4 Social Media Trends for 2022 Posted on January 20, 2022January 14, 2022 by Natalie Slyman Social media is an ever-evolving marketing medium. And if you want to keep up, it helps to be aware of the trends that are likely to be shaping the months to come. Most brands — well, 91.9% of them — use social media for marketing their business. If you’re one of them, you know just how difficult it can be to stay on top of new platforms, features, and metrics — especially during the previous couple of years. The good news is that 2022 is expected to have a bit more predictability as the industry continues to adapt to the disruptions of 2020 and 2021. There are also some exciting things on the horizon to be prepared for. Ready to move full speed ahead? The new year is here, and with it, a number of big changes in the ways that brands can communicate effectively with their audience online. Here are four social media for trends for 2022 that you should consider as you work on upcoming changes to your strategy and your social media calendar. 1. The Rise of Social Commerce We already know that consumers overwhelmingly want to make their purchases online, but more and more, they specifically want to make those purchases through social channels. It’s estimated that social media eCommerce — a.k.a. social commerce — will jump 22% from 2021 to 2022, with a total spending expectation of $45.74 billion, or 5.2% of all U.S. online retail sales. By 2025, that number should almost double to $79.64 billion. You’re probably already using social media to promote your products and services and drive prospects to your website to make a purchase. Going forward, the goal should be to skip that middle step entirely, allowing prospects to shop without clicking over to your site. To get started, set up shop with social commerce via platforms like Instagram Shop, Facebook Shop, and Pinterest Product Pins. Focus first on getting your top sellers up, then expand your inventory as it makes sense to do so. 2. Making an Impact with Micro-Targeting Targeting is already a cornerstone of productive social media engagement for brands, but it’s about to get a whole lot more specific. Micro-targeting takes all of the data you’ve been gathering for years and combines it with AI-driven predictive analytics to help you get the right content in front of the right people. We’re starting to see it at play in all sorts of marketing endeavors, including email marketing and paid ads. And unsurprisingly, it’s expected to make a splash with social media, too. Brands are still limited to the targeting parameters set out by individual platforms. Where micro-targeting can be of use is helping spread out your social presence among a wider range of platforms, keeping brand identity constant while also modifying your message for a more limited audience. Influencers will be instrumental in helping you do this, particularly when it comes to targeting smaller audiences within each channel. 3. Goodbye Instagram, Hello TikTok? Instagram is poised to lose its top spot as the number one platform for brands. Taking its place: TikTok, a video-sharing platform that, despite common misconceptions, isn’t just for teens. TikTok took on its billionth subscriber in 2021, boasting a global user base that has increased more than 1,000% in the past couple of years. Compare that to Instagram’s annual growth rate, which in 2021 was estimated at just 3.7%, and it’s easy to see how TikTok is fast on its way to taking the crown. The secret here is in TikTok’s rapid-speed algorithm for brands to target the right audience. There’s also a ton of opportunity for virality through both branded and non-branded content. In 2020, Ocean Spray experienced a massive spike to the tune of 15 billion media impressions in one month, all because a video in which someone was drinking an Ocean Spray drink went viral. 4. Using Social Listening to Pay Attention Psst… hear that? It’s a slew of companies working to improve their social listening skills and ensure they’re never the last to chime in on important conversations. Social listening isn’t new, but it is becoming increasingly important. Keeping your ear to the ground will be integral in 2022, both for getting ahead of potential PR issues and for creating content that’s optimized for your audiences’ interests — and optimized to perform against your competitors. Use a social media automation tool to streamline social listening, and pay attention not just to your brand name but to relevant hashtags, impressions, and mentions related to your industry and other brands you are in direct competition with. Ready to Take Action? You’ve got the info; now get to work. Start incorporating 2022’s social media trends into your strategy as soon as you can, focusing on the actions that make the most sense for your brand and your goals. Who knows, this may just be the year your social efforts pay off in big ways you never imagined.
