Lessons

Lesson Info

Live Streaming Video

So I'm gonna have my CEO at Aftermarq, Vincenzo Landino, come up and talk about live video, especially on Facebook because I feel like it fits in really with where we are but it may be on another platform. Vincenzo is the CEO at Aftermarq, he's also a live streaming video campaign expert. He's worked with a lot of brands he won't tell you about because he's extremely humble and it's kind of annoying 'cause I want to brag about him all the time. But he is just great at what he does so please help be welcome Vincenzo up here. (audience applauding) There you go, sir. All right, how do I, do I just put this on? Mm, hm. All right. All right, live video, thanks for the intro, Amy. First of all, I'm glad you guys are all still here. It's been an amazing day of learning and vlogging, it's hard enough in and of itself, right? Like, that's why we're here. That's why we're talking about it and so, you guys are looking at live video, you're like, "Wait a minute, I haven't even had video yet,...

you know?" You don't even want to hold a camera like this for five minutes, like, "Now I gotta do live video?" So, when we talk about live video, understand that it's because it is becoming so much more popular and there's more money in advertising being pushed into it by brands, and the platforms are trying to push it more. That means people like us that are not big brands, we have kind of a way into a level playing field, 'cause right now, there's a lot of eyes on it. So understand that live video, whether you have a vlog or you don't, or you're just starting a vlog, is super important for you. There we go. You know, you really have to use what works. And right now, we're living in an age of algorithms and everything's driven by some sort of formula that somebody created and none of us know about. It dictates our daily habits. Amy said, you know, do you see when you're on Instagram, you see the exact same content every time you click on something or maybe you visit the same set of websites and now you're being driven with ads somewhere, I mean, it's constantly learning about what we're doing and changing what we see. On Facebook, they give us the option to kind of beat that system a little bit, just a little bit. It was bigger at one point, it's kind of leveling off, but you still have an advantage over traditional video, and that's with live video. Before I go into the next slide, there's one thing that's really the biggest difference between video and live video, or recorded video and live video. It's the fact that you can actually engage back in real time. With normal video, you upload it to YouTube, or you upload it to Facebook, or you upload it to Instagram. Wherever you're uploading your vlog, your vlog can be anywhere. Wherever you're doing that, you can't talk to them until they view it, watch it, and then like, say something to you. You know, "Oh, I don't like that dress you have on." Or, "Great video!" or whatever they say to you. When you're in real time, you can talk back to you them. Many, many times, people are blown away when you actually respond to them. I know from personal experience that just responding to folks in my live streams was the reason why they kept watching and they keep watching because now if I say, "Oh, hey, welcome Savannah, thanks for joining us "and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." And then she starts talking about something, and maybe she'll watch my next video and then I see her come in another time, and I start talking to her again, now she thinks, like, "Wow, Vincenzo knows me, this is cool, "I'm gonna keep watching his video." Now of course, I can't talk to Savannah the whole time, or I can't talk to Jody the whole time, you know, I can't talk to Meg the whole time. But, as people come in, you're forced to engage them as we're having a conversation like this today. If you guys shout out a question at me, I'm gonna answer it, even though there's 28 or so of you here. I have to kind of spend my time answering everyone's questions, same thing with live video. Understand that there's a different way of going about it, there's still lighting you have to worry about, and all those other fun things we talked about today. But that real-time engagement is the only difference. All right? Live video equals special treatment. Right now, that's pretty much across the board. All the platforms, Twitter, Facebook, even to an extent, Instagram, they're giving some sort of preferential treatment to live video. How many people, show of hands, have some sort of page, not a profile, a page on Facebook? Personal page, business page, okay cool. Do you notice that when you post anything, a picture, a text-only, which, if you're still doing that, you're probably getting no reach. But do you notice that maybe, like, 1% of your amount of likes are actually engaging, not even engaging, seeing it, period? Okay. Well, live video's a little bit of a way