The Best Platforms for B2B Live Streaming Success
Live video streaming has become a big part of many companies' marketing strategies.
Huge numbers of consumers actively enjoy watching brand videos online. People are often persuaded to buy by live-streamed content. Lemonlight’s research found that:
99% of respondents enjoy watching video content from brands online.
94% of respondents shared that watching a video has helped them make a purchase decision at least once. Of those, 72% were swayed by a product demonstration video.
Video clearly works to sell products and services for both B2C and B2B.
In our previous article, How to Reap the Benefits of Live Video in Your B2B Marketing Strategy, we discussed why companies should consider live events, even if it’s outside their comfort zone. We also talked about how easy it can be to get started with live video, what to say in your videos, and how you can repurpose your video content later to maximise your content creation.
If you’ve been considering live video for your B2B business, then the next step is to decide which of the social media platforms you should use. You also need to know how you can track and analyse your results and ensure success on popular social media.
Know your audience
To get started with live streaming, you need to know your audience. Of course you need to understand who you are aiming to reach, but it’s equally important to know which social networks your potential customers use and which online communities they are a part of.
When you put together your buyer personas and conduct audience research, ensure you look closely into your prospects’ social media habits. When are they online the most? When are they likely to have the time to watch a live video? How long do they like their videos to be? What types of videos do they prefer?
Answer these questions before you go live and you’ll have a far greater chance of success with live video.
Which social platforms should you choose for B2B live video?
From Lemonlight’s survey, “The top three platforms consumers report using to watch video content are YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook.”
That gives you a good place to start. But as we mentioned earlier, the best way to choose your primary social media site, and any secondary ones, is to look at your customer data. It’s also worth simply asking your customers where they hang out and what content they’d like to see on video.
Let’s take a look at the platforms you might use for livestreaming:
LinkedIn Live
LinkedIn is the social platform of choice for over 700 million business focused individuals, making it the natural home for your B2B content. You can create live videos that are designed to engage and grow your audience and to build your brand.
To use LinkedIn Live, you need to apply to become a broadcaster on their platform. If you are given access, you can then use a range of third-party apps to broadcast, such as Vimeo, Zoom, BigVu or Wirecast.
What can you use LinkedInLive for?
Share company updates, news, and celebratory moments like awards and new hires.
Show off your company premises and host ‘meet the team’ content to give customers and talent a feel for how you work.
Provide thought leadership content to establish your authority and expertise with in depth insights and analysis.
Do live Q&As and AMAs with the senior team.
Host a panel discussion with your CEO and other related industry experts.
Serial content and events.
To track your results, you can click ‘View Analytics’ at the bottom of your live stream posts. Or you can log into your ‘Page Admin View’ and look at the analytics on your dashboard.
You’ll be able to see a wide range of statistics, including live viewers, the number that watched your replay, the total number of views, and total minutes watched. In addition, the killer application on LinkedIn is audience firmographics, allowing you to see the job titles and locations of viewers.
With these statistics in hand, you can work out whether you’ve achieved your goals, match figures against your KPIs, and keep an eye on how successful each live video is. You’ll also be able to see which videos are watched the most and which topics and types of videos are the most popular.
Instagram Live
While you might think of Instagram as more of a B2C platform, according to Instagram’s own statistics, “90% of people on Instagram follow a business”. They also note that “two in three people surveyed say Instagram enables interaction with brands,” and “50% are more interested in a brand when they see ads for it on Instagram.”
With over a billion users on the platform, those are very healthy statistics for B2B companies. This one should definitely be on your list to at least try.
What to post on Instagram Live:
Live Q&As go down well on Instagram, with people engaging in real-time to ask questions.
Post product or service updates and upcoming new features. Use your videos to ask for feedback and receive it in real-time.
Start to build excitement for your new product launches with Instagram Lives.
Talk about company updates and what you’re working on now.
You can schedule your lives up to 90 days in advance on Instagram, giving you plenty of time to inform your followers and build up interest. You can also click the Share button to create an Instagram video that people can catch up with later, or save it to repurpose and share to other platforms.
Practice mode allows you to test your Live set up before going public. You’re able to practice on your own or with others, and only change to broadcast to your audience once you’re happy with your set up.
You can co-host your Instagram Lives with other brands and creators, allowing you to expand your reach. Other interactive functions include being able to share your viewers’ questions and invite guests to join you.
Instagram also offers excellent analytics to help you work out how effective you are being. Go to your Insights tab in the app and you’ll be able to see your stats, if you have a creator account or a business account. Look at your Audience and click See All, and you’ll be able to see your follower demographics, including the best times to post. You can also see impressions, the number of followers, likes, interactions, reach, and more.
