You have to get new product information to a couple hundred of your sales reps, but your annual sales conference is six months away. Your management team needs to communicate directly and in a personal way with shareholders, but you only recently held your annual meeting. You need to train hundreds of your product reps all over the world, and you need to do it in a compelling way, with a combination of live demonstrations, graphics, and discussion.
Live video streaming was only recently extremely complex and prohibitively expensive. It often required special hosting considerations or complicated local server setups. In-house IT specialists had to put together custom solutions. But now live streaming is within reach of almost any sized organization. Costs for third party hosting is plummeting. These providers can provide stand-alone web pages, or provide an easy way to embed the stream right into your company site. Here’s the best news: if you still think that third party hosting would be too complicated or expensive, YouTube is now providing live stream hosting, FREE!
Yes, just like all of their video hosting, your free YouTube account can now stream your live production. And as it streams, it is archiving your feed just like any YouTube video, ready to view repeatedly, anytime and anywhere. Your organization can just stream to your own branded YouTube channel, even keep your videos and live streams private.
Eclectic Productions can help you navigate through this process and get you online. In addition to hosting, you will need quality production equipment, (cameras, microphones, lighting), computer support, and the specialty gear to put those audio-visual signals onto the internet. Remember: we’re coming to a point in time where being able to effectively communicate with live and complex presentations is not considered exceptional… we’re at a point where it’s expected. And doing it poorly reflects on your brand.
Some things to remember before you go live:
- While it’s possible to produce a live stream with nothing more than a computer’s built-in webcam, are you sure that’s the image you want to convey to your customers/shareholders/partners/employees? We’ve all seen enough bad looking Zoom calls.
- Like any good live meeting, you’ll need to carefully edit and review your presentation. We’ve all had to sit through boring meetings, but now you are asking your participants to sit for a length of time staring at a computer screen. Good visuals (graphic support? titles? well-lit presenters…) are a must. Clean and clear audio is mandatory.
- Rehearsals are highly recommended. A live stream being viewed by potentially hundreds of people (if not more) and then archived as part of your video library should be as polished as possible. This is no time to “wing it” with an ill-prepared, impromptu speech. And remember, if it’s out on the web, it’s forever.
- Technical rehearsals are even more important. Even simple live events with nothing more than a PowerPoint slide deck need technical run-throughs. (Is the computer plugged in? Can you hear my microphone in the back of the room?) Live streaming adds a few more wrinkles. The most difficult part is usually finding a good, fast, and reliable internet connection on location. This may be the most expensive part too, hotels and conference centers often want to tack on additional charges for a solid high-speed line, (much as they charge for meeting rooms, wifi access, etc.)
One of the major and obvious benefits to broadcasting your organization’s message live is the amount of money you will save by not having to travel your audience to you. Instead of bringing them to the meeting, You will bring the meeting to them. Conferences, training sessions, public relations messages, sales pitches…. all done from your location, without paying hundreds of plane fares and hotel bills to bring your audience to some expensive hotel conference center.
People are pretty sophisticated now in their taste for online communication. You don’t have to have your online meeting look like a pay-per-view rock concert. But you don’t want it to look like a bad webcam, either. You get your presentation put together, and we’ll help you put it up on the web.