From Red Bull to General Electric to Adidas, major companies are streaming live video across newly emerging social media platforms to promote product releases, event sponsorships, celebrity endorsements, expert Q&As and behind-the-scenes reveals. But, delving into this viral realm can be spooky for some marketing agencies and small companies.

Live video streaming can be a frightening new space, because the content ‘disappears’ after a few hours, and the temporary platforms have not proven a return on investment. Still, these moment-in-time marketing pieces are creative, fun ways to utilize the growing trend of sharing video content to connect with followers.

Snapchat, Periscope and Blab might be too new for a small marketing team to truly understand each functionality, let alone develop a full set of internal best practices. But remember, only a year ago, Instagram faced the same hurdles. Now, an overwhelming amount of small companies and large corporations use Instagram to elevate their brand, and reach avid customers directly.

Instagram proved that marketers and companies can be more aware of what is relevant at an exact moment—and instantly share that message. The next step with Snapchat, Periscope and Blab is to adopt even more story telling, and interaction through mobile devices.

 

Snapchat’s Several-Hundred-Second Story
Snapchat is one of the fastest growing social networks around the world, with “more than 100 million daily active users viewing two billion mobile videos, every day,” according to Andrew Hutchinson’s Social Media Today article, “Why Are Marketers Afraid of Snapchat?”

Although the audience is half the size of Facebook, Snapchat is directed to millennials, which has marketers ready to sink their teeth into the growing viral video space. The biggest obstacle will be engaging millennials, who have an aversion to advertisements. This means a campaign must not speak to a group of customers, but talk directly to the buyer on a personal level.

 

Explore the World with Periscope
Periscope, owned by Twitter, is a social media app that broadcasts live streaming videos, which anyone in the world can watch and engage with in real time. (Most Periscope videos are available to search for and share, up to 24 hours.)

In just four months, Periscope has grown to more than 10 million user accounts, with 40 years worth of video watched every day, according to The Thinking Closet blog post, “Why Periscope Is Going to be a Game-Changer for Bloggers & Business Owners.”

Periscope is a great way to bring the brand presence found on a company website to life. Each video should feel like a real conversation, not an overly planned marketing piece. Periscope also provides an excellent way to collect instant feedback from loyal customers and your target audience. Imagine, asking for immediate input directly, with no emails or surveys!

 

Anyone Can Have a Show On Blab
Only a couple of months old, Blab is the newest edition to live streaming via a mobile device. Chats are conducted in a community setting, with multiple users participating in discussions, interviews, podcasts, teaching tutorials and amateur talk shows.

Blab has gained great respect already from marketers for being responsive to the industry’s user-friendly needs, including features for downloading video, directly uploading to YouTube, or embedding video on a website. Blab also offers measurable data on original live views, and how many times a video is replayed.

 

 

Mopdog’s Multimedia Marketing
Being successful in the world of live video streaming will require constant content creation. Although these ‘temporary’ videos will vanish right before your eyes after a live stream, each platform allows for saving and repurposing the visual content to a website, Facebook and YouTube.

Mopdog Creative + Strategy can provide you instant direction on how to engage with mobile streaming platforms.
Email [email protected] to discuss any of your viral video needs.