Facebook Live
Facebook Live can be an important part of your social media strategy, even though you sell B2B. With Facebook, you can find your potential customers and build engagement with them. It’s possible to create your own online community around your business page or your group. Once you’ve finished recording live, your video will be available for people to watch later.
What to post on Facebook Live:
Share product updates.
Let your audience see behind the scenes by going live at live in-person events.
Talk about upcoming events and create anticipation.
Create a presentation specifically for Facebook.
Create teasers for new products and services.
Give brand updates.
You can also run Q&A and AMA events on Facebook, just as well as you can on LinkedIn.
Facebook Lives can last for up to four hours, so it’s unlikely you’ll run out of time no matter what you want to post, though do be aware that audience attention spans are unlikely to last that long.
With Facebook, you get a whole range of tools, including live polls, live comment moderation to take care of spammers and trolls, featured links to promote your site or landing page, Front Row to give a shout out to your most engaged fans. You can also use the Live With capabilities to co-broadcast with multiple guests.
Facebook Live works with the platform’s events, allowing users to host free lives for registered users, as well as paid online events.
With great analytics, it’s easy to see how your company is doing with your Facebook Lives. Go to your Insights tab on your business page and click on Videos. You can see minutes viewed, unique viewers, reactions, shares, total views, and full demographics of the people who watched your Live.
YouTube Live Stream
YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world, after Google. You can quickly go live on YouTube simply by signing up and using a mobile phone or a webcam.
Creating a YouTube video is a great way to reach a B2B audience. So many people look for solutions to their problems and answers to their questions on YouTube. With YouTube Live Streaming, you can be there to present your company as the solution.
What to post on YouTube:
YouTube is excellent for providing tutorials on how to use your products.
You can create product reviews or feature reviews and talk about how your solution can help.
Show off your products with product demos and ask for comments to get feedback.
Talk about what’s next for your business.
Provide updates about your brand.
YouTube offers VR functionality as well as video, which gives you so many options for your customers. Create short Stories with your mobile, that only last for 7 days, or create Lives that last for as long as you want. You can receive comments and reply to them. There are also tools to allow you to manage spam and offensive comments. You can optimise your metadata, add captions, and more.
It’s also straightforward to look at analytics on YouTube and see what your audience is responding to. Go to your stream dashboard, and you can see views, likes, your chat rate, average view duration and more, while you are live. After streaming, you can also see total watch time, new subscribers, and other useful statistics.
With Twitter, it’s simple to go live. It can be as simple as just clicking the camera icon from Composer, selecting Live, and clicking Go Live. You can also use Media Studio Producer or third party apps such as OBS and Wirecast to launch professionally-produced livestreams on the platform.
What to post on Twitter:
Short updates.
Quick teasers.
Product features.
Short pieces of news.
Twitter isn’t the platform for long tutorials or case studies, but you can broadcast live with up to 3 other people. You can then increase your audience by sharing someone else’s. You need to get attention quickly, and get to the point. Don’t be verbose, formal, or boring. You’ll lose your audience fast. Once you’ve finished recording, you can edit your video title and other elements up to three times, if needed.
While Twitter Spaces don’t offer video, they are also worth considering as part of your ‘go live’ strategy. These are live events hosted on Twitter that allow you to promote and broadcast audio conversations. Spaces can be recorded, edited, and shared cross platform. You can also create ticketed Twitter Spaces, allowing you to monetize your content.
Use Twitter’s analytics to see how your live videos are going over. You can see the number of views, likes, shares, and more.
TikTok Live
With TikTok, you can only share very short videos of between 15 seconds and ten minutes. It’s fresh and engaging, but audience expectations of quick fire content can make it challenging to use for more in depth pieces.
You can still make it work for B2B, if your audience is present. With TikTok Live you can broadcast for up to 60 minutes.
What to share on Tiktok:
Short product demos.
New features.
Quick updates.
Q&A Sessions.
Do teasers on what’s coming next.
Collaborations
TikTok Live offers a number of settings to play with, including being able to flip the camera, and add filters and effects. You can also add moderators to help manage community engagement and comments, as well as hosts and guests to expand your reach beyond your own audience.
Using Live Events, you are able to schedule, manage, and promote your lives. Live Q&A formats help you to manage and respond to your viewers’ questions. You can also use TikTok for a fundraiser by adding a Live Donation button that allows your viewers to contribute to a charity of your choice.
And of course, you can get a whole range of statistics to confirm that you’re on the right track, including followers, likes, views, and more.
In our next article on B2B live streaming, we’ll share our top tips for going live and give you some inspiration from people who are using the format to great success.
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