15 Ways Businesses Are Using Live Streaming
15 ideas for how your organization should be using live video for communications, training, sales, marketing, and customer engagement.
There’s a certain excitement that comes with watching something unfold live right before your eyes. It’s authentic, transparent, and unpredictable. And even if you can’t be there physically, watching a live streamed event can still make you feel like you are there in person.
Over the last few years, live streaming has exploded online largely thanks to social platforms and apps that have made live streaming as easy as pressing a button on your smartphone. Acquired by Twitter before it was even released to the public, Periscope signed up 10 million users in just four months. And as of this writing, Facebook Live has now been used to stream more than 3.5 billion broadcasts, which have been viewed by nearly 2 billion people.
And that’s caught the attention of, well, pretty much everyone.
Yet for all the newfound enthusiasm around live streaming, the fact is, live streaming isn’t new. It is, however, remarkably less complex and far more affordable than it once was.
Just a decade ago, streaming live video required a specialized AV team and a lot of expensive hardware and equipment. Outside of the occasional big consumer product launch or important internal events at large companies with a geographically dispersed workforce, live streaming simply wasn’t a justifiable expense for most businesses.
Today, however, with as little as a laptop and a webcam or even just a smartphone, anyone — from senior executives to frontline trainers — can live stream corporate events, communications, training, and more to an audience of any size with just a few clicks and minimal costs.
Just as importantly, while Facebook Live may not be a suitable platform for live streaming sensitive internal corporate communications or employee training, enterprise-grade live streaming software has stepped up to fill that gap.
In this guide, we’ll examine the potential so many businesses see in live video. We then dig into how live streaming has changed with the emergence of new technologies and the commoditization of recording equipment, reducing the need for organizations to tap expensive third-party production companies. Finally, we’ll share 15 ideas for how your organization can use live video, along with real stories from three organizations that successfully shared their own live events.