Google Cookie Cutting: How You Can Prepare Posted on January 13, 2022November 22, 2023 by Jess Lunk A tide of cookieless internet is sweeping across the digital marketing industry. Mozilla Firefox and Safari web browser have already phased out cookies. And the biggest player in the web browser niche – Google Chrome – has announced it will follow suit by 2023. As the cookieless internet unfolds, you have to come up with better ways to track users online. But, where do you start when no one seems to have the crystal ball to predict what will happen when Chrome abolishes cookies? Fret not. In this article, we’ll discuss the burgeoning cookieless web and how it impacts digital marketing. We’ll also tell you some fascinating ways to prepare for the wave of change. Google Plans to Phase Out Cookies By 2023 When Firefox and Safari blocked third-party cookies, their move didn’t cause a buzz. Google Chrome has only announced its plan to abolish cookies, but there is a lot of fuss already. We can see why. Chrome is the most influential web browser, controlling more than 64% of the global web traffic. That raises two concerns. First, Chrome runs the industry, and any change it implements could turn the digital marketing industry upside down. Second, the whole idea of a cookieless internet was to eliminate user tracking, however, Google isn’t for this idea. Rather, the company is only replacing third-party cookies with alternatives. As for what alternative Google settles for, that remains an open question. The process of finding a befitting cookie replacement is still in the inception stage with more than 30 proposals up for consideration. Already, Google has tried four proposals including the much-talked-about Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC). In FLoC, Google groups internet users in large cohorts based on their traits, allowing marketers to target these groups instead of individuals. FLoC doesn’t completely prevent user tracking. Rather, it diminishes the marketer’s ability to track individuals while giving Google more control over the information it can collect. What Does That Mean for Marketers? To help you understand, let’s start from the top. What are cookies and how do marketers use them? Cookies are tiny pieces of code that are embedded in web browsers to track internet users as they visit different websites. They collect information such as the site a user visits, pages they look at within that website, purchase history, etc. By using this information, marketers can build robust user profiles of their customers – which they then use to send targeted ads. Keep in mind, tracking cookies can either be first-party or third-party. First-party cookies track users’ behavior or activity under the same domain they’re currently visiting. On the other hand, third-party cookies track user activities under a different domain than they’re currently visiting. Google is set to block third-party cookies on Chrome, meaning marketers won’t be able to track user activity outside their domain. There are also private browsers for iPhone and Android that also focus on enhanced privacy by restricting third-party tracking. Essentially, that means marketers won’t be able to track user behavior on the web, meaning they can’t build robust user profiles. As a result, it will be difficult to send targeted ads, but make understanding first-party data super important. How Can Marketers Prepare? The fact that Google isn’t abolishing first-party cookies is the silver lining here. But how do you make these changes work to your advantage? The best way to prepare for the cookie-free world is to strengthen your first-party data strategy. As Tina Moffett, Principal Analyst at Forrester, says, “marketers should revamp their first-party data models to gain better insights about their existing customers. And then, base their knowledge of prospects, targeting, and measurement on that information.” Already, the majority of marketers have heeded this advice. 85% of marketers in the U.S. claim that increasing the use of first-party data is their highest priority. Your website is a treasure trove of information about your customer. From the name and email address to phone numbers and other personally identifiable details, there’s a myriad of customer details you can collect. The best part about this data is that you own it rather than relying on external cookies. CRM and Marketing Automation To The Rescue Customers are becoming more privacy-conscious and are hesitant to share their information with every other brand. For this reason, you have to develop creative ways to win their trust before you can request their personal information. Enter: marketing automation and CRM tools. Marketing Automation Learning more about your customers doesn’t have to be a tedious, manual task. With a tool like BenchmarkONE, you can gather valuable customer information automatically with landing pages and pop-up forms. Once you gather that information, you can enroll site visitors into your email marketing and run A/B tests to determine what kind of email content is most relevant to them. Other types of marketing automation, like lead nurturing drip campaigns, can run in the background, enabling you to grow your first-party data without relying on third-party tools (or hiring expensive market researchers to do the work for you.) CRM Tools Your customer’s needs, preferences, and interests change over time. A CRM tool such as BenchmarkONE helps you keep up with changes to maintain an accurate lead profile. For example, when you first add a customer to your CRM system you probably have their basic contact info like their name, address, and phone number. As you continue to interact with the customer, you’ll gather more details like purchase history, pages they visit on your website, and interactions with your brand on social media. Over time, you can get to understand more about what they may want from your brand so you can move them closer to a sale. You can also set up surveys to better understand your customers, and have those integrated directly into your CRM. Regardless of the methods you choose, your CRM serves as a reliable data-gathering and storage tool, keeping your customer data safe and accurate, while keeping your entire organization aligned. Don’t let the promise of third-party cookie cutting put too much of a scare into you. As marketers, we’re all too familiar with the changing industry landscape. To persevere, it’s crucial to shift and adapt, and by focusing on first-party data (with the help of marketing automation and a CRM), your marketing plan can stay on course.
