Does Your University Have A Live Streaming Strategy?

Why Live Stream?

The growing popularity of Live Streaming Video Technology has enabled education marketers to create greater engagement with their target audience. After Facebook launched this feature with Facebook Live, businesses have already included this as a part of their marketing strategy. However, there is still a lot of opportunity for academic institutions and universities to experiment with. Having said this, the live streaming of videos has seen a tremendous growth since its inception. New technologies like VR live streaming and 360-degree video streaming were subsequently created. Records were consistently set for amount of people viewing live streams.

By 2020, we can expect live video streaming to overtake other online media properties.

Some interesting facts about live streaming video tell us why we should look at this technology strategically, especially by academic institutions.

• The live video streaming market is estimated to grow from $30.29 billion in 2016 to more than $70 billion by 2021. (PR Newswire).
• 63% of millennials have watched live content and 42% have created it, making this group the largest consumers and creators of live video. (eMarketer).
• The search term “Facebook Live Stream” has increased in popularity more than 330% since Facebook Live’s debut in August 2015. (Mediakix)
• Streaming video accounts for over two-thirds of all internet traffic and is expected to jump to 80% by 2020.
• 80% of brand audience will watch live video from a brand than read a blog, and 82% prefer live video from a brand to social posts.

(Source: strectchinternet.com and go-globe.com)

Academia can use streaming live video for a variety of purpose. It can be used to feed prospective customers with engaging content, for conducting webinars through Facebook, to systematically cover event/ conferences and many more such things.

Young students are especially drawn to live video streaming. Facebook Live is one of the most popular social property among Millennials.

What are the Benefits of Streaming Live Video?

Live streaming video continues to be a major force in the world of digital marketing.

So, what are some of the key benefits of live streaming?

# 1. Live Streaming is More Exciting and Inclusive

Streaming live videos provide a sense of excitement to audience and therefore has tremendous potential for greater engagement with them. It makes your audience (students, parents, researchers, etc) feel part of your journey and hence more connected with your institutional brand.

# 2: Helps Cross Promotion and Boosts SEO

Integrating live videos into your marketing process gives your audience a more transparent, self-satisfying brand experience at their own convenience. The feature also allows to record the broadcast and upload it on other social channels and your website for cross promotion. This gives access to the video even to those who could not tune in live.

Unlike any other media, internet streams transcend geographical boundaries. Take advantage of its impact on enhancing SEO after uploading it on social media platforms such as YouTube or sharing links on your website. The audience will engage with your focused content more if it is indexed high on search engines.

# 3: Live Streaming Gives Instant Brand Exposure

With live streaming you can give more authentic brand exposure to your academic audience. You can narrate the whole brand experience through live content and communicate your value system to the outside world in a powerful way. This opens new opportunities for engagement with your potential audience and can be a rewarding experience for them. Live streaming is a new phenomenon in education marketing, hence it offers great opportunity to brands to promote themselves in a manner never done before.

# 4: Live Streaming Creates Instant Touchpoint for Interaction

Streaming live content helps to instantly connect with your audience. You can more effectively tell your brand’s story while engaging audience in live streaming of events. At the same time, you also allow them to interact with your brand through their comments and likes.

This branding and marketing method is more impactful unlike other promotional activity because it allows you to reach the right people and simultaneously interact with them on the spot. It makes the entire interaction a fun loving experience generating lots of leads on the way. Live streaming can be a great fun to show your audience what they wouldn’t come to know otherwise such as the people behind a successful brand or the processes you follow to ensure complete customer satisfaction.

Live streaming is a powerful marketing vehicle to manage online reputation of an educational brand.

# 5: Mobile Viewing has Enhanced Live Streaming Experience

Most of your potential target audience from academia have access to smart phones. They are constantly hooked on to this device. Almost half of all the video content is viewed on a mobile phone. It’s therefore important that your live content should be easily accessible on such devices. You can even educate your viewers beforehand to use latest version of hardware and software technologies for better viewing of your live videos.

# 6: Enjoy an Ads-Free Experience

Unsolicited ads are a havoc. We all go through this experience while watching videos online. It more often disengages your audience and increases drop outs.

However, your live stream player allows you to provide a seamless viewing experience to your audience without any commercial breaks in between.

# 7: Less Investment of Time and Money

Live streaming also helps in reducing content developing cost and saves time. It takes more time and cost to produce a recorded video or writing a blog or even producing a social media post containing visuals and text. But with live streaming your event marketing team doesn’t have to worry on these aspects.

# 8: Real-Time Engagement

Live streaming is the biggest innovation in content marketing. Its ability to engage audience on real-time and strike an instant conversation with them is much more powerful and effective than any other digital media property.

Besides, it also gives an opportunity for educational brands to offer live customer support anytime anywhere.

# 9: Organize Webinars for Students

Live streaming enables academic brands to interact with your audience live through webinars. You can organize live Q&A sessions with students and give them the opportunity to clear their doubts on the spot. This personalizes the whole experience.

The best part about live webinars is that you don’t need to invest too much time in creating content. The content gets created by the users themselves and is also available for public viewing later. It is a more direct form of interaction where the relationship with your audience gets cemented more strongly.

You could use live streaming to set up online webinars for delivering short term courses with educational content. It gives you an innovative opportunity to create virtual classrooms online. You can reach out to a wider audience by combining it with social media.

# 10: Strengthen Your Brand Recall

You can use live streaming to your advantage for building recall of your education brand. By regularly streaming live events you can penetrate the viewers’ mind space more often. You can introduce people to a whole new brand experience and build lasting relationships with them. In the process, you can even attract new audiences using this strategy.

# 11:  Leverage Influencer Marketing

Live streaming can be a strategic tool to leverage influencer marketing. Identify individuals visiting your campus who can influence your audience. Orient marketing activities around these influencers using live streaming as an important tool.

Influencer content can be a great way of promoting testimonial advertising. Voices of these value-added influencers from all walks of life such as media, academics, industry, politics, civil society and so on helps in building the trust factor for your brand.

Start Live Streaming Now!

Promoting a service such as education has its own challenges. Selling an experience is very different from selling a product. You do not have something tangible to showcase beforehand. The actual experience can only be gathered once you avail the service. Live streaming makes it a bit easier for potential customers to experience a brand.

With social media networks getting stronger day by day you can promote your academic brand can easily use live streaming on these platforms.

Now that you know the benefits of video live streaming services, why not try it out today?

Or, if have you tried Live Streaming to promote your academic brand, let us know about your experience.