Marketing and branding experts have long touted the power of live video content to build genuine, long-lasting relationships with target audiences. Not only does this help you improve your follower count, but it can also help you boost your brand recognition among new viewers. But to do so, you’ll need to focus on how to make your live videos interesting and engaging.
To help, 10 members of Young Entrepreneur Council discuss their best tips for successfully leveraging live video content to improve your brand recognition and grow your brand’s following on social media and beyond.
Members pictured from left to right.
Photos courtesy of the individual members.
1. Leverage Fun Backdrops And Gamification
It depends on where the live video is taking place, but for brand recognition and followers on social media, we strongly suggest welcoming new users right away and making them wonder “What’s going on?” with fun backdrops and gamification. Both will increase your average user watch time. That is the primary metric algorithms for TikTok, YouTube and Instagram look at to judge if they should show that live video to more users. It will help increase brand recognition and your following, and you’ll also stand out from the crowd and not be just another livestream. – Ethan Kramer, EK Creative
2. Focus On Genuinely Helping Your Audience
We have found that webinars featuring our customers and the insights and techniques that make them successful have been very engaging both for our current customer community and for new prospective customers. The key for a successful live video is to focus on making the discussion genuinely helpful to the audience and not just a self-promotional thing. That’s why focusing on insights that are generally useful to people regardless of whether they use your product is better than primarily talking about your product. Bringing value drives engagement, and then you can build relationships of trust with your audience. An example of how we did this successfully was when we invited a customer of ours—head coach Mike Sullivan of the Pittsburgh Penguins—to share about building a winning culture. It was a huge hit. – Andrew Powell, Learn to Win
3. Engage Watchers By Answering Key Questions
Leveraging a trending topic or answering key questions the audience has are great ways to show your expertise in the industry, which can build trust and advocacy. Early preparation and bringing on support staff, such as question curators and moderators, are crucial steps to ensure everything runs as expected. In addition, engaging and interacting with the audience through Q&A participation, live polls and giveaways helps create a sense of community and advocacy, boosting both brand recognition and followers. – Julian Hamood, Trusted Tech Team
4. Collaborate With Other Brands Or Influencers
Don’t be afraid to collaborate! Building connections with other brands or influencers in your field is a great way to share the wealth of an audience. As a content creator, I think many people in our field think that collaboration will lead to stealing numbers or ideas, but in reality, you get the exact opposite results. Partner up with someone who’s aligned enough with your target audience that yours will still tune in, but don’t be afraid to branch out a bit! This will show your target audiences that your live feeds always have the potential to offer up something new to them and will make them excited to come back for more. – Isabelle Shee, GROW
5. Remember To Be Genuine And Authentic
Be genuine and authentic, and understand what your audience is after. Have a clear understanding of the objectives of your live video and make sure you outline exactly how you would go about attaining the goals your audience is wanting expert insight on. This, presented by a personality who is genuinely likable, respectable and trustworthy, is worth a million dollars and will be sure to get you both the following you strive for as well as the recognition and return you want to see from your videos. Offer value and position yourself as a thought leader whom your audience would like to sit down and have a chat with. – Magnus Simonarson, Consultwebs
6. Create An Ongoing Series
Create an ongoing show that regularly addresses a particular topic or provides content related to your business. A regular series helps you build familiarity with viewers by providing them with anticipated, reliable content they come back to week after week. With a series, you want people tuning into each episode of your show as much as possible, so avoid skipping weeks without warning unless necessary. Just let people know ahead of time when there will be breaks between sessions. Also, try not to mix up topics too often; aim for consistency within each season’s content throughout its duration for maximum engagement from followers who get involved every week. Live series are perfect for getting your customer demographics by using polls, Q&As and discussing audience questions. – Tonika Bruce, Lead Nicely, Inc.
7. Reward Viewers For Participating
When it comes to leveraging live video content to build relationships and increase your following, engagement is key. You’ll want to find ways to reward people for participating in your live video. This could be anything from offering a coupon code or free trial of a product or service to simply saying thank you by sending them a special gift. You can also hold a giveaway contest. When you offer something for free, it surprises people and also gets them excited about engaging with your brand live. So, you not only get visibility, but you also build goodwill among your audience. – Blair Williams, MemberPress
8. Ensure Your Audience Knows It’s Happening
Live video content sounds exciting—as long as people actually show up. Even somewhat established brands fail to generate traction and bring their audience aboard with ad-hoc, last-minute sessions. Without sufficient planning and promotion, you can easily end up sharing your strategic advice with half a dozen viewers. Treat live video sessions as you do an important conference event. Promote across your networks. Send newsletters. Invite people with calendar reminders. Use social platforms and their event tooling to build the audience. Don’t miss the opportunity to maximize your live video impact solely because your audience has no idea the event is about to happen. – Mario Peshev, DevriX
9. Get Watchers Involved
Live video content can boost brand recognition when you involve your audience. You can do this by asking questions of your audience. By asking them to share their opinions and experiences, you can create conversation and engagement around your brand, and it makes them feel like they’re co-creators and invested instead of passive recipients. It also makes your business, your products and you more real to them instead of some faceless entity. The benefits keep flowing as people see others engage, and this creates the sense that you have an avid fan base, which in turn builds authority and trust. – Syed Balkhi, WPBeginner
10. Pay Attention To Timeliness
Live video content is popular because it can be fast. This is why the video-first strategy came about. Put out a live or raw video before crafting a well-edited output for various platforms. The video must be something the public wants to consume, so it has to be timely. During the pandemic, we started a video podcast discussing various issues that cropped up because of Covid. We discussed mental health, care tips and how businesses coped during the pandemic. Video content does not have to be solely about business anymore as long as it is timely and people care to know about it—though remind people that the video is brand sponsored. You must also diversify your content, so pepper outputs with brand-focused videos like live tutorials or behind-the-scenes coverage. – Bryce Welker, Big 4 Accounting Firms