How to Create a Sales Funnel and Fill it With High-Quality Content Posted on January 12, 2022January 26, 2022 by Natalie Slyman These days, it’s relationships that define and sustain a brand. Countless research studies have proven that businesses that connect with their customers on a more personal level are much more successful than competitors that don’t. And one of the most effective ways to make those connections at scale is through content. But there’s more to it than just creating content and hoping your prospects see it and identify with it in some way. You have to tap into the customer journey and how content plays a part within it. The journey your customers take when interacting with your brand is synonymous with the sales funnel. Your sales funnel is essentially the way your inbound leads identify your brand, interact with it, and consider it to solve their problem (but more on that in a bit). However, most leads don’t enter your funnel with the same level of knowledge about your brand or at the same stage of their journey. Here are some ideas to help you meet your prospects and customers where they are at each stage of the funnel. What Is a Sales Funnel? A sales funnel, also known as a purchasing funnel, is a marketing model that describes the journey shoppers take from prospect to brand loyalist. It is composed of four separate stages — awareness, consideration, conversion, and loyalty — with each stage encompassing various behaviors, questions, and challenges that marketers can use to optimize their strategy and better move potential and current customers from one stage to the next. There are multiple ways to conceive of the sales funnel. For example, some marketers break it up into five or six stages, while others see it as a three-stage journey from the top of the funnel to the middle and then the bottom. The purpose and associated marketing tactics, however, are almost always going to be the same, as are the benefits of working with a funnel model as a way to give structure to your marketing practices. The Four Stages of the Sales Funnel Using the four-stage model mentioned above, let’s take a quick look at how each stage fits into the larger idea of the modern-day sales funnel. Awareness When prospects know they have a problem that needs to be solved and are discovering your brand as a possible solution. Types of content to use: Social media posts Paid advertising Influencer marketing content Blog articles Guest contributed content Giveaways This kind of content will help get your brand seen by prospective customers and help showcase a little bit about what you do and who you are so you can spread brand awareness. Consideration When prospects know that your solution exists and are in need of further information as to whether it’s the right fit for their needs. Types of content to use: Product descriptions Demos and tutorial videos Case studies Reports Whitepapers The content listed above is crucial in helping to showcase your brand’s selling points. Often in the consideration phase, your prospects are also looking into your competitors, so make sure you create content that depicts your competitive edge and why your product is the best solution out there. Conversion When prospects have become qualified leads that are seriously considering your product as the solution to solve their problem, however, they haven’t pulled the trigger….yet. Types of content to use: Customer testimonials and reviews Influencer reviews Product or service comparison charts These leads are super close to partnering, so it’s important to share with them resources that will give them that last nudge to make the right decision. Loyalty When leads become paying customers and require ongoing engagement to become brand loyalists and advocates. Types of content to use: Promotions and special offers Loyalty and referral program Customer showcases FAQs User-generated content It’s always crucial to acquire new customers; however, retaining your existing customers is more cost-effective. Also, there’s nothing like a happy customer to help you get new customers. To make effective use of the sales funnel, you’ll want to optimize content at each stage to align with where the prospect, lead, or customer is and encourage them to do — or continue doing — business with you. Creating Your Sales Funnel Just as there is no one-size-fits-all definition of the sales funnel, there is also no one-size-fits-all way to incorporate it into your marketing practices. That being said, there are a few steps that you can take to create a sales funnel for your brand and start benefiting from the model. Step 1: Know Your Audience Hopefully, you already have well-researched customer personas that cover the wants, needs, preferences, and demographic anomalies of your core audience. Your approach, and especially your content, will be geared