March 31, 2016
A few days ago, Periscope passed its first birthday! And what a year of fireworks it has been for the live streaming mobile platform. Twitter recently announced that in a single year, the app has streamed 200 million broadcasts, and 50% of which were created in just the last 3 months. From small startup, to a fundamental part of Twitter’s growth strategy, Periscope has knocked competitors Meerkat out of the live streaming ring.
Video, in particular live video, is hot property in 2016. To keep up with this trend, Periscope has been developing its offering at a rapid speed, including the ability to live stream video via GoPro, and from within tweets. The big boys Facebook, and Google are clambering onto the live streaming bandwagon. But Periscope CEO, KayvonBeykpour isn’t fazed by the late interest the industry has taken to live streaming. Here’s what he had to say:
“We were thinking about this before it was super interesting to the big players so the fact that Facebook, the 800-pound gorilla, woke up one day and decided that live was interesting is very flattering for us. They couldn’t have been further from this a year ago.”
What the industry thinks of live streaming
From a survey of brands, it was found that 44% ran a live streaming event in 2015. 25% of businesses surveyed saw results that prompted an increase their live streaming budgets for 2016.
Live streaming is immersive, immediate and easy to consume directly from your mobile. It offers brands a way to engage with their audience in an authentic, unedited way. There’s no safety net of Photoshop or post-production editing – it’s a real and honest means of brand storytelling, helping to facilitate a connection with consumers.
If that’s whet your appetite for live streaming, below we have listed a few tips before you embark on your first live broadcast, or “scope”.
1) Watch a few broadcasts before you take the leap
See what’s possible. Watching a few streams will help to give you inspiration on what you like or don’t, and to understand how Periscope works.
2) Make your followers feel special and offer exclusivity
Periscoping a Q&A with an industry influencer (a route that would work well for both B2B and B2C brands), or revealing behind-the-scenes footage of an event, whether it is London Fashion Week or SXSW, offer your followers exclusive content that isn’t available to everyone. These exclusive snippets of content give your audience a special experience that they would not otherwise be able to enjoy.
3) Be responsive
If you’re receiving comments or questions, engage with your audience and respond positively, to keep the conversation flowing. Bear in mind that you may have some viewers watching the stream 24hrs after it has ended, so repeating a question before answering it will help these viewers to follow the conversation. This is especially helpful if you plan to upload the video to YouTube; the comments that feature during a scope are not available within a saved video file.
Periscope offers a great opportunity for brands to experiment with content. However, the platform is still relatively new so there are no hard and fast rules around what makes a successful broadcast – the key is to test the water and experiment.