Livestreaming for businesses:
How to increase the success
of your live event

The importance of livestreaming in modern corporate communication 

Livestreaming has become an essential tool in modern corporate communication. It allows companies to interact with a large audience in real time and receive valuable feedback, fostering a direct and authentic connection between the company and its customers. Livestreaming increases transparency and builds trust, which in turn strengthens brand loyalty. With livestreaming, you can spread corporate messages and content cost-effectively and globally, making events such as product launches or press conferences accessible to an even larger audience. 

The benefits of livestreaming for businesses are evident. However, the initial excitement over the impressive impact of livestreams on the reach and relevance of corporate messages has waned. Every digital event eventually becomes routine and loses its special appeal if it does not address changing demands and seize opportunities to capture attention once again. 

The new challenges in livestreaming 

With Gen Z, new demands, and changing consumption behaviors, businesses face new challenges in the realm of livestreaming. Technological developments open new possibilities to meet these challenges. 

New challenges in livestreaming involve both technical and content aspects. Technically, companies must ensure that their infrastructure can handle high viewer numbers and bandwidth requirements while providing a stable, high-quality, and secure transmission. Content-wise, viewers increasingly expect interactive, visually appealing, and engaging formats, pushing companies to be creative and innovate both in terms of content and technology. 

In the next section, we will discuss exciting possibilities to meet these new content demands in livestreaming and create even more engaging experiences. 

5 Tips for even better livestreaming experiences

1. Fokus auf Planung und Vorbereitung 

Gone are the days when simply meeting virtually and exchanging ideas sparked excitement, and any random, substance-lacking livestream seemed to successfully work. With the routine of livestreams comes the necessity for thorough planning and preparation to make livestreams more professional and successful.  

Firstly, you should establish clear goals for your livestream to achieve the desired outcomes. Do you want to strengthen the connection with existing customers or expand your brand’s global awareness? Are you looking to launch new products exclusively or attract future employees? A detailed definition and analysis of your audience and their expectations will help you structure and craft the livestream content in a targeted and engaging manner. 

Livestreams are not the time for spontaneity and unmoderated group discussions. A detailed script or agenda instead ensures smooth execution of your live event and optimal use of time. Prepare presentations, graphics, and other visual aids in detail beforehand. Discuss procedures with speakers and other participants to leave little room for improvisation. This supports clear message delivery and keeps the audience engaged. Rehearse your virtual event until content and timing are seamless. Promote your event in advance and share an agenda with your audience to set expectations and ensure satisfaction. 

Technical preparation also plays a crucial role in your livestream, as you want to be perceived as professional and relevant. This includes selecting the right platform and communication channels. Where does your target audience spend their time, and through which media do they learn about your livestream? Choose your camera, microphone, and lighting carefully, and test everything to ensure high quality. 

Through careful planning and preparation, livestreams can achieve their full impact and leave a lasting impression on the audience. 

2. Interactive livestreams 

How often have you asked yourself what your audience is doing during a livestream? Are they actively engaged? Do they have their full attention on you? What are your viewers thinking and how does your content resonate with them? 

Interactive elements are a crucial part of a successful livestream as they make audience engagement and satisfaction measurable and can significantly enhance them. 

In our LiveStream Interactive, for instance, interactive opportunities can be roughly categorized into 4 groups: 

Information 

A welcome change and effective method to highlight important content and generate targeted attention from your audience is by adding information in textual overlays. These overlays can be used to emphasize important announcements, provide additional information, or prompt valuable clicks. A countdown or web clips also enhance interest. 

Communication 

Direct communication with the audience is essential for fostering a sense of community and gaining valuable insights. Use the chat or Q&A function to answer questions in real-time, intensifying interaction. Utilize polls, ratings, and votes to understand your viewers’ perspectives better. Pose spontaneous or scheduled questions and gauge the current mood of the audience. This creates an interactive and engaging atmosphere that can enhance virtual learning processes more efficiently and sustainably. Additionally, this approach allows you to gather valuable participant data, helping in measuring the success of your livestream. 

Gamification 

To enhance the entertainment value and achieve your livestream goals effectively, engage your audience with interactive games and challenges. A gamification approach like quizzes, predictions, or estimations motivates viewers to participate actively and sparks their competitive spirit as they compete. This keeps your livestream not only informative but also refreshing, entertaining, and dynamic.

Shopping 

For a unique approach to product communication, seamlessly integrate products into your livestream with features like picture-in-picture overlays. Create distinctive shopping experiences by launching new products and offering exclusive deals that viewers can add directly to their carts with a click. This innovative blend of entertainment and shopping helps increase interest in your products while boosting sales figures. 

