Wish people were more active during your live video streams? Looking for ideas to help activate your viewers? Engagement in your live videos is one of the big things all algorithms want you to have, and it’s one of the most difficult things to actually get. Today, we’re gonna fix that and provide you with some useful tips on how to get more live video engagement!
Why Live Video?
One of my favourite things about live video is how engaging it can be. It’s a conversation. It’s a community. And it can be the most powerful way to create long-term loyalty and move people from stranger to customer faster than most marketing techniques. Let’s get started with the tips we have on how to get more live video engagement.
Train Your Audience
Getting engagement is about training your audience. I mean, no one wants to think that they’re trainable like a dog, but it is the reality of growing a loyal audience. You’ve got to train them, but it’s not a bad thing at all. It can provide structure. It can give you the ability to do more with them. And it removes the chaos from your streams. A quick example of this, if you do Q&As in your streams, you can “train” your audience to actually put a “Q” in front of their question so that you can gather those questions and not get distracted by chatter happening in the. If they don’t put a Q in front of their question, their question doesn’t get answered.
Ask for Engagement
Beyond a simple example like that, training your audience can go way deeper into actually creating an engaged community. You’ve gotta actually ask for engagement. And maybe you’re thinking, “Well, I ask all the time!” But what most people do is, “Hey, what do you think about this?” What you need to do instead is actually get specific. For example, “Do you agree or disagree that algorithms are built to make your life harder?” Asking a specific question will get you more engagement. And when asking for engagement, you have to realise that there are different types of engagement and there are different levels of engagement.
Levels of Engagement
When we talk about types of engagement, we’re actually referring to things like commenting, liking the video, sharing the video, and even things like reactions on a Facebook Live. So you can use all of these to get more engagement and teach the algorithms that you’re worth spreading around just a little bit more. So mix it up. Ask people sometimes for them to tap the heart reaction. You can ask them to comment. Or ask them to share. Switch it up. But remember, you have to ask over and over again in order to train your audience to engage with you. Eventually, it becomes a snowball effect. People are already trained. They’ll engage easily with you without you even having to ask! But you’re always gonna have to train new people coming in. And your trained audience will actually help you do that as well!
Easy Win Engagement
Then there are different levels of engagement. Easy wins, for example, are a fantastic way to get your audience started with engaging. People don’t engage easily, so you want to get them going with an easy win engagement question. “Where are you watching from?” “Do you like pineapple on your pizza?” These are very simple questions. They’re an easy win for your audience, and they’re an easy win for you.
Meaningful Engagement
Then we move into more meaningful engagement. This is like getting through the first awkward minutes of a first date. You’ve talked briefly, now it’s time to get a little deeper. Asking your audience what they struggle with when it comes to the topic of the day is a great example of more meaningful engagement. Get them to write more than a single word or phrase, and not only will the algorithm benefit you, you’ll also create more loyal viewers. The more they put into you, the longer they stay.
Community Engagement
The third type of engagement is where your audience is having conversations with each other. You flip the engagement from directed at you to where your community is actually a true community, helping each other out, learning about each other, joking around with each other. Let’s say someone asks a question and you don’t have a good answer for them. You can say, “You know what? I don’t have the answer to that. But I know our audience is full of super smart people. Does anyone have a resource for John that you can share in the comments?” You can encourage this by calling people out when they do it on their own. If you see someone in the comments helping somebody out, give them a special shout-out. It’s worth pausing your stream for. For example, simply say “Thank you so much Jane for answering John’s question.” Tap in to the human desire to feel special. Not in a fake way, of course. But in a genuine way that shows people that you truly care about them and they’re not just another number.
Audience Triggers
One of my favourite unused things to get more engagement is to tap in to audience triggers. Audience triggers are purely conversation pieces that may or may not have anything to do with the content or the value that you promise your audience. Food, kids, pets. An audience trigger is something that your audience latches onto that taps in to the human element of your conversation.
Be Human and Get Personal
Speaking of being human, here’s a bonus tip for you. As a brand, you may think you need to stay professional and stay on-brand. But what you really need to do is be human and get personal. When you do, you’ll see much higher engagement. When you talk about your personal life along with your business, people will connect with you on a deeper level. That leads to more comments, more sales, and more long term loyalty. How do you get personal without going overboard? The perfect easy way is to integrate stories, life lessons, mistakes made, examples from your own life into your business content. This way you’re staying true to the value your audience expects, and they also get to know you as a person all at the same time!