around it. And what'll happen is you can gain more engagement that way. We have some numbers I'll show you in a second. Actually it's the next one up: 300% more engagement when compared to non-live videos. I've actually seen higher in a lot of circumstances. Well, when we've run live videos versus just posting a video now, Amy's got a really established following, you know, she's got people, they know what to expect from her, she's crafted her page where she's constantly posting certain things, they know what to expect. So it's different, numbers will vary across the board, so just be sure that when you see that number, don't think, "Oh no, I just posted a video "and got like two more likes than normal, "it's not gonna work." You have to stay consistent with it, you have to keep going live. Consistency is key across the board. It's what we've talked about all day with vlogging, it's the same thing with live video. You can't just go live once, you have to consistently go live. This is actually a really cool number: this number I pulled yesterday from a report that came out from 5, it's a video company. 67% of watch time actually happens after the live event, which is mind-blowing to me. Anything you post live, then lives on as a regular video, which people can then watch. Most of your watch time is happening after that. So don't write off live video as a way of even just creating, maybe that's your vlog. I don't know if you talked about it earlier, but maybe that's your vlog, maybe you're a life video vlogger. And that's totally cool too, there's a lot of people I know that have become, they've done regular shows on live video, they don't want to do recorded. They don't want to put in the time, like we were talking about earlier with the gear, and they just want to go on their phone, go live and they're done with it. And that's okay too. But 67% of watch time is happening after the live event. So you're have a real-time conversation with your audience, which I mentioned, it's also kind of a behind-the-scenes content that compliments your vlogs. And what I'll talk about here is that, when you publish your vlogs, you know, Amy had a schedule, she used to do Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and then it changed. But let's just say, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday; all right, let's just say Wednesday is your upload day. And people know to expect it on Wednesday. Well, you can have an in-depth conversation with people, with your audience, and go live, maybe Tuesday, or maybe Thursday after the video's been up. Or after the video's been up for a few hours, and what you can do is you can actually answer questions that people are asking on the YouTube side, you can go live on say, Periscope, or you can go live on Facebook. I wouldn't recommend going live on YouTube the same day you posted it, you know? But you could, you could try it. You can try anything, but I don't think I would recommend it. It allows you to ask for those questions. It also allows you to drive people in real-time. I'm standing here in front of you, you guys have to listen to me, you really don't have a choice right now, right? You chose to watch us, you chose to ask questions, you choose to engage all day. Well that's what live video gives you the opportunity to do. So now, you're instantly interested, to some extent, obviously I have to remain interesting, or we have to remain interesting for you to stick around. I have your attention for at least 10 seconds, I have your attention. In that 10 seconds, if I've remained interesting, now you're gonna keep watching me and then I can say, "Hey, check out more of my vlogs" or "check out more of my content elsewhere." It's a way of getting more eyeballs on you. It's a way of engaging in real-time and allowing people to see, like, "Oh wow, this person cares about me, "they're not just talking to a camera to get more views "and hack the algorithm." Cause I'll tell you this: if you're just posting a video to hack the algorithm, people are not gonna watch, right? But if you're there to engage, and you're using it as kind of, "Ask me any questions you want "about my video-making process. "I just uploaded a video yesterday, "I'm gonna upload one tomorrow, "here's what it's about." Are you guys excited if people are like, "Cool, I would love to know more about your process." Almost all the questions you guys asked us today, are still the same questions that Amy gets on most of her videos. Like, I challenge you to go watch one of her 800-plus videos because there's like the same questions constantly. Well, she can now take all those questions that she gets all the time and go live, and have a conversation with people, like, bring them into your room, have a cup of coffee with them, and you have that ability to do that with live video. By engaging people, you can ask them to return, it's like that call to action we talked about in your vlog, you can do that in real-time. And