By incorporating these various interactive elements into your livestream, you create an enriching and engaging experience for your audience. 

3. Improved visual quality 

The eyes are among the primary receptors during a livestream, and it’s important keep them stimulated and captivated. There is significant potential here to give your livestream a fresh, surprising boost. Professional design plays a central role in achieving this. 

In the look of your brand 

By consistently incorporating your branding elements such as logos, fonts, or color schemes into your livestream, you can establish a strong brand presence and visually captivate your audience. Strategically integrating your brand elements into the livestream—whether it’s a permanently displayed logo in a corner of the screen, consistent use of brand fonts for texts and overlays, or employing your corporate colors in graphics, backgrounds, and overlays—creates a cohesive visual experience. This visual experience helps your audience instantly recognize your brand and fosters a stronger emotional connection. Colors and design elements that represent your brand can positively influence the mood and perception of the livestream. Additionally, a professionally designed livestream can differentiate your brand from competitors and leave a lasting impression. 

Take control of the production 

To transform your live event into an impressive visual experience, you don’t necessarily need an expensive production team. You can also use a user-friendly, browser-based solution without additional technical equipment or prior knowledge. This makes your livestream not only professional and appealing but also easy to create and manage. Provide visual variety by incorporating different media such as pre-recorded videos, graphics, or presentations. Additionally, varying visual layouts, lower thirds, smooth transitions, and animations help optimize the visual experience, making the stream more organized and dynamic. 

Playing with the camera 

In more elaborate productions, using multiple camera angles and perspectives is highly recommended. By switching between different camera angles, you can add variety to the livestream and enhance entertainment value. Incorporating close-up shots and wide-angle views increases dynamism, allowing you to highlight key details and capture the overall scene effectively. 

4. Breaking down language barriers 

An essential factor for the success of a livestream is its accessibility to a global audience. Language barriers can pose a significant hurdle in this regard. By utilizing an AI-based feature, you can add subtitles to your livestream and quickly break down these barriers. These subtitles can be translated into various languages, sometimes even edited in real-time or optimized with company-specific vocabulary. This makes your live event accessible to an even broader audience, regardless of their native language. 

Automated subtitle translation also saves costs and effort involved in complex translation processes that would otherwise be necessary. This allows you to offer your content in real-time in multiple languages and ensure that your message is understood worldwide. This not only increases the reach of your livestream but also enhances engagement and satisfaction among your international viewers. By making your livestream globally accessible, you maximize the potential of your live events and open new doors to international markets. 

5. Engagement after the livestream 

Not only is the professional execution of the livestream important, but to sustainably increase its success, it’s crucial to maintain engagement after the livestream and leverage the video content to its fullest potential. 

Content recycling 

Livestream content provides immediate value in real-time but also holds significant value afterward as reusable content that should be adapted for different communication channels. It’s always advisable to record your livestream and make the recording available for later viewing. This allows viewers who missed the livestream to catch up on the content and provides a resource for repeated viewing. In marketing, webinar or livestream recordings are also popular for lead generation. Seize this opportunity! 

Additionally, you can create and publish highlights and summaries to showcase particularly interesting or important moments, reaching a broader audience. 

Seeking feedback 

Gathering feedback is a crucial step to enhance the quality of future livestreams. As discussed previously, you can do this interactively during the livestream or afterwards. Conduct surveys and feedback sessions to understand the audience’s opinions. Analyze viewer numbers and interaction rates to gain a better understanding of your audience’s preferences and behaviors. If you’ve actively collected data through various audience interactions during the live event, now is the time to evaluate them in light of your goals. 

Post-event follow-up 

Continue the interaction with your audience through social media and email. This fosters a sense of community and keeps your audience engaged. Use these channels to announce future livestreams and topics, and build a continuous relationship with your viewers. 

These actions create sustainable engagement that extends far beyond the actual livestream, laying the groundwork for the success of your future live events. 

Conclusion 

Livestreaming has become an indispensable tool in modern corporate communication. However, not all livestreams are created equal. To maximize the benefits of your live events and align them effectively with your objectives, it’s essential to continuously seek new ways for improvement, align with goals and target audiences, and leverage innovative technologies. Through careful planning and preparation, integration of interactive elements, high visual quality, and the use of AI-based translation tools, you can elevate your livestreams to the next level. Furthermore, maintaining engagement post-livestream is crucial to capitalize on your success. By following these tips, you not only enhance viewer retention but also significantly boost the reach and success of your livestreams over time.  

Experience the new dimensions of livestreaming and leverage the opportunities it provides to increase brand visibility, gather valuable feedback, and build an engaged community. This sets the stage for sustained success in your virtual events.