toward these personas, so make them as clear as possible from the get-go so you can accurately target your messages. Step 2: Focus on Awareness You can’t move someone down the funnel if they don’t know you exist. Use social media, paid ads, email marketing, and other tactics to reach more of your audience and pull them into the funnel, being sure to qualify leads as you go to see who’s worth investing more effort into. Step 3: Build out Your Website Your website is a crucial tool in managing a productive sales funnel. The content you share on there is obviously key, but so are landing pages and forms. Make sure all of the building blocks are in place and do regular audits to ensure you’re not inadvertently putting any obstacles in the way of conversions. Step 4: Employ Email Marketing Email marketing is huge in sales funnel success. Opt-in newsletters, drip campaigns, and automated workflows will all serve you (and your customers) well and should be high-priority tactics for making headway with prospects, leads, and customers. Quick Sales Funnel Tips Find the cracks. Your funnel probably won’t be perfect right away, and that’s fine. Always be on the lookout for gaps in your sales process and solve them as you go. Update content consistently. Publish new content regularly, and update old content to make it more relevant and easier to find. Touch base with your key audience. Check in with top customers for feedback, and to ensure you’re meeting their needs. If they have suggestions for how you can do better, strategize and try to incorporate them. Consider your UX. Your site should be as seamless to use as it is pretty to look at. If it’s not, you could end up losing people in the funnel when they otherwise would have continued moving forward. If you don’t have a sales funnel that’s working, then follow these tips to reshape your funnel and turn things around. Don’t forget to tap into your highest quality content that addresses the needs of your audience so you can see your funnel churn out more and more new customers.
Get More Hours In Your Day: How Marketing Automation Turns Back Time Posted on January 6, 2022January 3, 2022 by Allie Wolff A day in the life of a marketer is akin to a juggling act. You have to plan out the day, check emails and respond to anything relevant, conduct a morning huddle with the team, monitor campaign performance, schedule social media posts, and more. While these tasks are critical, they can also be overwhelming and consume a huge share of your time. Fortunately, marketing automation helps you eliminate repetitive tasks and focus more of your time on high-value items on your to-do list and big-picture marketing plan. In this article, we’ll dissect how marketing automation helps reduce the amount of “things” you need to do in a day, turning back the clock and creating time so you can get more high-priority items accomplished. Daily Tasks that Marketing Automation Makes Simpler 1. Lead Scoring Lead scoring entails assigning leads a score in a bid to set apart more qualified leads from low-fit prospects. It’s an intricate and time-consuming process when done manually, but setting up workflows and triggers within your marketing automation software updates the lead lifecycle and saves you hours. You set up automated rules and use the tagging feature to score leads based on how they interact with your channels. For example, you can tell BenchmarkONE to add a “CRM” tag to contacts that frequently visit the product page on your CRM website. You can then configure automated rules such that when a lead with a “CRM” tag attains a score threshold, they are automatically added to the leads pipeline. Once the process is automated, you don’t have to lift a finger to score leads, saving you tons of tedious work. Breakdown To manually score your leads, you’ll want to first calculate your lead-to-customer conversion rate so you can use it as a baseline. New Customers / # of leads generated Next, take into consideration certain qualifiers, like industry, job title, marketing budget, actions they take on-site, etc., to help you to determine which are more desirable. Consider how many of your leads with those same attributes become customers to help you. From there, you’ll want to figure out the actual close rate for each qualifier. Determine how many people become customers or qualified leads with those qualifiers. Lastly, compare that to your lead-to-customer conversion rate. If it’s higher, you’ll know those qualifiers should get a higher score. As you can see, this process requires time and detail. First, you need to make sure you have all the information you need, and then you have to do your calculations and assign your lead scores. With that in mind, let’s estimate that manually scoring one lead can take you approximately 20 minutes and that, on average, you generate 30 leads a week. 20 x 30 = 600 / 60 = 10 hours 2. Lead Nurturing Once leads enter the pipeline, the next step is to convert them into customers. Lead nurturing can consume a lot of hours, especially if you’re dealing with hundreds or even thousands of leads. However, with BenchmarkONE, you could set up a drip-email campaign to send emails to leads when they perform a specific action. You could deliver targeted messages to leads based on their score, pages they visit, filling out a form, or position in the marketing funnel. Doing so saves you time and ensures you deliver messages to the right prospect at the right time. The result? You’re able to capitalize on the right moments instead of overlooking them because you’re busy doing other things. Breakdown Let’s stick with the 30 leads a week model and assume an email takes approximately 10 minutes to personalize and send. You’ll also want to consider the additional emails you’ll be sending within your drip campaigns. Let’s say you go with five emails per lead total. 