In this post, I’m going to talk about increasing your engagement, specifically for your live streams. I actually have 5 tips for you. And when I talk about engagement, what I’m really referring to is meaningful engagement. Check out the video to know what these five ways are, or read the rest of this post.
TIP 1: ASK FOR ENGAGEMENT
In my videos, I always ask my viewers to subscribe and hit the notification bell before I really dig deep into my topic. You may well have spotted that I’ve already done this, right?
I was asking you to do something because people like to be asked. People like to take instructions. Don’t think that it’s immediately given that your passive viewers will take action on what you’re delivering. Perhaps some of your viewers will, but don’t miss the opportunity to ask your viewers to engage with your content, more importantly, engage with YOU.
So ask for the engagement. You can do this live. You can do this as part of your description and your title. It doesn’t really matter. Just make sure you’re asking in some way in every live stream that you do.
TIP 2: INVOLVE VIEWERS IN YOUR LIVE STREAM
As you might know by now, I use this amazing piece of software called Restream in my live streams. I have an in-depth guide for this actually, and if you haven’t seen my video about it yet, I highly recommend that you do.
One of Restream’s great features is Chat Overlay. What this does is give you the option to bring in the chats and comments of your viewers as you live stream. Everyone in the audience can see it in your video. So, you might wonder, how does this help increase engagement?
Well, it’s fairly simple. The people that watch your live streams love to be involved. And if they can see their name appear on your live stream: A, they’ll stick around longer, and B, they’re more likely to engage. When people see that other people’s comments are shown on screen, it encourages them to leave comments as well. They want to see their name up in lights.
TIP 3: LIVE STREAM TO MULTIPLE DESTINATIONS
We’re going to stick inside of Restream because there’s another feature that I wanted to point out to you that I think is super important. Restream gives you the opportunity to live stream in multiple destinations at once.
In this photo, you see that there’s a list that has Facebook labels on them. These are actually multiple destinations for my live stream. I was connecting it to my Facebook profile, page, and group at that time. It’s just not Facebook you can connect to Restream of course. You can also connect to other platforms like YouTube and LinkedIn.
So, if you want to grow all your platforms at once, you can turn all the toggles on for your destinations when you go live. But if you want to grow a specific platform, like YouTube, for example, I have a simple tip. You can turn all the toggles on for a bit to give your viewers a preview. Then, you tell them to join you on YouTube. This way, you’re sneaking in a teaser to all your viewers across different platforms. But you’re really pushing them into YouTube.
Give them a link in the description so they can join you right away. Watch my Restream Guide to learn how to do this.
TIP 4: STICK TO THE TOPIC
You might think to yourself, “Well, how does this increase engagement”.
When you live stream, you tell people what you’re going to talk about, right? You greet your viewers then you give them the topic before you get right into it. What you’re actually doing is you’re creating a promise.
You’re making a promise to your audience. If they give you their time and attention, their most valuable resource, when they come into your live stream, you are going to stick to that particular topic. You can tell stories, you can meander off, you can respond to comments or that kind of stuff. But you are going to stick to the topic that you said you would.
This increases engagement because you’re delivering on your promise. And people will appreciate that.
This has a compounding effect that happens over time. When they see you’re going to live stream, they’ll know that whatever topic it is that you’ll talk about, you’ll deliver on that promise. They’ll watch your live stream with that expectation.
TIP 5: ASK FOR THE SHARE AND THE TAG
You might think, well, this is just like Tip 1 when I talked about asking for engagement. But actually it’s slightly different. This time what you’re asking for is for people to share your live stream or your video.
You can ask for the share or ask for tags. So, these are two things or two strategies, if you will, to share your live streams. You can say, “Hey, if you found this video really helpful, really useful, then please share it with your friends on Facebook. Hit the share button in the bottom right side and share it with your friends. If you don’t want to share it, then you can also just tag a friend that might find it useful in the comments.”
And since we’re talking about meaningful engagement, emphasize sharing your live stream because it’s valuable. Those who’d want to share it will reach out to other people in their circle who might find it helpful as well. And this brings out meaningful engagement and the sharing of valuable content.
RECAP and FREEBIES
So, that’s it. Those are my five ways to increase engagement in your live streams. I hope you find them useful.
Just a quick summary of these tips:
- Ask for the engagement.
- Involve viewers in your live stream.
- Live stream to multiple destinations.
- Stick to the topic you promised.
- Ask for the share and the tag.
In the video, I mentioned that bit about a template for Chat Overlay for Restream. You can grab it for free, just click on this.
If you haven’t signed up for Restream yet, use this affiliate link to enjoy a bit of discount or free credit.
Watch my Restream Tutorial video on YouTube for more details about this software. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to King of Video on YouTube, and follow me on Instagram and Facebook.Â