being able to do that, it gives you a stronger connection with your audience. So while your vlog is being created, you can also go live. And we've done that a lot, especially during Amy's book launch, we did a lot of live video, we mixed it in, live video and her videos and Instagram, just constant, we were putting tons of content out there. But that created a lot more eyeballs. I would say the biggest misconception for many is that they think, "Okay, put a video out, I'll send a couple Tweets out, "I'll post about it on Facebook and that's it, "like, that's all I'm gonna do." And then an entire week goes by, you know, you posted the day you posted your video, an entire week goes by and no one's heard from you. Until your video comes out again. Anywhere, like maybe they haven't heard from you anywhere. I would tell you right now, no one is going to continue watching it, or you're gonna have to keep trying to get new viewers constantly, 'cause you're not building a relationship with people offline, and live video's giving us the opportunity to have that face-to-face, to have the conversations. Conversation is where you're able to build the relationship. If you don't have conversations with your audience, they're not gonna stick around and watch. You'll see some of the bigger creators, they're still doing these kind of like, "Ask me anythings" They're still doing, I actually saw Casey Neistat do, I think it was a product hunt chat, I don't know if it was Casey or someone else. But they'd do like, product hunt chat, because it was a way for them to engage. They'll do it once in a blue moon because they've gotten so big. But again, for the rest of us that aren't at that level yet, we're still getting there, why not? It doesn't take you much time to go live for five minutes, 10 minutes, and that's it. I mean, we can go live right now, promote the Creative Live class, and I'm gonna get engaged individuals who are interested in Creative Live or interested in vlogging. And so that's a way to hack the system with live video. You can also, this is really cool. This is a cool feature, again, we did a lot of this with the book launch was, "What do you guys want to see next?" And in real-time, it's not enough to do a Tweet, like, "Hey what do you guys wanna see from me?" Show off your personality, ask your audience, "What do you want to see out of our next videos? "What do you want to see out of upcoming?" Maybe you're not gonna make it your next video, but imagine if I made a video for anyone here, Meg, right? Meg you're like, "I wanna see you do back flips, "attempt back flips and cartwheels in your next vlog." All right, well, imagine if I actually go out and make that video for you. Because you asked for it, right? What are you gonna say? You're gonna be blown away by that. I just turned you into a subscriber. I'm not saying do that all the time, but it's one way to kind of add, or to up the game for yourself. So yeah, questions about live video. There's a lot about live video, so I'll answer as much as I can. Go ahead, Meg. On that same note actually, and asking questions of your viewers, if you are still building your tribe and the people who are watching you- Yeah. Does it behoove you to not ask those questions quite yet because you're still building that relationship, or do you suggest asking them early on? Two years ago, you didn't have access to live video, right? Right. There was no option there. But now you have the option, why not use it? Of course, whether you're just starting, or whether you're like Amy, I mean, she's asking, but if I was starting today, I would ask too because I wanna know what people that already care about me to some extent, that aren't my family and friends that already know me; if it's one person or if it's 15 people that are watching me. I want to know, what do they want to see? Like, here's what I'm about, this is the kind of stuff I like, what kind of content do you guys like to see? What aren't you seeing from creators our there, why are you watching me live right now and not somebody else? They'll give you a reason. Cool, so what can I do for you to turn you into a subscriber or to turn you into a viewer long-term? And I would like to see that back flip video. (audience laughing) I can't back flip, I can't back flip. [Woman In Audience] Can you suggest some best practices for using Facebook Live to engage your fans, like what's working now. In terms of- Just, you know, to make it compelling and worth their while, I mean there's probably some good practices and best practices, or are there things that you can avoid, things that you suggest? So being an engaging presenter is my biggest tip. If you look up "Vincenzo Landino" and "Live Video" that's the biggest tip I have across the board. But don't overthink it, right? It doesn't have to be a production like this to be a live video, you know? So I would say, let them come into your home, to your room, to your coffee table, and have