How do you measure the success of your live streams?
Audience engagement is the most important success metric in live streaming. So, what can you do to gain audience attention and engage with the viewers during your event? How can you make your live streams more engaging? This blog looks at expert tips for maximizing livestream engagement.
In this Article:
📅 Devising a Live Streaming Strategy that Engages
Preparing for live streaming is just not limited to checking for the camera and mic. To gain the most out of the live stream, you need to have a proper approach that can help you fetch maximum engagements. This can be accomplished by exploiting many options relevant to making the live stream worthwhile for the audience. But if you fail to engage with the audience effectively, it is obvious that they will turn to either a new Instagram notification or a messenger pop-up.
Pro-Tip: While devising your live streaming strategy, make sure you avoid these common live streaming mistakes.
Read More: Top 6 Live Streaming Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
The impact of high user engagement on live streams is based on the consistency of social media and audience retention in terms of sharing exciting content and constant follow-ups! To market your brand, increase engagement or build your audience, it remains imperative to understand the expectations of your target audience. Ask questions like “What do they like?” and “What tactics will elicit their response?” Then make a rough draft of your video content. Make sure to give your followers something unique to relate to you; make it your personalized style like you can take small pauses where you might want the users to respond.
Read More: How to Increase Views for your Live Streams
💡 Tips to Increase Audience Engagement
As much as it is important to multistream on social media channels, it is equally important that you gain the most out of the live stream through maximized engagements.
🗣️ Speak to your Audience
During your live streams, make sure to interact with your audience in real-time. Well, this is precisely why they tuned into your live broadcast instead of a Video-on-Demand (VOD). So, engage with your audience and acknowledge them while you’re live:
- Respond to the audience in a way that allows the audience to relate to you and your brand.
- Value the post-broadcast feedback and openly ask for suggestions.
- Ask questions and answer theirs.
- Promote a call-to-action – share the live stream, hit like, leave comments, etc.
▶️ Engage, Even if it’s a Pre-Recorded Stream
Pre-recorded videos can help you schedule the stream and allow you to engage with your audience in the comment sections fully. This is one of the most convenient ways of sharing your content without the hassle of going live and instead dedicating all the attention to audience engagement. With OneStream Live, you can schedule your pre-recorded streams up to 60 days in advance and devote all your energy to interacting with your viewers.
Read More: Tips to Schedule your Videos for Greater Reach
✴️ Add Value to the Live Stream
By adding value, we mean you develop curiosity amongst your audience regarding your live streams. Curiosity can convert something boring and mundane into something very interactive and exciting. That done, tell your viewers what they’ll gain from your live stream?
- Some extra knowledge
- A promotional offer
- A discount coupon
- Free tickets to their favorite movie
Read More: Repurpose your Live Streams: Restream Old Videos for Better Audience Outreach
🔺 Keep the Audience Hooked
Keeping the audience attentive can be tricky, especially in longer live streams.
- Offer them something that you can develop their curiosity around. How about announcing a guest star!
- Invite a celebrity and interview them to add authenticity to your channel. Or announce a special discount for viewers.
- Tell them about your upcoming live streams.
The most effective method is to keep the audience suspicious about what is in store for them in the latter part of the live stream. They will have their eyes glued to your stream; we promise.
Read More: Lacking Live Stream Viewers? Here’s How to Attract Attention and Boost Views!
✅ Be Prepared
Live streaming is all about being there in the moment – being spontaneous and responsive. But you must also be prepared to face some awkward questions.
- Keep a rough draft, so you don’t miss out on anything you planned for earlier.
- Joke around, take suggestions openly but don’t ignore your viewers’ feedback. It is always valuable.
- Viewers can make a demand, ask you to sing or dance, or show any of your talents. Do that! Your viewers are your admirers.
- Never forget your goal. The goal shouldn’t be just to market/push the product, brand, or service, but it must focus on building a valuable relationship with your audience.
♾️ Set the Theme
Seasonal themes for your live stream give a relatable feel to your audience. Know your audiences, and set the theme of your live stream accordingly to make your content inclusive – as it’s for everyone and anyone can tune in to watch! Some engaging lines can be:
- Share yellow hearts if you think it’s a cool idea for autumn!
- A holiday theme will make the stream attractive.
- Click wow if you like to see more stuff like that.
- Let me know in the comments what season I should pick next by sharing hearts, and I will guess and pick the next season on your votes!
These would help keep the audience attentive because aesthetics is something that strikes a lot of interest at times.
📣 Provide Short Recaps
At times, live streams can be lengthy, making it difficult to keep the audience engaged. Here’s what you can do:
- Take short breaks after 10–15 minutes for a quick recap.
- Break a light question-answer session in the middle of the stream.
- Take questions, and never feel interrupted.
- Offer short recaps now and then to keep the audience on track with the topic
💬 Ask Opinions
The best way to engage an audience is through interacting with them properly rather than clinging to your discussion. Often, a watcher gets bored of the continuous discussion and might decide to jump out. An effective method to curb this is to engage the audience for opinions:
- Ask them to use a certain hashtag. You can drop a personal hashtag to help market your stream.
- Ask for engaging and thought-provoking suggestions like “Let me know what topics, issues, latest trends, sort of music, etc., you want me to cover in the future live streams!”
- Make comments on hot topics in News or on social media. Give your opinion and ask people’s opinions.
- Share your experiences and ask for theirs.
😜 Keep it Fun
There are numerous ways you can make your live stream fun and interactive session for the users.
- Share some jokes or simple puns that could break a smile easily.
- Introduce a challenge during the live stream.
- Show behind the scenes of live streaming setup.
- Show bloopers if you are doing pre-recorded live streaming.
- Dedicate a time for giveaways to the viewers.
- Give your viewers a deal or promotional code if they promote your streaming channel.
- Introduce the tools you use. Let people know how you created smooth live streaming.
Read More: Top 10 Content Ideas for Live Streaming
🚀 Bonus Tip: Use a Professional Live Streaming Solution
Selecting the right streaming tool is a core component of a successful and engaging live stream. Using a professional solution like OneStream Live will erase you of all your live streaming concerns, so you can solely concentrate on audience engagement. You can multistream on 40+ social media simultaneously, so fetch the maximum viewership. You can create a dedicated live streaming webpage to host your audience with a magnificent branded live streaming experience. You can respond to all your viewers’ comments in a single window via Unified Chat.
With OneStream Live, the sky’s the limit!
Download OneStream Mobile App.
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OneStream Live is a cloud-based live streaming solution to create, schedule, and multistream professional-looking live streams across 45+ social media platforms and the web simultaneously. For content-related queries and feedback, write to us at [email protected]. You’re also welcome to Write for Us!
