How to use YouTube Live to develop your business

YouTube Live Sucks! Like any new fad or technology, it has oodles of potential, but so many people exploit it that it goes from innovative to irritating. We have seen everything from launching SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy to Fortnite streams. How on earth are you going to develop your business with an online function that people are already avoiding like a plague? How are you going to use YouTube live to develop your business? The answer is wholly unsatisfying because it is not a quick fix, top tip, or trade secret. The answer is that you need your target audience to fall in love before they follow you live.

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Where this article differs from others

Google the topic of how to use YouTube live to develop your business, and you will find a series of very similar articles. The reason for this is because writers use Google, and they trawl the first few results and then rewrite them, which is why the first page of Google features so many articles with the same tips. The information in this article differs in three very large ways:

1 –  This article doesn’t concentrate on the technical side of making YouTube Live videos

2 – This article isn’t a carbon copy of the others you find on Google

3 – The information in this article concentrates on the business development side of the issue

If you were simply looking for technical instructions on how to create YouTube Live Streams, then here is a list of articles on the subject:

• Mention
• Neilpatel
• Viewsreviews
• Quicksprout
• Blog.pond5

You have to make your audience members love you

When you use YouTube Live, you are using a technological function that your viewers are not fans of. Firstly, there is little a user can do within a YouTube live section that he/she cannot do while watching a pre-recorded version. Secondly, Live-Stream trolls ruin it for everybody.

Excuse the lines through the troll comments in the image above. It was from a Christian live stream, and they ran lines through the screenshots to avoid offense, but you can make out what the trolls said if you look close enough.

In order for your target audience to watch your live streams, you need to make them love you…or love something about your YouTube content.

David Wilson, marketer at Uk.Bestessays.com, says: «Take the notion of advertisements. People hate ads. Sky Plus is so popular because it made it so easy to avoid ads. YouTube users are paying YouTube for subscriptions so that they do not have to watch advertisements.”

Yet, the TV show Rick & Morty has such a loyal fanbase that not only will they riot in McDonald’s, but they will also “seek out” ads with Rick & Morty in them.

Look at how many views and likes the advertisements have on YouTube, and one cannot blame its success on the poster’s popularity because the poster is a nobody with only 29K viewers, and the poster is only reposting because the Hardees YouTube channel was the first to post it.

People hate adverts, but almost 2.5 million people “sought it out,” and those are only the numbers from one nobody’s YouTube channel. It doesn’t touch upon the many other people who posted the advert and had people look at it. People hate adverts, but if they love the brand or the content, they will suffer any form of inconvenience.

Apply this to your business

• Focus on PR and pushing the desired image to make people seek out your online content
• Work on pulling people in rather than pushing ideas/products onto them
• Ingratiate and cultivate first and sell only after they love you
• Work towards the users loving your brand through YouTube or loving your YouTube content
• People seek out uses and/or entertainment…they don’t seek out offers

Love your brand…or love something about your YouTube content

A company such as Harley Davidson can promote a live stream showing the release of their newest bike and receive hundreds of views from people who love the brand. People love the brand, so they watch YouTube Live videos and become excited about new products. People dislike live streams but will happily watch live streams of Alex Jones (InfoWars) on YouTube and Facebook because they love his personal brand.

However, some companies have a very hard time making people love their brand. For example, companies such as hotels have a harder time making people love them (or even getting people to know who they are), but they can still produce live stream content that gets people watching. For example, Palazzobembo was one of the first to show Venice Live Cams, which effectively enabled people to take a sneaky peak at what is happening in Venice right now. Their live stream is still heavily attended despite the fact that all people are watching is a live camera in another country.

If you run a business that your target audience has a hard time falling in love with, then have them fall in love with your YouTube content instead. Just because you are a plumbing repair company doesn’t mean you cannot post videos about movie mistakes. You then develop your movie mistakes content into live streams, such as discussion panels on what is really a mistake and what is really a movie nuance. For example, your panel could discuss if Jessica Biel was underacting during the child stealing scene in “Tall Man,” or if her actions were conducive to the twist at the end. Simply have your logo at the bottom of the videos you produce and end each video with an ad for your services. The great thing about posting non-service-related entertainment content is that people will also seek out the ended live streams that you publish, so that people who missed the live version can still drop in.

