Case Study: Tapping Into the Power of Social Media Live Streaming
February 19, 2018
Facebook Live and Instagram Video are video streaming features businesses can use to connect with audiences in real time. This case study shows how going live increases engagement and expand your audience – directly through people’s phones.
There’s a lot of ways businesses can use social media for marketing, but one of the most effective is becoming live video streaming. This tactic is a perfect fit for generating social media engagement during business events. It’s so effective and easy to do, in fact, that there’s little reason a business serious about social media marketing should not live stream their events.
Video streaming live is popular because it epitomizes what people like so much about social media: unrehearsed, natural authenticity.
Unlike the polished promotional video or the practiced, planned webinar, live events are spontaneous, whimsical, and imperfect. Presenters walk a tightrope where they have to improvise around gaffes or mistakes – which is a good thing – because it often results in laughs or touching moments. This is a big part of the appeal, making video streaming one of the best tools to show the human side of your business.
Live streaming is also a powerful logistical tool. It expands your audience in real time. People can participate in the event remotely. They comment, ask questions of presenters, like, tag, hashtag, and share.
It’s also an almost unrivaled tool for increasing engagement or your page overall. As you start tagging people and getting tagged, thousands of new people are exposed to your brand.
Here’s an example event with Facebook Live and Instagram Video Stories run by the Marketing 360® social media management team.
The Event
Our client, Old House Vintage Market, has large events for sellers of vintage, antique, and unique handmade items. The most recent event drew in over 7,000 guests.
These events take place in Colorado, but the owners want to spread the word in a move to have events in other states. Our marketing team saw an excellent opportunity to use social media live streaming to increase the event’s exposure.
The tactic is pretty straightforward. A couple of our marketing pros hit the event with phones in hand. They experienced the event just like other guests, but they live streamed their experience. One used Facebook Live, the other Instagram Live Stories.
These videos varied from shopping moments to checking out demos from vendors to live streaming a presentation from social media influencer Liz Marie Galvan.
If you’re unfamiliar with how an Instagram Live Story looks, The Old House Vintage Market saved Liz Marie’s Instagram here. These stories are removed after 24 hrs; they are very much live content (unless you add them to highlights).
On Facebook, they saved selected videos, such as this Facebook Live video of one of the vendors creating a custom clothing patch.
Beyond this, of course, they were posting images galore on both platforms. In each post or video, they tagged or mentioned the people involved, then used hashtags to share the content based on topics. This table setting, for example, got a lot of attention at the event:
Social media excels for business marketing because of the way word spreads digitally on these platforms. Every hashtag (such as #farmhousedecor) is topic of interest people search on. Every mention (@rachaelsevelrey) gets a push notification telling them you mentioned them in their story. They also get a direct message from you that includes a preview of your story.
Live events on Facebook get more reactions and comments, so they appear higher on people’s feeds. In fact, Facebook is making no secret of the fact that they’ll rank live videos higher in feeds, which is important because a lot of other business content is difficult to rank organically.
When you’re live on Instagram, your profile picture appears at the top of your followers’ feeds, with a colorful “Live” button. This attracts attention which results in more shares and comments.
As these mentions and tags spread, you get more followers and likes for your pages.
For example, during this market, The Old House Vintage Market gained Facebook and Instagram engagement:
On Instagram, they got an additional 1151 followers.
It’s important to note that this is all from organic traffic. We didn’t boost any of these posts or videos. These results show how effective live streaming is, because recent changes in Facebook’s algorithm make ranking business content organically difficult.
For a business like decor and decorating – which is highly image-based – strong social media marketing is a must. You can connect with people at live events, regardless of their location. Sharing content among networks grows exponentially, feeding audience growth.
And perhaps most importantly, social media shows people things they’re interested in. These are not ads. It’s content people want to see.
Everyone who watched this event live on Facebook or Instagram was wishing they could attend. Because of this live event it’s much more likely that next time, they will.
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