Guest Post: Reach More Audiences with Multistreaming

If there is a requirement to stream your event live, which platform do you stream it to? Is it Facebook, YouTube, Periscope or others? If you choose only one platform, this may lead to a loss of potential leads as your target audience could be spread across different platforms. This is where Multistreaming comes in handy.

What is Multistreaming?

Multistreaming is streaming the live video content to different platforms at the same time. If you stream your video to YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Periscope, and/or to other channels all at once, this means you are multistreaming your event.

Why You Should Stream Your Event to Multiple Platforms

Going live on multiple destinations has many advantages. Here is how you can benefit from multistreaming:

Maximize your reach

Every media holds a segment of your unique target audience. Favoring one over the other and you’ll be missing out on the views. But if you stream to multiple sites, you are more likely to be followed and viewed by more people.

Go the Extra Mile for Your Audience

If you stream on only one platform, you can’t persuade your audience to go to that very platform. But if you stream to multiple platforms, they will find your event on their favored platform. This means you don’t need to take extra actions to convince them to use the platform you feel most comfortable with.

Answer Comments from All Channels

If you are multistreaming to Facebook and YouTube, for example,  how are you going to answer your viewers’ comments? There are some multistreaming services that can aggregate all the chats to one screen.

Social Alerts (Automatic Publishing)

One of the event planning problems is staff and volunteers. Maybe during the event, you run out of people taking care of the event and in that hassle, the social media representative doesn’t have time to make a post on the channels you are going to stream to.

Multistreaming social alerts messages will be posted automatically to all the connected channels. So even if you don’t have time to notify your audience about the event, the multistreaming service will take care of it.

Analyze Your Audience Behavior

Multistreaming services are great for collecting statistics about the entirety of your audience. For example, what’s your main source of views (which channel most of your audience comes from) or what phrases are the most popular among your viewers.

How to Multistream Your Event?

Here, you have a few options: hardware, software and the cloud. Which one to choose largely depends on your needs and the equipment you have at your disposal:

Streaming hardware is a type of single-purpose encoders that has a CPU for processing and streaming video clips. All the appliances for recording audio and video content are connected to the hardware setup.

Streaming software implies that you have a program, audio and video sources all connected and running on a computer. Such software comes in a variety of prices and features, but most of them can only handle a few streams without hindering the content quality (the more streams, the more traffic speed and CPU power you will need).

Cloud software is a type of multi-streaming service that doesn’t require a powerful computer since all the heavy lifting (video processing and traffic) is handled in a cloud. That makes it possible to stream high-quality content even with a 4G connection.

Although multistreaming hardware is lightweight, you should either keep it stationary or transport with caution. Software can be used from any place, but the computer should be powerful enough to handle multiple streams. Cloud software, on the other hand, ticks all the boxes — it can be used from any place and any device.

How to Multistream a Pre-recorded Event

Some event organizers are concerned about live streaming as it can be risky or include bloopers which might go viral. To make sure your company’s reputation doesn’t suffer, you can go live with a pre-recorded video of your event. This means you will have time to make edits and bring your video to perfection.

To live stream your pre-recorded event, you can use a scheduler tool.

Here is how scheduling a live event works:

1. Upload the video
2. Pick a date and time to go live
3. Monitor your video once it’s on air

When you choose the best time for your video, your event will automatically go live to all of your connected channels.

Unlike live video streaming, you don’t need additional bandwidth and even if your internet connection is slow, you can still upload the video. Of course, it might take a little bit longer but still, you will have the video uploaded. As the tool is cloud-based, you can access your scheduler profile from various devices and make changes in your schedule if necessary.

Apart from the higher quality, scheduling a pre-recorded event live is beneficial when you are away, too busy with other organizational tasks or just want to be less stressed because of streaming the event live.

Conclusion 

Streaming your event to multiple destinations will lead to more exposure and consequently, more viewers/followers. Your audience will be able to watch your live event from the platform they favor. This also eases the question on where to stream your event to – you just pick all the available channels.

Simulcasting should be included in your event planning checklist. Stream to multiple platforms and reach more audiences!

Author: Sirarpi Sahakyan

EventsAir has been at the forefront of Event Technology and Innovation for over 30 years, continually pushing the boundaries of what an event management platform can do. Built by event planners for event planners, EventsAir is a secure, scalable, cloud-based solution that can manage everything from in-person, virtual to hybrid conferences, meetings and events in a single online platform – anywhere, anytime and on any device. In use in over 50 countries by multi-national corporations, professional conference organizers, government departments and tertiary education institutions, EventsAir is also used in global congresses such as G20, APEC, CHOGM and ASEAN, as well as sporting events like The Olympic Games, World Rugby, Commonwealth Games and Pan Am Games. EventsAir is trusted by event professionals around the globe. For further information, visit www.eventsair.com