Apr 01, 2015 admin
While Meerkat and Snapchat Stories and Discover features have fans buzzing, Twitter’s recently launched Periscope app is taking the live casting category by storm. So what is Periscope? According to Twitter’s blog post on the launch, Periscope is “a new app that lets you share and experience live video from your mobile phone”… but that doesn’t fully capture the new world this app delivers. While I wasn’t convinced I needed a live streaming app; once I checked it out for myself, it was easy to see the potential for more creative social sharing, news coverage and branding opportunities for marketers.
My first experience watching a live broadcast on Periscope came courtesy of Josh Constine of Tech Crunch and he had me hooked from the first minute to the last.
Josh livestreamed the capabilities and potential of Periscope, by asking followers “what should I do next?” Viewers of his livecast asked him to complete tasks in real time including; serenade a woman on the street, bark at a car, ask someone for directions to Central Park (poor guy on the street fell for it), give a girl a flower, buy a Coke and some Mentos at the grocery store (and make a lame volcano), climb a palm tree, interview a street performer, and many others. His energetic jaunt from task to task was hilarious and the entertainment value was non-stop.
For marketers, Periscope is particularly powerful as it provides a new avenue to interact with fans and adds another powerful dimension to your social strategy.
Now is the time for marketers to experiment and test out live broadcasting with Periscope and other apps like Meerkat, to gain first mover advantage with this growing and engaged audience. My colleague Lee Glandorf shared her thoughts on Meerkat and some great ideas for how marketers can experiment with live broadcasting — you can check them out in her post: Meerkat: Everything You Need to Know About the Live Streaming Video App.
After reading all of this great info on live casting, you’re ready to jump in and try Periscope for yourself, right? Well here are a few final tips to get you started:
1) Be sure to check out other live broadcasts so you can get ideas for how you may want to use your Periscope. You can comment on the video in real-time, or simply tap the screen to give the broadcaster “hearts” to show you like the show.
2) Once you are ready to do your own broadcast, be sure you give it a descriptive title to tell your followers what you are doing
3) Select your privacy options; you can leave location or privacy on or off and /or post that your broadcast is starting to your Twitter followers or not
4) Start broadcast by tapping “start broadcast” and stop it by swiping the screen down.
5) You will see people “join” your broadcast and any comments on the bottom of the screen and your “hearts” will scroll on the right side of the screen.
6) To turn the camera around while broadcasting, just double tap the screen.
7) When you stop your broadcast Periscope will start to save it for replay broadcast. As it’s loading you will have the option to cancel the saved recording (if you prefer not to give access after) and will also have the option to save the video to your camera roll. Periscope also gives you the ability to shut comments off or save the broadcast with or without comments, so you can remove any unwanted troll talk from your saved video for re-broadcast.
8) Lastly because all marketers love metrics; after your broadcast airs you can see how many people joined, what percentage stayed engaged, who they were, and how many hearts you received.
Are you a Periscope fan? We would love to hear about your favorite live casts or best marketing use case examples.
