Influencers have been around for some time, but they’ve hit their pinnacle of success with the prolific increase in live streaming. Today, influencer marketing has become the key to driving brand awareness, increasing viewership, and boosting sales.
If you’re wondering where to begin with influencer marketing, this blog is a must-read.
In this Article:
🎦 What is Influencer Marketing?🎦
Influencer marketing is essentially Word-of-Mouth marketing gone big. Influencers are usually external content creators with substantial fan following, thriving on the audience’s trust. Brands encash this element of trust to enhance their credibility. So, the influencers align their content around your brand, pitch in personal recommendations, and pooof – you can witness your brand equity soaring to new levels. Also, finding a suitable influencer can be challenging. Many influencers acquire huge followings due to their niche, but they won’t always emulate your brand’s values and voice.
Influencer marketing is a sub-domain of what we call the Creator Economy. The Creator Economy thrives on more than 50 million content curators – independent creators, community builders, bloggers, and videographers – who have effectively helped build millions of million-dollar companies. Today, the Creator Market is worth over $104.2 billion and indeed is a force to reckon with.
❓Why Influencer Marketing❓
In today’s digital age, when the entire marketing concept revolves around user-generated content (UGC), people tend to trust the advice and opinions of their friends and family more than the brands themselves. Even so, they trust recommendations and reviews of their favorite people – celebrities and influencers. So, influencer marketing offers social proof to people at large to trust the brand via recommendations of people they admire.
But the million-dollar question is, when is influencer marketing the most effective?
Influencer marketing is most effective when the endorsement is authentic. Remember that people are smart enough to decipher genuine recommendations from fake or paid reviews.
🧑🤝🧑Influencer Marketing & Live Streaming
Influencer marketing is all about connecting with the audience and who can do it better other than live streaming. Live streaming is undeniably the best way to engage with the audience in real-time, strike conversations, and address their queries and concerns to build trust and credibility. But that’s not it; there are several other feathers in the cap that make live streaming a perfect match for influencer marketing:
🔴 It’s free and easy – Live streaming is way easier than recording a Video on Demand (VOD). A two-minute VOD might take two hours to edit, but a thirty-minute live stream will only require a few minutes of prep and another thirty minutes of streaming. And it’s free – all you need is a smartphone and a social account, and you’re good to go.
🔴 Algorithms love live streaming – It’s easy to get noticed by social platforms’ algorithms via live streaming. On platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, users who are live appear at the top of the feed for their followers.
🔴 Results and Immediate and Quantifiable – Live streams deliver immediate results; an increase in the size of your audience, increased purchases through your website through influencers’ links, etc.
💡Tips for Influencer Marketing💡
Build your audience beyond a single platform. Multistream on several social networks simultaneously to increase your content’s discoverability. You’ve already invested hard work in building your following on these networks, then why not engage all of them? With OneStream Live, you can multicast your live streams on more than 45 social media platforms at once. You can even embed your live streams on your brand’s website and target an even larger audience.
Read: What is Multistreaming — How to do Real-Time Multistreaming with OneStream Live?
💻🎤Invest in Live Streaming Equipment🎤💻
While you can simply go live from your smartphone, making a smart investment in professional live streaming equipment won’t hurt. Even if you’re short on budget, you can purchase a decent webcam, external mic, and good lighting to create high-quality live streams. These three pieces of gear alone can significantly improve the quality of your live streams.
Read: Checklist for Professional Live Streaming
🤝Collaborate with Brands that You Actually Like🤝
If you don’t like the brand you’re trying to promote, it’ll reflect in your content. You’ll feel less engaged and less enthusiastic, and your audience will instantly figure it out
♻️Repurpose♻️
Don’t just leave your live streams hanging there. After all, you’ve put in quite some effort to make them a success. Repurpose your live streams to drive the maximum value out of your live streams. How about sharing graphic posts about the products you endorse, tweeting short snippets, or putting up eye-catchy gifs?
Read More: How to Increase Views for your Live Streams
📜Avoid Scripting📜
While it’s always good to plan and prepare for your live stream, make sure you don’t overdo the script. Try being genuine when you’re live, especially when speaking about the brand partner. Your followers are there to watch you and get fascinated by your persona, be sure to give them what they want.
Read More: Top 5 Live Streaming Best Practices in 2023
⭐Use a Professional Streaming Solution⭐
While you may have many alternatives available for live streaming software, make sure you choose wisely. OneStream Live is a cloud-based, easy-to-use live streaming platform that supports multistreaming to 45+ social media and the web simultaneously. So, you can go live on all your favorite platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and LinkedIn, directly from your browser or straight from your mobile phone using the OneStream Android or App. Not only can you broadcast real-time streams, but you can also schedule your pre-recorded streams to go live on your desired date and time. You can even create a dedicated webpage for live streaming your broadcasts using Hosted Live Pages and deliver a wholesome experience to your followers.
🔅Let's Wrap Up🔅
Live streaming opens up new opportunities for influencers to build brand communities and lasting brand relationships. Capitalizing upon the power of real-time engagement, live streaming allows you, as an influencer, to draw closer to your followers while also attracting the limelight from brand partners.
So, to be a successful influencer, you gotta be an incredible live streamer!
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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!