a cup of coffee with them. The coffee sessions worked for Amy, when we were launching the book. It was like, let's have a cup of coffee. And that works, you're bringing them into the home, you're not making it look like it's a production, and sometimes that works a lot better than going over the top with it. But engaging, using people's names to the best of your ability, is a really big tip. Engaging them by name and trying to engage with all the comments. In the beginning, you might not have a lot of people watching, so it's easier as it speeds up, you're kind of like, "Okay, I can't answer everyone's questions." But doing your best to engage after the fact is also a really big key for me, because if I miss somebody's question, or if I miss somebody's comment, I wanna make sure they got that attention. Just because I didn't say their name out loud, 'cause I didn't see it, I always go back. So engaging during and after will help you more so than any other tip I can give you. [Woman In Audience] What are your thoughts on taking live stream content from Facebook and then reposting it on YouTube? Amy can answer that probably better. I would say, so your content should be different everywhere. She said taking your live stream content and posting it on YouTube, like after the fact. Oh, I'll come up for this. So I will say this, a live video is different, obviously, than a regular recorded video. And so, if you just went and just posted that up, let's say I'm talking to you guys, right? And all these cameras weren't here, I just had one camera looking at me and they didn't have microphones, they couldn't hear you, and then I go try and post that video elsewhere, or I try to repurpose it as a podcast, the listeners are gonna say, "Who's he talking to? "What are they talking about?" So, I'm not saying not to do it, I'm not saying to do it, I'm saying see if it works for you. But- I usually say not to do it, but that's just because of the reason he said. If they weren't there real-time, and it's an exported experience, and there's not, like, the comments integrated in some way, how can you customize it for the YouTube experience? So, maybe there's a way you can sit in front of the cameras and say, "Oh my gosh, we just had the most amazing live stream, "let me tell you about it." And then pull pieces from it, pull footage from it, definitely pull what happened from it to summarize what's going on in the video. Even more likely, I just really love live stream for talking directly, having the conversation, engaging and saying, "What do you think about this? "Let's talk about this topic "and see what rabbit hole we can go down." 'Cause there might be 10 or 15 more topics I haven't even thought about yet, that my community is just stirring on. And so now, I'm gonna take those ideas and make a new piece of content on YouTube. You don't have to recreate the wheel, it's gonna sound, in all of your content, like you're talking about the same thing all the time. And you should be. Because if you really are good at what you do, you're gonna be on that one topic a lot and you're gonna be able to customize it into the different frames and questions that people are thinking about. So in that same capacity, I'm gonna go to a live stream and I'm gonna find a way to repurpose that live stream, but it's probably not for the sake of exporting it and uploading it into a YouTube channel, unless maybe you just wanted to save it there for the sake of reference and it's easier, and it is a lot easier, in my opinion, to link than to have someone go searching for it on Facebook. But that would be an Unlisted video for me then, if it's just meant to be there as a resource and not be distributed through subscriptions. Because that is gonna be wildly different than what people are expecting of me. And I'll add too, people go to a live stream to view something because they wanna engage with that person, they wanna get the chance, like, "Oh my goodness, I wanna get the chance to engage Amy. "She only comments to me back and forth on YouTube, "but I wanna actually have a conversation with her." So that's why they'll jump in there. Take advantage of that rather than just like, "Oh, I'm gonna go and post it all across the board everywhere." 