Professional live streaming

How To Create a Professional Live Stream For Your Audience

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It’s never been easier to stream a live video, with there being an abundance of platforms offering users the ability to go live to large audiences entirely free. Despite this, if you want to generate success from your streams and build an audience for your new online business, they have to be professional and offer value. Gamers, musicians, teachers, personal trainers, and more, can utilize live video for generating revenue and boosting their brand online presence, but how can you make sure you do it right?

Whether you’re a beginner to the concept of live streaming or you have years of experience but are looking to elevate your setup, here are some tips and tricks to having a professional live streaming setup. 

Table of Contents
1. Choose your platform
2. Set up your equipment
3. Plan your stream
4. Promote your content

Choose your platform

Where you plan to offer your stream will heavily affect its format and the equipment you may need. While social platforms offer free live features, if you want to stream for unlimited amounts of time or offer a more high-production video, you are quite limited to what you can do on social media. Using a professional and dedicated live streaming platform like Zidivo allows you to go live from any device and share your live video on as many web pages as you like. You can even monetize your streams by charging people to view and share private links for your audience. What’s more, you don’t have to invest a fortune in working with a professional team or platform either, you can usually pay an affordable monthly fee in exchange for complete access to a range of broadcasting and video hosting features. 

Set up your equipment

The next piece of the puzzle for a professional live stream is your setup. Don’t get ahead of yourself and start investing in tons of expensive recording equipment and microphones if it’s your first time hosting a live stream. It’s far better to start with what you’ve got and work on the quality of your streams before investing any money. A simple smartphone or IP web camera will suffice for recording your streams, along with an affordable external microphone, both of which can connect directly with a software encoder and live streaming platform and allow you to go live at high resolution for as long as you like. 

Another key aspect to keep in mind is the internet. A strong internet connection is crucial to a successful live video; if your internet dips in and out, your audience will end up watching a video that constantly buffers and is likely to leave in frustration setting a bad name for your brand. Make sure no one else is connected to your internet or use an ethernet connection to make sure you are ready to go. 

Plan your stream 

As much as you might want to go live with little to no planning beforehand, this can end up leaving awkward silences or causing you to go off on a tangent in your streams. Plan a rough timetable for your stream, whether you’re gaming, interviewing someone, or simply having a chat, so you can stick to a rough roadmap of conversation and not expect your audience to stick around for a video that’s hours long. 

While it’s important to plan, it’s also valuable to stay relaxed and interactive. Engage with your audience’s comments and respond to them in real-time rather than sticking to a strict script and not showing off your personality or making your videos unique. 

Promote your content

Last but not least, promotion is essential. If no one knows about your live streams, you won’t have an audience to talk to and engage with. Make sure to promote your streams in the run-up to the date and time and give your target audience plenty of reminders to avoid your hard work being wasted. Another idea is later to repurpose your content in different formats as a Podcast, or as content in a textual format such as a blog post.

Johnny McKinsey
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