- If you guys have ever been interested in live streaming
on your channel or Instagram or Facebook or anything,
these guys are the people to talk to.
They're gonna tell us their best pro tips
for how to engage your audience and live stream, coming up.
(Funky music)
Hey guys, my name is Tim Schmoyer,
and welcome to Video Creators.
This channel is all about helping you guys
grow a YouTube audience,
so you can spread a message that reaches people
and changes their lives.
And one of the things I love about live streaming
is that you can reach a lot of people at once
and, like, change their lives
by interacting with them in real time.
Not like videos, recording this
and they'll see this maybe a few months later.
This is like real time interaction.
- We find that's the quickest way
to build the like and trust, 'cause it's like real time.
- At the core level, like, at a subconscious level,
when people are watching live video
they know you know what you're talking about.
So, when you're trying to build credibility as a brand,
people don't second guess that there's edits
and things like that, right?
The way of the future is to really
solidify a relationship first and get engagement first
over thinking about numbers,
and live video allows that to happen.
- First of all, I wanna say, people fear the tech the most.
Like, the tech freaks them out.
- I mean, I've feared the mistakes
and people making fun of me
and me not being able to erase it and edit it out.
(Laughter)
- We did surveys and stuff, like:
What is your biggest issue?
Or why aren't you live streaming?
They don't know what to get.
They don't know what computer,
they don't know what software, and all that stuff.
And so, that's what we try to simplify first.
- I look at, you know, live video as four part strategy,
as a four step strategy.
Step one is the tech, step two is the content,
step three is promotion, and step four is sales.
When it comes to getting people to show up
and being a part of your community,
there are a couple of things.
One, your content abso-freakin'-lutely
needs to lead to the end goal.
If that's, your end goal is a sale of your own product,
or if it's a sale of a sponsor product,
or a book that you're launching--
- Or even convert viewers into subscribers.
- Yes!
Whatever it is,
you work your way backwards from that end goal
and you create a straight line in terms of content.
And you need to be very specific with your call to actions,
call to engagement, because it is a vulnerable thing
for people to engage with you if they don't know
that they're gonna get an ROI on that investment,
it's an emotional investment.
So, that's number one.
Secondly, you know, a lot of people
have this major problem with engagement and live video.
Because what they do is, oh I don't have my phone on me,
I was gonna hold it up.
There's my phone.
So, they go live and I call this the squirrel, right?
So, they go live and they're like,
"hey, I'm gonna deliver this awesome thing.
You're gonna learn how to live to 200 years old.
Are you read--
Hey, Tim!
Oh my God, I'm so glad you're here, thank you so much."
And there's this whole, like,
you never finish your sentences, you get interrupted.
You can have your phone back.
So, I look at a show flow.
So first and foremost, you open, you tease.
You tease your audience, tell 'em what's comin' up
and then you introduce yourself.
And then you ask a question
to get that engagement right off the bat.
Specifically, topic related.
And then you deliver some value.
And then you break for the engagement.
While you're delivering value, you don't engage.
You know, you dedicate that time to giving.
And so, you segment out your show flow.
That way you have the engagement aspect of live video,
which is so important, and then you also have the value.
- I felt bad doing that because when I get a superchat,
I just, like, wanna stop and thank the people who, like,
just paid me money and.
- I can help with that, actually.
- I did super chat commercial breaks--
- Yeah, exactly.
I love that you do that.
- And another thing, I don't know if you--
do you use Twitter?
- Yeah, I use Twitter.
- Okay, because, like, what you can do is,
I can set it up so that when you get a superchat,
it'll tweet the person a thank you note for the superchat.
So, you can keep on going and that'll just happen.
- That's like level 6.0.
- We get geeky around here.
- And another really important thing about engagement,
and something that not a lot of people realize
about getting community engagement,
is that you gotta learn your triggers,
your audience triggers.
And I don't mean pain points when I'm talking about this.
But, when you think about triggers for your audience,
I mean fun things that have absolutely zero to do
with your content, your end goal,
I know I said you need to lead to the end goal.
But, the triggers and the engagement need to get fun.
So, what I mean by that is, Chris Tucker,
this is a perfect example, had a book launch party recently.
So, he did a live launch party and he,
the promotion leading up to the party, he was like,
"Hey, we're gonna be live for this book launch party,
come join us.
We're gonna have incredible guests,
we're gonna talk about this, we're gonna talk about that,
we're gonna do this, and I think there's gonna be cake."
And then he moved on, right.
And then his aud--
comments started rolling in,
"wait, there's cake, do I get cake?
Hold on now, what kind of cake?"
And so, he saw that trigger happen
and then he started picking up on that in next episodes
or next videos that he would do leading up to the launch.
It became a theme of cake leading up to the launch.
And that's what I mean by trigger.
Like, we used to do this with bacon for the tech audience.
- And people would send bacon and coffee...
- Yes, like, I would get bacon gum and bacon toothpaste.
But, it's on the human level.
Like, everybody cares about cake,
everybody cares about bacon,
everybody cares about whatever your trigger is
for your audience and it's different for every audience.
So, there's no magical answer here.
But, you gotta play with some ideas
and some things and figure out what they respond to.
- One of the things that I do every Monday here
at Video Creators, is I live stream at one pm Eastern time.
Just talk about news and what's going on in the industry,
how creators should respond to what's happening.
How does that, is that important?
Or what goes into, like, do I need to get consistent
or is better just spontaneous or what?
- Well, there's actually a time and place for both.
So, we tell people you wanna definitely start a show,
a regular show, that people can build a habit around
and consistently come watch you
and put it on their calendar.
- Okay.
- And we always tell people, 'cause people are like,
"well, I have an international audience,
when's the best time that I should do the show?"
And we tell people, whatever time works for you.
Because if it doesn't work for your schedule,
guess what you're gonna do?
You're gonna find reasons not to do it.
So, start that live show, be very consistent,
do it at the same time every week, every day,
every other week, whatever it is.
But, just be consistent and you lead people to that event.
You're like, "okay, don't forget to join me Monday"
or you get on, "Hey guys, tomorrow's Monday,
don't forget I'm gonna be live,
we're gonna be talking about this topic.
If you guys have anything you wanna add,
post that in the comments under this video
and we'll respond to them on the show."
- What resources would you guys recommend
for people who wanna take their live streaming
to the next level?
- [David] So, we have livestreamingpros.com/tech.
And that is a free workshop, no obligation.
Just go in there, take that,
and learn why you want PC over Mac,
learn about the other levels,
why you wanna use them and all that.
And then she's also put together a quiz
that can help you go up through the levels.
- I went through the tech work shop, I've taken the quiz,
but those links are down there in the description below.
Go check 'em out and it'll very helpful for you
and your live streaming goals and strategies going forward.
- I started not being comfortable pretending and so,
you know, and then I had to really face the facts.
This partnership isn't working, you know,
the business itself wasn't doing as well as it looked like
from the outside, you know.
And I had to face that fact.