'Cause it just loses that value. It's the same idea, you're respecting the vlog wherever you created it for, respect the live stream where it took place. That's just my feeling about it. Same with the Snapchat stories that you could have downloaded or the Instagram stories you wanted to save, there's a way to do that, but if you're actually doing it for distribution to create new content, how can you reframe it? [Woman In Audience] Do you have thoughts on YouTube Live? I have a lot of thoughts. YouTube, okay. Do you have thoughts on YouTube Live versus Facebook Live? Yes. [Woman In Audience] That might be general, I'm sorry. (audience laughing) No, I'll help you. That's a good way of putting it! Really, it depends on where you've built your audience. And I know that a lot of the things that I'm saying sound really similar but really it does depend on where you're building your audience. If you spent 10 years on YouTube- Right. And now all of the sudden, you're like, "See ya later, YouTube subscribers! "I'm gonna go on Facebook." They're gonna be like, "You just abandoned us?" And I've seen people who have actually taken it personally that, you know, she'll do a live stream on Facebook, and I'm like whoa, this is crazy. And that's the dynamic that you're building when you're trying to build in one place. I'm saying you'll get better numbers on Facebook right now. They're vanity. I'm not saying they're going to be quali- But it's just like anything, right? Like it's where did you make your first friends? Right. A lot of us started on Facebook. It's so easy to say Facebook's handing out views, right? If I had to pick a place today to start, I would say Facebook because you have the opportunity to build not quickly but to build and to also get better numbers 'cause everyone's after better numbers. But I'm still gonna say that YouTube is the place, if you're focused on quality, I mean Jason for example. He's a perfect example on YouTube, right? I think you said YouTube Live, but it'll tie in. He's on YouTube building constantly and he hasn't seen the growth that people want to see. Everyone wants to be like, "I want to be to a million subscribers tomorrow." We all do, but reality is you have to put in time to do that. You could do it faster on Facebook, it just doesn't mean that those numbers hold as much value as they would over on YouTube. And YouTube Live is, I mean, we've seen tremendous numbers on YouTube Live on Amy's channel from her going live on YouTube. And it's a perfect compliment. I think we're still doing a monthly live stream, like, ask me anything, a question and answer for the audience. It's so well-received, it's so well-received. And again, it's a compliment to the rest of the videos she's making. So pick your platform wisely. Understand where you have traction before you pick one of them. Because they both have their positives and negatives. [Woman In Audience] I'm wondering about the navigating the waters of difficult conversations. So when you're live, you don't have control over what people are gonna say. And so how do you steer that conversation, or is it okay to stop the conversation and say, "You know what, I'd like to address this offline" or something like that and follow up with people? That's a great response. You know, this is tricky, 'cause this is like an in-depth question. There are some people that address it right in the moment, hit it head-on, and they don't allow that type of, if it's a negative or a hard conversation. Some will address it head-on, others will just skip it, ignore it. I tend to be the one that will address it head-on, 'cause a lot of times people, with live video, they think, "Well, I'm gonna razz him. "I'm gonna get on him, I'm gonna shake them. "I'm gonna knock them off of their thought pattern." So that happens to a lot of people. They'll ignore it, but they're thinking about it the whole time and they're completely rattled after it. And that troll, you know, that's all it is, they get their satisfaction and that's it. I would recommend doing whatever's comfortable for you. If you think you wanna ignore it and you're capable of ignoring it, great. However, if, let's just say that kind of behavior or if it's like a tough question where other people are now, like a lot of side conversations happening, it's totally derailing what you're doing and no one's paying attention? Yeah, then you have to address it differently. Like I said, either you address it in the moment, or you say, "Hey, can we address that offline, "we'll talk about it after the stream, "we can have this conversation." I know I set up email addresses just for those types of conversations where people would ask questions, but I'm like, I don't wanna answer right now, whether it was a tough question, or like a rude comment or whatever it was, I'll answer it after. But a lot of times I would answer head-on, just because people would say, "Oh wow, okay." And this happens in YouTube comments. The minute Amy starts commenting in the thread, and people see that she's actually engaged with her audience, they stop with the disrespectful or the hard, not the hard questions, but like the disrespectful level, and I know live video there's been a lot of conversation about that 'cause you just can't filter people from watching all the time, so it is difficult. But I would say pick what's comfortable for you, and pick what is good for your audience, you know? Maybe the audience will rally around those types of situations and it's beneficial for you. For those of you who don't know, I'm Savannah Peterson, Savvy Millennial, brief news jack here. But someone who's been live with Amy and Vincenzo and Jason many times over