Live Video in Today’s Internet
Viewers spend a lot more time watching a live video than a video that is available on demand.
While most consumers spend around 5.1 minutes watching an on-demand video, they spend around 42.8 minutes watching a video that is streamed live.
This statistic is kind of obvious for today’s internet where live streaming video has become the most engaging form of communication by a large margin.
When brands are planning to live stream to social media, the first consideration is often deciding on the platform. There are multiple video streaming platforms like Facebook Live, Instagram Live, and Periscope and all of them have their own strengths and weaknesses.
Fortunately, most brands are not forced to make that decision and can choose to live stream on multiple platforms simultaneously using the services of a dedicated webcasting company like Dreamcast.
In this article, we explore a few reasons why webcasting simultaneously on multiple social media platforms using live streaming solutions is useful.
Why Live Stream to Multi CDNs
Reason #1: Because you can be everywhere at the same time!
- When live streams started becoming popular, social media giants began to adopt the technology and started integrating it to their platforms to create their own webcasting solutions.
- Periscope was initially the first among live streaming solutions that fully utilized the power of live video in a social media context. It was soon acquired by Twitter and other platforms like Youtube Live, Facebook Live, and Instagram Live started popping up as well, to leverage the power of live streaming video on social media platforms.
- These days, live video has become an integral part of most social media platforms and it’s not uncommon to find people and companies live stream to social media. However, all these platforms have different strengths and weaknesses and are meant for different audiences too. For example, the audience found on Facebook Live would be much different than the audience that would be found on Instagram Live.
- To maximize the reach of a live stream, it is important to take advantage of the different types of audiences found on these platforms. By webcasting on one platform and ignoring the others, a lot of the potential audience is lost for any brand.
- By streaming to all major platforms at the same time, brands can maximize their reach and be everywhere at the same time without worrying about missing out on a large part of their potential audience for the live stream.
Reason #2: Because you can make the best of every platform!
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- When it comes to using social media streaming to spread the message or tell the story of a brand, it is important to consider the pros and cons of every webcasting platform.
- By streaming to multiple platforms at the same time, brands can utilize the best features of all the platforms while avoiding the cons of them and create a more unified social media strategy featuring live video and utilize social media broadcasting to its full potential.
Reason #3: Because it is easy and convenient!
- Webcasting to multiple platforms at the same time is convenient and easy, as there are many software solutions that can enable that.
- These solutions also take care of ensuring proper encoding takes place for all the different platforms as they have different requirements for video input.
- Most dedicated live streaming companies have experience using these solutions to create a more unified broadcast for corporates and brands across all social media platforms.
- As live webcasting across multi CDNs can be done almost effortlessly, there are no reasons why brands shouldn’t do it and multiple reasons why they should.
Reason #4: Because you get presence on every platform!
- As we previously established in this article, every social media platform has its own unique set of audience that responds differently to content and ignoring any of them can diminish the live stream’s reach and the intangible returns on the live stream.
- One of the benefits of simultaneously broadcasting on different platforms is that it enables a brand to have a unified presence on all the different social media platforms.
- For example, most social media platforms have the option to store the entire live stream (some permanently and some for a limited time). These enable the audiences of the brand on different platforms to view the entire stream on-demand later.
- Another benefit of streaming on different platforms is better analytics. When combined, all the viewing data from different platforms can lead to making improvements in future streams to ensure only the best output is given.
Summary / Quick Notes
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- Live streaming video has been a very powerful medium of communication since its inception. By decentralizing the power to broadcasting to a large audience, live webcasting video has changed the way both individuals and brands communicate with their audiences.
- With the help of a dedicated webcasting company, any brand can simultaneously stream to multiple platforms conveniently, leading to
- A more unified social media strategy.
- More reach and presence across all social media platforms.
- Better analytics.
