Introduction
In this Playbook we’ll cover step by step how to add a powerful Audience building tool to your business.
Live video has been the remit of games and hot-tub streamers for some time. But it’s too powerful a tool to leave to just entertainers.
We’ll cover how live video can be used to educate, build authority and trust and bring in sales and clients for your business.
We’ll cover:
- Part 1: Live and Kicking
- Part 2: Your own TV show
- Part 3: Going Live
- Part 4: Reach explosion
- Part 5: Frozen in Amber
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Let’s get started:
Live And Kicking
OK so why the hell should you do live video? That’s for gaming right? For kids and not people interested in your business.
Nope. Live video is the GOAT for building trust, authority and reach right now. And it works really well for business owners.
The platforms (TikTok, Instagram, X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube) are all clamouring for live video.
They give it the highest priority in their algorithm because they want people using it and watching it.
And on your side it lets you very easily produce massive amounts of content without complex pre/post production.
More than this it’s the most raw, authentic and “real” content out there. Which is the secret sauce here – as a business owner you can use live video to very rapidly connect with potential customers and move them to purchase quickly.
Think of it as taking hundreds, if not thousands, of face to face sales meetings a day.
You can literally talk to someone, answer their question and nudge them to a sale. But at scale – massive scale. Literally thousands at a time.
My very first live ever was attended by 1000 people to give you a sense of scale.
Here’s a vid of Gary Vee talking about how live video is 2024’s version of social media in 2014. Businesses thought “we don’t need social media” back in 2014 – meaning there was a massive opportunity for any one who jumped on it. Gary Vee argues here that we’re at a similar position with live video right now:
What we’ll be focusing on in this guide is adding regular live streams into your content mix to take advantage of this growing trend.
We’ll cover how to work out what your live show is about, how to actually go live, how to re-stream your live in multiple places simultaneously and then how we can carve our long lives up into short video clips for evergreen social media content.
Lots to do!
What if my niche is boring?
A common objection here is that your niche isn’t very exciting.
I get it. There’s a natural tendency to think that people aren’t interested in watching a livestream about bookkeeping, insurance or mortgages.
But guess what: there are.
And those people are precisely your customers.
Live streams build on topics we’ve previously covered in other Playbooks – Personal Branding and using Q&A content marketing. Live video just gives us a much more immediate outlet where potential customers have the ability to access our expertise by asking questions live.
So if someone is looking for insurance you can answer their questions. And potentially sell them a policy off the back of the interaction.
If someone is thinking about finding a business coach and you answer a question in a live you can potentially sell them coaching as a next step.
If someone is struggling to file their tax return and you can point them in the right direction you can more easily secure a new client.
Find examples
Let’s find examples in your niche.
This can be tricky because on some platforms once the live has finished you won’t find trace of it.
So we’ll be smart.
Head to Youtube first and plug in ““niche + livestream”.
For example if I put in “UK mortgage broker + livestream” I get this:
I’ll ignore the top result because it’s Sponsored.
I’m going to ignore the second result because i) it’s a company not a personal brand and ii) it only has 228 views.
That third result though? Perfect. It’s a channel called “Moving Home with Charlie”. Personal brand, livestream, 5.1k views. Solid.
Click through and check out the more relevant results in your niche.
Specifically click the Live tab:
This shows the channels previously Lives. Here it looks like Charlie streams roughly a few times per week, each time to 2000-5000 people.
Go ahead and check out the streams in your niche. Very likely it’ll be the host just talking to camera for an hour or so. Potentially covering news, potentially having guests on – but majority will likely be talking head style.
What we we want to do next is track back to their other platforms. Youtube may be where their Lives live permanent after the livestream. But often they’ll use a primary platform before Youtube.
So Google their name + the various platforms to trace back and find where they operate.
For example Moving Home with Charlie also operates on Tiktok and other platforms:
Look for the platform where they go live first. They may have a scheduled live or just a regular time they go live. Try to make it to their next one to see what they do. It’s valuable information for you!
In the next Part we’ll work out what your lives will look like. Right now it’s important that you go and find who else in your niche is doing lives.
If there are lots then i) that means there’s a market and it works for them and ii) we can learn what they are doing by observing and emulating.
If there aren’t any then you may have a blue ocean to move into. In traditional markets this may be the case – live-streaming is very cutting edge and you may have a clear path.