10 ‘Not to Miss’ tips to Host a Successful Hangout

Today, carrying out a live hangout or  live streaming is the apogee for any digital video marketer. Ayushi Shrivastav drove a live hangout on ‘Child Safety In Schools’ last week and would like to pass on some handful nuggets that can help you towards a successful one for your brand.

Omnisocial Buzz: With the evolution of the social media space, the stringent algorithms have made it difficult to reach out to your audience in timely fashion. Therefore, it is essential to unleash a uniform and omnisocial communication strategy for your hangout campaign. Buzz all social media channels with the hangout teasers till D-day. Your followers, fans or friends should not miss out on what you or your brand is up to. Worthy to note that doing paid campaigns on Facebook and Google will help you reach out to a far wider audience All social channels of Doctors’ Circle including Facebook pages, twitter, Youtube were abuzz with activity all through the promotion.

Facebook Event Container: ‘’Buzz on social media demands to be contained’’ Once you have rolled out the word, the next most important step is to filter and contain your targeted audience at one place. Facebook event page is the best possible format which is available in just one click. If you are planning to host weekly hangout, then depending on a budget, marketers can also create a microsite with the YouTube hangout link embedded.

Quack Quack Collaboration: Look out for collaborations. Based on the topic you have chosen, reach out to relevant communities or allied brands. Having said that, the important point is not to lose the focus of your hangout objective. The essence and value you are trying to propose through the hangout need to be preserved. For the hangout we did on ‘Child Safety in Schools’, we had SHEROES and the Logical Indian as partners. These very highly engaged communities ensured we were reaching out to a wider set of audience.

Video Teasers: Video has emerged as a strong means to communicate in the digital ocean. if the video feature is nurtured with content exclusively for the targeted audience, you have come half a way! You can use free tools to create quick videos that will garner more eyeballs than blog posts.

Topical Content: Choose real time topics, keep an eye on what’s happening around, and then wisely merge it with your brand values. It can fetch you great viewership accolades and sets the right tonality of your brand persona.

If you have got a hazy vision over a choice of topic, crowdsource it. Ask your fans what they want to talk about.

Native Content Marketing: Recycle>> Repurpose >> Improve. Create great teasers, designs, and copies, feature them at the right time and observe the kind of engagement you are receiving on each creative or post.  Additionally, roll out educational content in the form of blog posts, guest blog posts and white papers as fillers in your content marketing plan for the hangout.

Tweetchat: We tried and tested Tweetchat and hangout, and it yielded us great results in terms of multichannel engagement, extra views as an incentive during the hangout and buzz on #ChildSafetyInSchools at India level. #ChildSafetyInSchools hangout received over hundreds of questions on both twitter and YouTube.

Email Blast: Most of the marketers are already in the practice of sending an email to the large set of potential targeted database. For our hangout on Child Safety, we sent emails to HRs of companies asking them to further forward it to their employees. This worked wonders for us. Similarly, it is not bad to do an email blast to a paid database as well.

Offline Buzz: Build offline support for your hangout campaign to give it a well-rounded, multi-faceted approach.For instance Doctors’ Circle distributed 2000 flyers to parents on the day of the hangout, and received great feedback from their target market which may or may not be online. Other offline means can be gathering in-house team support for word of mouth marketing, radio and print ads.

Technical Adequacy: Since hangouts are video driven content format, a few technical points are noteworthy before you go live:
a. Check if you have got a decent camera with a noise mute sound recorder.
b. Hands on expertise on ‘Wirecast’ tool lends you a great personalized control on hangouts. You can flash your logos, play ads or other promotional videos in between, you can play with audio inputs or even air live tweets on the hangout screen!
c. High-speed broadband internet connection for uninterrupted live streaming.