12 Exciting Ways to Use Live Streaming Video | Travel Research Online

Image
Image

12 Exciting Ways to Use Live Streaming Video

Are your clients clamoring to know exactly what their tour with you will look like? Do they ask questions about the experiences, activities, and culinary creations?

What if you had a way to show them exactly what your tours involve and help them experience it online? Wouldn’t that be an amazing way to build stronger relationships and put the human touch into your marketing!

Live streaming video gives you that star quality!

How to Use Live Streaming video

Imagine live-streaming from your next:

  • Hotel site inspection
  • Ship inspection
  • Trade show
  • City tour
  • Culinary experience
  • Museum experience
  • Event or festival
  • New features of your attraction, hotel or restaurant
  • A day in the life of… a travel pro, a tour guide, a chef, etc.
  • Interview a guest: BDM, hotel GM, local travel celebrity, past clients, etc.
  • Day on the Road snapshot
  • An adventure or activity

livestream

The power of live streaming video is right in your back pocket. Facebook Live, Periscope, Snapchat Live, Instagram Live, and now Twitter Live are enthralling your clients.

The beauty is that it’s as easy as pressing the ‘Go Live’ button on your mobile device. With a bit of advance planning and prep your live stream can be a marketing masterpiece.

Did you know? 90% of users say that seeing a video about a product is helpful in the decision process. Source

Before & During your Live Stream Event

Planning in advance is key to a successful event… or not!

Advance planning and marketing will yield you a more defined audience.

No advance planning and going completely spontaneous will yield a spontaneous audience. Based on your goals (connect with a predefined audience or fish for a new audience) you may want to try either or both.

If you choose to plan in advance, begin building buzz on your social sites and inviting people to join in on a set date and time.

Create a remarkable headline/title.

Tips to going live:

  1. Test your lighting, camera position, and sound in advance. I like to use a tri-pod and an external mic. More tips here.
  2. Once you go live, remember people will be joining in at random, so reiterate your topic and re-introduce yourself and any guests
  3. State the questions you see popping up on the screen before you answer them.
  4. Give shout-outs within reason. Don’t go nuts and mention everyone who’s joining in.
  5. Add value
  6. Have fun!
  7. Facebook is soon rolling out ‘Video Styles’ and you can apply different filter styles to your video while recording. Hmmm… this sounds similar to SnapChat lenses so we’ll see what it looks like when it’s rolled out to the masses.

How long should your live broadcast be? When talking with Lauren Cleland of Visit Savannah, she mentioned that if you have high retention, keep going with your great content. The longer you broadcast, the more likely you are to generate a bigger audience and answer more questions. The maximum time on Facebook Live is 90 minutes.

Did you know you can also broadcast within a Facebook group? How cool would it be if you have a group set up of newly engaged people and you were to broadcast and share wedding planning tips, destination tips, and answer questions of group members?

Broadcast Live from your Desktop?

You bet! With a simple-to-use tool on your desktop computer, you can broadcast with multiple cameras from different locations and share your screen. This means you and your favorite guest star can be in different cities and still appear together on a live broadcast. You can even share your screen to show viewers photos, offer a how-to tutorial, or showcase your slick new destination guide. Here’s more info on those free and affordable tools. 

After your Live Stream event

Wow, your event had great attendance, super questions, and high retention. What’s next?

Remember to save your live stream to your camera roll. It will automatically be saved to your Facebook page. If you’re using Periscope, your live broadcast will be saved for 24 hours (if you insert #save into the title of your Periscope, you can now save it online as well.)

Once you’ve saved your live stream, you can upload it to You Tube, Vimeo, or embed it into your blog or newsletter. Countless ways to share the love and spread the word. Tips here.

Did you hear that “video will generate 70% of traffic across Facebook’s platforms”?

Now that you can harness the power of video to bring travel experiences to your clients, answer their questions in real time and show them (not just tell them) what their trip will look and feel like, how will you use it?


catherineheegCatherine Heeg, international speaker and trainer, focuses on social media marketing & communication for the travel and tourism industry. Join the conversation and connect with her at www.cmsspeaking.com and socially.

Connect online for access to free social media resources.

When you ‘like’ her Facebook page you’ll have access to the latest social media news just for travel pros!

Share your thoughts on “12 Exciting Ways to Use Live Streaming Video”

You must be a registered user and be logged in to post a comment.