Live streaming has been rapidly advancing and even social media giants like Facebook or Vimeo are scrambling to jump onto the bandwagon. The use of live streaming for branding has increased by 4 times over a few years.
Short-form live streamed videos are getting more popular than ever and the movement toward mobile-first videos urges a need for businesses as well as brands to get on the board and share content via live streaming apps. However, before you jump into the live streaming world, let’s take a closer look at what live streaming can offer your business.
Historical Notes
Thanks to such apps as Periscope or Facebook Live, live streaming is nothing new today. Though live streaming has recently become a trend, it has an old history that no one knows. It was not until the 1920s when the first efforts in this field were made. Of course, the quality of that video was poor because of the primitive computers and slow Internet. However, video streaming started gaining popularity in the mid-90s along with the technological breakthrough.
Coming back to our time, live broadcasting has become so popular thanks to powerful smartphones and tablets packed with state-of-the-art cameras. Nowadays video streaming works almost seamlessly and that’s the main reason why people prefer mobile video streaming to TV or even YouTube. Its number is constantly growing. Statista has predicted that the number of mobile video viewers will reach 179.4 million in the US by 2020.
Industries Where Live Streaming
Comes in HandyLive streaming is all about engagement. It’s a great way to interact with your customers in real time. If you want your company or brand to stay apart from the herd. Live streaming comes useful in lots of business niches not to mention:
Retail
Retail is probably one of the most app powered industries. Thus, retail entrepreneurs are constantly looking for new ways to engage customers and stay competitive. Live streaming can do both enhance brand awareness as well as drive more sales.
In this case, it’s better to develop a custom live streaming app that will let users make purchases while streaming.
Real Estate
People don’t have lots of free time to visit the properties they are going to buy or rent. With live streaming apps, real estate agents can show dwellings in real time. Since real estate strongly depends on the visuals, the use of live streaming with all visual details in real time may appeal to customers. You can load your app with an “instant booking” feature and allow your customers to book the property while watching your live stream.
Education
Using live streaming for education, students will be able to learn from the top experts in their field regardless of the location. Of course, YouTube is great at sharing lectures and presentations, but there is hardly any interaction with a speaker.
Live streaming allows unmatched interaction above and beyond the classroom experience. Teachers and students can face-to-face contact no matter where they are. Also, live streaming has no rival when it comes to engagement. For example, little students can watch live streams from zoos while learning about animals. Or students can practice their foreign languages with native speakers.
Logistics
Customers are often concerned about their cargo. If it’s safe, where it is, all that worries customers. Live streaming can help in this case, too. You can equip your trucks or containers with webcams that will broadcast the video to smartphones and allow the customers to monitor where the cargo is and if all is going well.
Healthcare
Healthcare can benefit from live streaming as well. There are dozens of ways how live streaming technologies can power up the healthcare industry. Thanks to live streaming apps, hospitals will be able to support patients in real time by providing face-to-face consultations or interpret the results of examinations. Moreover, it can train interns or old conferences with colleagues from all over the world.
Why Should You Use Live Streaming for Business?
Going live is a trend that will only gain more popularity in the upcoming years. It has become a new way of communication. Thus live streaming can help to:
- Share live events
- Present and promote products or services
- Share news
- Hold seminars, workshops, and conferences
- Provide face-to-face online consultations
- Run interviews
- Hold “how-to” meetings
- Carry out training
- Become closer to customers
- Take your customers behind the curtains
Summary
There are lots of ways to harness the power of live streaming for customer engagement. Use every chance to keep close to the community. For this purpose, you can use ready-made streaming apps or develop your own one. Broadcasting is a great idea not only for startups but also for businesses.
Well, there are two options either use a ready-made app or build a custom live streaming app integrated with all your existing business systems and apps. If you want just to share your knowledge or interact with customers, existing live streaming platforms are more than enough. If you want to go far beyond average live stream talking, create a custom app not only to share videos but to power up your business.