10 x 5 = 50 x 30 = 1,500 / 60 = 25 hours 3. Campaign Promotion One of your roles as a marketer is to amplify your promotions and brand awareness through campaigns, content creation, and social media. These processes involve a lot of moving parts, and often need to work together to ensure your promos go as smoothly as possible. We covered email campaigns in point number two. However, email campaigns are just one side of the coin. Your social campaigns are just as important as they help you reach a wider audience engaged on other platforms. When we get busy, things fall through the cracks, and more often than not, social media gets neglected for other things. But when you are able to prioritize social media, you’re not only able to grow your audience; you’re able to take advantage of posting times that will yield higher engagement. Each social channel works differently. For example, to get the best results on Facebook, you should publish posts on Tuesdays and Thursdays between 8.00 AM and 12.00 PM and LinkedIn on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 9.00 AM. If you’re busy doing other things at these times, you’ll lose out on peak engagement blocks that could ultimately make your campaigns super successful. Automating social media is key because it ensures you’re not overlooking peak posting times and that you’re saving time with your social media strategy. Some marketing automation tools include social publishing and scheduling capabilities, while others integrate with social media software, allowing you to access your channels within the same platform. Whatever situation you find yourself in, utilizing a social media scheduler is an absolute must. Statistics show that scheduling posts all at once can save you up to six hours a week, and maintaining a consistent social presence bodes well for potential new followers and customers. 4. Collaboration Collaboration keeps marketing teams firmly fixed and working towards a common goal. While it’s indispensable, some aspects could be automated to save time for other high-value tasks. Take team meetings, for instance. Meetings follow a near-identical process: you schedule the meeting, invite other team members, prepare the agenda, and finally, have the meeting. High-value meeting-related tasks, like planning the agenda, can take at least twenty minutes. According to the latest statistics, marketing executives hold 12 meetings per week. With that amount of weekly meetings, the agenda planning alone takes four hours. However, with an all-in-one CRM, you can cut back on meeting time altogether. An all-in-one CRM is a tool that has marketing automation capabilities and CRM wrapped into one seamless package. Your sales and marketing team can have access to all your customer data and interactions, keeping them aligned and cutting down on catch-up time regarding your priority leads and accounts. Statistics show 71% of meetings are ineffective, which means that eight out of those 12 meetings executives hold a week aren’t actually necessary. By trimming the fat and eliminating those eight needless touch bases, you’d save two hours and forty minutes a week. Save Over 8 Hours a Day After adding up the hours saved and dividing it by five (assuming you only work five days a week, that is), the hours saved by marketing automation is astounding. Marketing has numerous aspects that could be automated to save time. We just highlighted a few of these tasks to give you a sneak peek into the time-saving benefits marketing automation affords you. It’s important to note, however, that these numbers are mostly estimates based on our predictions of how long these tasks should take the average marketing professional. Some people may take more or less time to complete the various tasks we covered, and some teams may be larger or smaller, which also can contribute to efficiency. Either way, marketing automation truly does save you a ton of time, and as marketers, small business owners, and company leaders, who couldn’t use that?
How To Ace Your Live Streams: A Checklist Posted on January 5, 2022December 28, 2021 by Guest Author Did you know that more than 90% of consumers increased their online video consumption in 2020? And nine out of ten of them want to see more videos from brands and businesses. Video content plays an important role in marketing these days, and if you’re not creating it, you’re missing out on excellent marketing potential. Live streams are a great way to use video marketing to reach your audience more personally. You’ll get to be more interactive, and your viewers will feel more connected to your brand. However, people have a very low tolerance for bad live streams. You’ll have to wow your audience right from the start or risk losing their interest. With that in mind, we’ve compiled an easy-to-understand guide you can read through to ensure your live streams are always amazing and hit the right spot for your audience. How Live Streaming Works Before we go into how to ace your live streams, let’s quickly determine how a live stream works. Technically, live