Here, I’ll hold your hand and guide you in the little known ways to optimize your YouTube Live streams. You’ll be able to get better results when you do these tweaks. Let’s start by answering why you should use YouTube Live – Just in case you need some motivation to continue using YouTube Live for your marketing campaigns!
Why Should I Use YouTube Live for My Digital Marketing Campaigns,
YouTube Live is an indispensible tool that can improve the results of your digital marketing campaigns. This technology offers a better solution than live events where geographical limitations abound – With YouTube Live, you’ll be able to cost-effectively reach your ideal customers and prospects wherever they are in the world!
YouTube is the world’s most widely used video repository with more than 1 billion users today. This platform has over 4 billion video views per day. Live stream views make up a significant part of YouTube?s daily viewership volume – YouTube reaches more 18 to 50-year old viewers than any other cable network in the USA!
Using YouTube Live can make your broadcasts more urgent in the eyes of your target audience. Your ideal customers and prospects might be more passive when dealing with online content. That’s because they can go back to your content whenever they want. With YouTube Live streams – They’ll see the urgency in immediately taking advantage of your one-time content presentations!
So now, enough about the benefits that YouTube Live can give your business. Let’s say you’ve already decided to use YouTube Live to augment your digital marketing campaigns – Here are some ways that you should do to optimize your YouTube Live video streams and increase the results of your campaigns:
How Can I Optimize My YouTube Live Streams,
Let’s say you’ve already have a verified YouTube channel that’s in good standing without any live stream restrictions. After checking if live streaming has indeed been enabled through YouTube?s Creator Studio tools, remember to do these things before publishing your YouTube Live streams:
Choose the right option when creating your YouTube Live stream.
You’re presented with two options – Stream now and Events.
The Stream now option is a quick and easy way to start your live video streams.
The Events option can provide you with more features for your live video streams. These include privacy settings, schedule video stream start time, set up redundant backup streams, develop and simultaneously broadcast multiple live streams.
To know which option to choose, check out these simple to follow ways on what you should do with your YouTube Live stream:
1. Download your encoder. This is a piece of software for compressing audio and video into certain formats that are supported by YouTube. To ensure that the majority of your target viewers will be able to watch your YouTube Live streams without any issues, YouTube automatically converts your streams into lower bit rate formats that are compatible with standard HLS and iOS protocols.
2. Set up your encoder. You’ll need to use the correct server URL and stream name / key.
3. Create a captivating title for your YouTube Live stream. A good title should be able to effectively grab the attention of your target audience.
4. Also create a short and sweet description for your video stream. A good description should be able to compel your ideal customers and prospects to watch your YouTube Live streams.
5. Don’t forget to include an attention-grabbing thumbnail that’s directly relevant to the topic of your YouTube Live stream. Remember, a lot of viewers today just skim through Web content before deciding to look closer at something. Most of them look at thumbnails and icons when doing this.
6. Enter tags that are most relevant to the topic of your YouTube Live stream. If you know the tags that are used in relevant YouTube videos that are very popular across your ideal customers and prospects, then you should also use these tags for your live video stream. This will allow your YouTube Live stream to be included by Youtube in their list of recommended videos. More viewers will be able to see your live video streams while they?re watching other relevant videos in Youtube.
7. Inform your target audience about your next stream time. You can do this by entering a schedule for your upcoming YouTube Live stream. Keep in mind that not too many viewers will subscribe to offers that they’ve heard for the first time, so it’s best to announce our next live airing.
8. Consider using the Fan Funding card feature of YouTube Live. This can allow you to earn additional income for your live video stream.
9. Carefully choose the most relevant category for your YouTube Live stream. This will enable YouTube to recommend your live video stream to viewers who are subscribed to the video category that you chose. If you want to advertise your live video stream in YouTube, then this can also help display your ad to the right audience.
10. Don’t forget to set the privacy settings of your YouTube Live stream to public. You’d want to get as many viewers from your target audience as possible. Many viewers share live video streams, and most of their shares end up in the feeds and emails of users who might not be subscribe to your channel just yet.
11. Select Low Latency in the Stream Options tab when your target audience is in countries with average Internet speed and bandwidth, especially if they mainly connect to the Internet using their mobile devices. On the other hand, you can select Highest Quality if you know for sure that your ideal customers and prospects have sufficient Internet speed and bandwidth along with the processing power to accommodate high quality video streams.
12. Choose the “Mark archive unlisted when complete” checkbox. This is in case your content rights are limited to just the live stream.
While your YouTube Live stream is ongoing, keep in mind to do the following things:
* Use YouTube?s live chat feature to interact with your viewers as much as possible. Your objective as a YouTube Live video stream host is to entice your viewers to engage in meaningful discussions with you and other users.
* Use YouTube?s sharing tools to promote your YouTube Live stream across relevant social networks where your target audience hangs out. You’ll be able to reach more of your ideal customers and prospects when you do this.
* Observe the data in YouTube?s Analytics section for real time stats. You’ll be able to do some offsite tweaks when you do this, such as sharing your YouTube Live video stream across the social networks where most of your viewers are coming from and sharing your content.
* Use the Stream Health tab to closely monitor how your live video stream is going. You’ll be able to spot issues before they become bigger problems, preventing more serious issues.
* Before the end of your YouTube Live stream, announce to your viewers your next live event schedule. You should also post this in the live chat thread and share this announcement to relevant social networks.
Once your YouTube Live stream ends, remember to do the following things:
* Make sure that your encoder has already stopped sending content. Otherwise, YouTube Live won’t end your live video stream.
* Keep in mind that YouTube only archives live video streams for 12 hours. So, download a backup copy of your live video stream and store it locally. If you intend to do this using YouTube Video Editor, then remember that archived videos can only be edited through the YouTube Video Editor 3 hours after it has been archived.
* Post an opt-in subscription offer in your website for accessing your recorded live video streams. This can help you get more subscribers. You can advertise your opt-in offer in relevant social networks.
To wrap up, I have one piece of advice for those who have yet to do any video marketing campaign:
If you think you aren’t cut out as a video host who can captivate your ideal viewers and compel them to engage with your content, then don’t let that stop you from taking advantage of what YouTube Live can do for your business, especially with the more than 1 billion viewers who regularly watch YouTube around the world! Your best option is to hire someone with the right experience.
You’ll also be able to free up your time and focus your attention to the more important things in your business.