Apply this to your business

• Your YouTube content doesn’t have to have anything to do with your products
• Create content that appeals to your target demographics without actually selling your products
• Treat your content like a target-audience filter and not like a warm-lead generator
• Structure your live streams to revolve around your regular content
• People will skip your ads if they are at the start of a video
• People will allow your ads to run on at the end of a video because they have had their fix

Getting people to feel involved – the Tony Robbins example

Tony Robbins is an on-stage therapist who sells the same meaningless and fluffy motivational nonsense that all the other motivational speakers push, but Tony is so convincing and persuasive that he is able to capture you in the moment and change your mind while he speaks, which means you end up thinking differently not because of what he said, but because you believe in the man himself.

Getting Tony to do a live stream on YouTube is harder than picking grains of rice from broken glass, but when he does appear live he allows you to join in at home. Part of the allure of live content is that anything can go wrong, and the other appeal is that viewers can become emotionally involved in what  is happening. Imagine snooping on a phone call as it happens, and imagine snooping with a pre-recorded phone call, which gets your juices flowing the most?

Tony Robbins expertly used live streaming when he promoted his new book, and he did it by having people join in. Part of his process is getting the audience moving, talking, writing, and on their feet. He asked people at home to do the same. When he asked his audience to celebrate with their hands in the air, he asked the people at home to do the same. The fact that it was live helped make the people at home feel as if they were part of an event, rather than feeling like they were waving their arms in front of a pre-recorded seminar.

Apply this to your business

• Get people to join in at home (or maybe with the live comments section)
• Have somebody standing by to kick off trolls when using the live comments section
• Remind your viewer that it is live, and anything can go wrong
• Create tension and/or some form of suspense
• Trying to run phone-in fund raisers is against YouTube’s terms and conditions
• Trying to run live selling sessions (like QVC) is against YouTube’s terms and conditions

Live stream your demonstrations and tutorials and then post edit them

A fiberglass company have been using this method for years and it is a wonder why everybody isn’t doing it. The fiberglass company has a wide range of products, so they post weekly videos on how to use their products. For example, one week they showed how to make a fiberglass mold of a wall plaque so that plaster cast replicas may be made.

The company posts all its videos on live streams on YouTube and on Facebook because live streams are promoted more highly and are ranked more highly on both Facebook and YouTube. When the live stream is going on, the hosting channels are far easier for users to find.

The fiberglass company runs all its weekly videos as live streams. Many times, they need to saw something, or something needs to dry and set, but they just use the old “Here is one we made earlier” method. The videos draw in a fair number of people and are published on YouTube once they are finished. The marketing team then takes the video, edits it, runs it through post production, and republishes the session as a shiny new video to add to their catalog. Not only do the videos receive a healthy number of live viewers, but their videos are also evergreen, which means people keep coming back to them again and again to learn technical knowledge on whatever is being demonstrated.

Apply this to your business

• Take advantage of the fact that live streams rank highly while they are live
• Are you able to run all your videos as live streams and then post produce and republish?
• Can you make live streams part of your video production process?
• Always post-produce your videos after live streams because it is the right thing to do

Final thoughts – More viewers and more conversions

You can use YouTube live to develop your business, but the hardest part is getting people to love your content or your brand enough so that they will sit through live streams (don’t forget that most people have something better to do). The most successful business-based live streamers (not celebrity or TV shows) are the ones who offer viewers something that they are not getting elsewhere.

For example, a company that sold car parts produced live-stream discussions that recapped the Fast and Furious movies so that people could watch the new movies without having to re-watch the old ones. The car parts company ran ads after each video ( or live stream), and they received a fair amount of website visitors and product sales because of their efforts, (sadly, the company’s YouTube channel was banned for having too many copyright strikes after using music from the movies, so be careful what music you have playing during your live streams and remember that you can add in copyright-free music after the session during your post production edit).

Unlike other articles, this article is not going to tell you that XX will work and YY will improve sales. The fact is that live streaming and/or YouTube videos will not develop your business at all if you do not produce content worth watching. Start with making your target audience love your brand or love your YouTube productions, and start by coming up with content that specifically draws in your target audience without being afraid of alienating everybody else. Your YouTube viewers will not become warm leads. Instead, treat your YouTube viewers/subscribers like a fresh pool of target consumers where you may start fishing for conversions.

Author’s Bio: Silvia is a professional writer at Best Writing Clues and novice entrepreneur from Phoenix. She mostly writes and works in the field of popular psychology and marketing. In her free time, she loves to travel around the globe. Follow Silvia on her Twitter @SilviaWoolard!

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