streams are a way to deliver a video file to viewers a bit at a time from a remote location. The streaming video is sent over the internet in real-time and doesn’t have to be recorded beforehand. It is much more complicated to edit than pre-recorded content. This form of video creation is done by many different kinds of businesses, from pro chefs to fashion houses. You can do it too, just follow our checklist and allow room for creativity. A 6-Point Live Stream Checklist If you’ve decided that live streams are just what your marketing plan needs, you’ll love the advice we dish out here. The following checklist is in question form and is meant to help you determine whether or not you will be able to nail your live stream. You can use this checklist whenever you want to create a live stream and even add more questions tailored to your brand and business purposes. 1. Have You Finished Planning Your Event? Although many live streams seem spur-of-the-moment (and some of them are), most of them are planned ahead of time. Even live shows are planned in advance to ensure the best entertainment and avoid technical issues. You need to put the same kind of planning into your live streams that these shows do, or you’ll have a messy event that could go very wrong very quickly. A chaotic live stream may sound interesting, but it won’t have the same effect a well-planned one would. There are several factors to keep in mind when you plan your live stream. Who is your target audience? What kind of content do they want to see? Also, keep in mind that if your audience isn’t local, you’ll have to factor in time differences. Special holidays and festivals may also not be relevant to everyone in your audience. Buzzfeed managed to get more than 800K live viewers for their video about a watermelon because they chose an interesting title. Source You also need to plan around the platform that you choose to use. Research which platforms are best for your audience to ensure they actually get to see your content. Choose the best possible location for your stream as well. No one wants to watch an inferior stream negatively affected by the location (poor signal, weather interruptions, etc.). The lighting must be just right, the guests (if you have any) must be comfortable, and it shouldn’t be possible for passersby to cause an interruption of the stream. You should avoid shooting your live stream in a noisy area as well. Your audience won’t find it entertaining if they’re being screamed at by the host and can hear other people doing whatever they’re doing in the background. 2. Have You Chosen Your Platform? Your platform is very important — whatever you choose will be influenced by the goals you want to achieve. Here’s a look at the most popular live stream platforms and what they tend to be best for. YouTube Live If your aim is to boost revenue, YouTube Live is where you’ll want to be. Setting up an account and getting started is pretty straightforward and shouldn’t be too difficult. You can teach a class, host a live Q&A and even stream an event such as a music show with relative ease using YouTube Live. Also, make sure you keep in mind SEO practices that will ensure your YouTube video ranks in search results. Instagram Live You’ll find Instagram Live within the Instagram Stories Feature, and you can save the video content you create to your Stories. When using Instagram Live, your audience can engage with you through comments and likes as you stream, also growing your followers. Instagram is great for engagement, brand reach, and brand loyalty. It’s a popular platform as well, with roughly 500 million users interacting with it each day. Facebook Live videos shared on Facebook get a lot more interaction than traditional videos, so if you’re already active on the platform, you might as well make use of the live stream feature. It can go a long way to helping you grow your social media audience easily and effectively. You can also promote your live streams in advance, ensuring your audience knows when to tune in. After Facebook’s interface changed, using the live stream feature is easy and can be done right from the mobile Facebook app. TikTok Live TikTok is known for being awesome for short-form video content (a big marketing trend this year), and the platform also makes it easy to host live streams. It’s a great way to boost engagement and increase brand reach. All you have to do is open the app, select the plus sign (which is at the bottom of the screen), enter the name of your stream, and start your event. Viewers can engage with you by liking the stream and leaving comments, to which you can respond in real-time. TikTok Live is easy to use, and the platform promises that you’ll be able to grow your audience when using this feature. Twitter Live If you want to reach a wider audience than just your following, Twitter Live could be just what you need. The platform makes it easy to share and promote content to a larger audience. And once something gains traction on Twitter, it can easily go viral and get you a lot more views and engagement than you expected. You can go live straight from the mobile app. These are the most well-known live stream platforms; there are several other options if they don’t meet your requirements. You can use Twitch, Livestream, or Periscope as well. 3. Have You Prepared Your Equipment? The equipment you use is also of high import. Using inferior equipment will result in poor quality live streams