What makes live streaming attractive for the audience?

Live streaming attracts viewers for three main reasons:

• It's raw. People want to watch things unfold in real time.

• It's easy to see. Livestreaming lets people watch and interact with the event without turning on a television, computer, or tablet.

• It's intimate. Livestreaming lets people participate in the event. They can ask questions and send feedback in real time.

Where can you watch some live streams?

Live streaming became mainstream, starting with Facebook and Instagram, it’s also spreading to other platforms like YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Tik Tok and Twitch. The livestream feature has become so ubiquitous that some new services like Streamyard were built to run a live stream simultaneously on all these platforms.

Bottom line, you can watch live streams of all the major social media platforms.   

What makes live streaming a good one?

Video is king in content marketing, but it's important to understand the potential pitfalls. The power of livestreaming lies in its ability to capture the raw emotions of an audience in real time. Unlike traditional television advertising, live streaming allows for authentic consumer interactions, allowing brands to capture real time feedback, create intimate and informal moments, and forge deeper connections with their consumers. Live streaming helps brands to engage with consumers in a way that feels genuine. That’s the main difference with a scripted talk show you can find on a traditional tv network. 

How does that impact the audience?

Live streaming serves as a platform for brands to curate authentic, intimate, and hyper-personalized moments that appeal to consumers on a personal level. Rather than feeling the need to be perfect, live streaming allows for a more authentic and honest expression of a brand's values and ethos. The intimate nature of live streaming allows brands to tell their story in a way that feels closest to the consumer, and drive a higher level of engagement.

How does that change from TV production?

With live streaming, it has become much simpler, cheaper and faster. The cost and resources to start a live stream is so low that almost everyone can get started with a live stream. 

The metrics on viewership and reactions from the audience is real time. You don’t have to rely on another service to figure out if you have found an audience or not. Some tools can be used to evaluate when the viewership drops or increases to work on retention. 

Eventually, you can track sales from the livestreams by triggering a special promotion with an influencer. Some stories made the news where an influencer was able to sell in 12 hours what a Hong Kong mall sells in 12 months through a livestream attracting 4 million viewers and 300 million US dollars in sales (Deng 2021). 

Through live streaming, brands can establish a deeper connection with their consumers by curating moments and experiences that they remember and cherish. It allows us to tell a story in a way that feels real to the audience and billions of people around the world are now doing it.

References:

Deng, I 2021, ‘Comeback king: China’s disgraced live-streaming ‘sales king’ sells in 12 hours what a Hong Kong mall sells in 12 months’, South China Morning Post, 21 March, <https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3127332/comeback-king-chinas-disgraced-live-streaming-sales-king-sells-12>.