the years, and I'm curious, because you and I have faced- Yes, I'm scared. Exactly, I've waited 'til the end of the day for this. (audience laughing) You and I have faced some very interesting things to that very point of, how do you handle a really weird live situation? Vincenzo and I have very different beliefs on a few different things and so we often actually help each other through those moments, rather than taking the side of what we're historically known for which I think really diffuses, and honestly just acknowledging someone, often deflates their troll, because then they're not being ignored, and when you're ignored it's easy to get really, really angry. Right. As soon as we're like, "Hi Mark, that's actually not what we're discussing today, we're talking about X, Y and Z because of whatever. Anyway, my question- Thank you. Because I'm fascinated about this as your friend, what's the worst thing or the most intense moment I should say, that has happened to you while live, how did you recover from it- Oh. And what was the takeaway that you think perhaps the group here could learn from? Oh, goodness. Well, I mean, as you brought up, so you brought up some of our good, little battles right, back and forth. We used to do a lot of live video conversations. We've had a lot of political conver- I'm not gonna go down that street It was deliberately ambiguous. (laughing) I know, I'm just telling them so they understand a little bit more. So that's happened, I don't know. Let's see, I did... Actually I was in New York City doing something for Barilla Pasta, and there were celebrities on the street, they were doing a celebrity chef battle, Voltaggio brothers, they were doing a celebrity chef battle, between them two, in the middle of the flatiron district. And I got brought in to do this thing, they didn't tell anybody that I was brought in to do this thing. They didn't mention it, the team that had hired all the video so I came in thinking like, "This is great, I'm gonna go in, I'm gonna interview." And I'm like getting in, I was in one of the Voltaggio brothers' faces, it was Bryan. If you guys know who they are, one of them was on Celebrity Chef or Iron Chef, one of those. Anyway, that's beside the point. And I'm like asking him questions, I'm standing in front of the barrier 'cause I thought I was cool, I'm like, "Yeah, I'm the live video guy, I'm talking, I'm having conversations with him" and he's like, I literally had people watching, it was like maybe a hundred people watching, asking questions like, "Oh this is so cool, Bryan!" And so I'm asking their questions to him. And he was like, right to the camera, "Dude, who are you and why are you in front of the thing?" He called security over and I'm just sitting there going like. So I had an audience of a hundred people watching, I've got them recording in the studio, they were recording this session, and not no one knew who I was, the production team knew who I was, they just didn't tell the key people in the space. So security comes over, and I'm having a conversation with security, I'm having a conversation with a celebrity, and the audience is just watching. Now of course, I'm on the brand, this is on a brand page, so now I'm like, how do I save this? I didn't want to just turn it off, and the biggest lesson learned was make sure that everybody, and the story there was, I was able to discuss it, I was like, "Hey, we're live video." I told them, I was just super honest with them. And then Bryan was there, I was like, "Hey, your wife's actually watching this right now." And she was, and he's like, "Oh!" And I told him. The key there was just be honest. Disclosure Make sure everybody knows when you're doing live video, especially if you choose to do it in public places. People really freak out about this stuff, even with video, like holding those cameras around, people freak out about being around video. Especially when it's not video, 'cause I wasn't, like, what are you doing here? It wasn't just, it wasn't the production crew, they were supposed to be there. What's this guy doing here? So just always be mindful of what you're doing, be mindful of what's around, if you're doing it for a brand, I've done, like Amy said, I've done a lot of stuff with brands, live video, and it's very, they're always telling you be very cognizant of the types of brand logos that are around, the people that are around, make sure that if they are in the screen, make sure they're supposed to be there, make sure getting disclosures if they have to. That's probably a little bit more than what live video you might be doing. If you're in your room drinking coffee, no big deal, you got nothing to worry about. If you're doing something else in a public space, public setting, there's a lot of times where situations could arise and you just have realize what your game plan is to get around it. Thank you Savannah, that was a really good question. That was actually a really good question.