Choosing a platform overview

(upbeat music) - Hey, everyone. I'm Stephanie Liu with Creator Up, and this is LinkedIn Learning. Today is all about getting started with live streaming. Did you know that 80% of consumers would rather watch a live video than read a blog post? In an increasingly digital world, live streaming has emerged as a leading tool to spread information. So if you plan to start live streaming, where do you start? In this video, you'll get a high level overview of some of the most popular live streaming platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitch, and YouTube. Let's get started. By now you've likely heard how effective video marketing is, but did you know that Facebook live video receives three times higher engagement than a video that is no longer live? In fact, according to ad week, Facebook Live videos get five times the engagement than standard photo posts. Here's some more interesting stats about Facebook's audience. Facebook users are 54% female and 46% male, and around seven in 10 US adults, 69% use Facebook. Here's another fun fact. Almost 90% of Facebook's daily active users come from outside the US and Canada. Whether your goal is to raise brand awareness, get more leads in the door, or increase interactions with current customers, live streaming on Facebook can make your brand top of mind and tip of tongue. You can live stream on Facebook in a number of areas, including your personal profile, your business page, groups, or even events. A few things to remember: when you live stream to your personal profile, your family and friends receive a notification. Unfortunately, you miss out on some of the most advanced features you get when you live stream on your business page. There you can cross-post to other Facebook pages, add captions, create live video clips and take advantage of Facebook advertising to reach a wider audience. Have a Facebook group, then live stream within the group to keep members engaged and build your community. And if you'd like to drive more viewers to your live stream, create a Facebook event which you can promote beforehand and even monetize. You also have the option to live stream from either your desktop or mobile device. A major benefit of live streaming on Facebook Mobile is having the ability to bring on a guest, and with the desktop version, you can use Facebook Live Producer to stylize your stream with advanced features like overlays and intros and outros. You even have the ability to broadcast with third party live streaming platforms, such as Ecamm Live, Restream, and StreamYard, which we'll get into a little bit later. Now let's talk about Instagram. Instagram Live launched in November 2016 and lets you broadcast to your followers in real time as part of Instagram Stories, a feature now used by 500 million people every day. And because we love numbers, here are a few to highlight. Instagram has over 1 billion monthly active users. Over 60% of users log into Instagram daily, making it the second most engaged social network after Facebook, and 69% of Instagram users are younger than 35. So keep that in mind when thinking about your target audience. When you live stream on Instagram, it appears in the stories area at the very top of a user's feed, which is prime real estate on the app. You can choose to live stream as a talking head, but can also invite a guest. Just remember, broadcasts are limited to one hour. You can only broadcast natively on the app, and once a live video has ended, it's no longer visible in the app unless you share a replay to IGTV. Now let's talk about LinkedIn, the social network for the working world with close to 675 million monthly users. LinkedIn has actually entered the live stream game with LinkedIn live. However, that feature is currently in beta. Users interested are encouraged to apply online. You can do so by searching for LinkedIn Live Application. LinkedIn Live users can broadcast through their personal profile, LinkedIn event, or organization page. To participate in the beta testing, you'll need to leverage a third-party broadcast tool such as Restream, StreamYard or Switcher Studio just to name a few. Using these programs enables you to go live from your personal profile or your organization's page. And then there's Twitch. Introduced in 2011, Twitch has primarily been a live streaming platform for gamers, but has also become popular among other creatives such as musicians, chefs, and artists. It's also gained a reputation as a solid fundraising tool. Some important numbers for Twitch: 3.8 million streamers broadcasted to Twitch in February 2020, attracting an average of 15 million unique daily viewers. Twitch's viewership skews heavily male with over 81% of their base. And Twitch is popular among young viewers. According to Statista, 73% of the users are ages 16 to 34. As you live stream on Twitch, you can unlock features that gives you more opportunities to reach viewers and in turn lead to bigger advertising revenue. It's also highly interactive with an emphasis on built in chat rooms during streams. If you're looking to set a trend and break new ground, Twitch is a platform to keep an eye on. You might've heard that YouTube is the second largest search engine on the internet. With more than 500 hours of video uploaded every minute, they're a platform where you can stand out. If you want to reach 2 billion monthly active users, then consider live streaming on YouTube. First, you need a YouTube/Google account that's able to be verified. In order to embed a stream on an external site, you must link an approved AdSense account to your YouTube account. And in order to live stream with YouTube on a mobile device, you need at least a thousand subscribers. Once you meet these qualifications, there are two ways to get started. Stream Now is a fast and easy way to begin streaming. This method allows you to use your webcam or another connected camera. Alternatively, events allows you to pre-schedule a live event, invite people in advance, set up a backup stream, and so on. Events also enables you to use high quality cameras connected to encoders. Now that you're familiar with some of the main live streaming platforms, let's focus on how to find and identify your audience. (upbeat music)