that won’t be entertaining to watch. Laptop Using a laptop for live streams is fairly common. It comes with all the stuff you need: a camera, microphone, and can connect to the internet. If you’re on the move a lot, then having a laptop suited for remote work and live streams is also important. Keep in mind, though, that most laptops don’t have very impressive cameras or microphones, so you may have to use other equipment along with your laptop. Camera The camera you use should be able to capture audio and visuals very well. You may have to spend quite a bit of money on investing in a good camera, but it’s worth every penny. The better quality camera you use, the better your live stream will be. Microphone If you don’t want to rely on the microphone that comes with your laptop (or phone), you’ll have to get an external one. It’s a good idea to opt for one that is able to eliminate noise interruptions with in-built features such as the pop filter. Always test your microphone before a live stream to ensure it’s in working condition. Internet Access It goes without saying that you’ll need internet access to host and stream your event. Typically, you’ll need 6 Mbps for 720p videos and about 13 Mbps for 1080p videos. Go for as stable a connection as you can get. Recording Software When it comes to marketing, you’ll have to get used to using all kinds of software. Just like recording podcasts remotely requires specific software, recording live streams also needs certain types of software. When using an external camera, you’ll have to use encoding software for your recording to convert your camera’s footage into a format that the platform you use for streaming can understand. 4. Have You Prepped Your Guest Speakers? Having guest speakers is an excellent way to add extra flavor to your live streams. However, if your speakers aren’t prepped well enough, you could end up with some really awkward silence, and not in a funny way. Plan the questions that you want to ask your guests and give them to your guest speaker(s) so they can prepare their answers in advance. It may not be very spontaneous but doing so is better than having dumbfounded silences or guests who say ‘um’ and ‘ah…’ a lot. Allow your speakers to plan everything they want to say and do ahead so they won’t be as nervous when the camera starts recording. Be sure that you also know precisely what you’re going to say and do ahead of time, so there are no boring moments in your live stream. 5. Have You Cleared Up Your Shooting Location? Once you have chosen your location, it’s crucial that you prep it as well. You need a location that is well-lit and doesn’t have a lot of noise going on. Hosting a live stream at night in a pub with dim lighting, for example, isn’t the best idea. Your viewers won’t be able to see what’s happening very well, and there will be a lot of background noise. You should clear up the location, so there are no distractions to ensure the viewers’ focus will be on you. Don’t have anything behind you that can make them forget that you’re in the shot in the first place. A green screen might be a great idea to make your location a bit more personalized to the theme or topic of the stream. It’s a great idea to also do a site survey of your planned location. A detailed map of the area and information on things like where you’ll be able to plug in your equipment is essential. Expect the unexpected and plan for it. If you’re traveling to a location, go there extra early and pack backups of everything you can. Bring back-up batteries for the camera and lots of water — dehydration can ruin an otherwise brilliant live stream. Also, remember to keep an eye on the weather forecast. Even then, it’s a good idea to have some sort of backup plan in case it rains, and you need to protect your equipment. 6. Have You Done a Dry Run? If you want to make sure your live stream is a success, do a dry run ahead of time. Just like dress rehearsals ensure that a theatre show is 100% perfect, a dry run of your live stream will help you create the best content possible. Doing a dry run will also point out any issues that might pop up or any points in the agenda that need some attention. You will be able to avoid technical (and potentially embarrassing) mishaps. Sure, improv is funny, but it won’t do so well unless you’re aiming for that kind of content. Once you’re satisfied, you can start promoting your live stream with confidence. You can promote on your social media platforms to get started, and you can promote your event on your brand’s blog as well if you have one. Blogs are great for promotion purposes (and marketing in general), especially if you’re able to add expert insights to your articles. Do Follow Ups After Your Live Streams Once you’ve finished your live streams, you should follow up with those who attended the event. Thanking them for their time will make them feel valued, and they will be more interested in your future events. You can also ask them for reviews that can help those who didn’t attend regret missing out and ensure more interest for the next event. Now the ball is in your hands — use the steps you learned about here to plan your next live stream and impress your viewers once again! Author Bio Zoe is a content marketing strategist for SaaS brands like FollowUpBoss, Mention.com and more. Bylines: Ecwid, ProProfs, Score, etc. On the personal front, Zoe is a pho enthusiast and loves traveling around the world as a digital nomad.