Every brand is looking to stand out from its competition. Building a unique and engaging brand requires a thoughtful approach and finding ways to showcase how your brand is different from others that may provide a similar product or service.
One of the real advantages of social media marketing is the opportunity to grow a community. Your audience for your business is out there. In many cases, they are building their own communities without any brand engagement. The ability to establish and grow a brand-driven community can propel a brand very quickly. Brands can tap into or leverage those existing communities that align with their brand offering. This, of course, is easier said than done.
There are a set of questions that can help lay the foundation for building a brand community.
Who are the members of your community?
Where can you find them?
What do they care about?
How can you reach them?
Let’s take a closer look at each one.
Who?
Any marketing effort should begin by understanding your audience. Who are they? What do they look like? Social media is extremeley adept in gathering information of its users and being able to organize them in an accessible and useful way. If we know the demographics (age, location, etc.) as well as the psychographics (attitudes, behaviors, etc.) of our audience, the tools available through most social media platforms enable us to target them quite effectively.
Where are they?
The question of where is not related to any geographical location (even though that can be significant as part of who they are). Instead, the question of where is your audience relates to where in the social sphere do they spend time. Which platforms, which groups within those platforms, where are the online and social communities that they show up. Even if we know a lot about who our audience is, if we don’t know where to find them we won’t have the chance to engage and connect with them.
What do they care about?
Oftentimes when we develop content that revolves around our brand and its wonderful features and benefits. Unfortunately, consumers of content rarely care about what you can do. They only care about what you can do for them. We are all self-interested, and as such want content that resonates with our beliefs, concerns, needs. Understanding what our audience cares about and finding ways to show them our brand also cares about these same issues will help foster a stronger community.
How can you reach them?
Now that we know who they are, where to find them, and what they care about – how do we connect with them. The how of reaching your audience is also the what type of content you will share and in what manner will you deliver it.
Visual storytelling is a powerful way to share your message to connect with your audience. 65% of the population are visual learners and the human brain processes visuals much faster than text – in fact, 60,000 times faster.
Engaging visual content is a must for anyone trying to reach an audience. There are many options from photographs, other static images, corporate animation, text animation, recording video, and live video.
Video content, whether live or animated, when coupled with a compelling story will capture your audience’s attention and help them remember your message.
Live video across most social platforms is trending high. Going live is very now.
What Is Live Video Streaming?
Live video streaming is when a video is sent over the internet in real-time. This typically takes the form of broadcasts where one creator is streaming video content out to many users at once. This differs from typical video content in that typical video content is recorded beforehand and then accessed by users asynchronously.
Live video streaming is the next big thing in advertising and if you have content worth sharing, a live video might be the way to present it.
82% would rather watch live video from a brand than read a social post and the emotional engagement rate for live content is a whopping 25% – much higher than the 17% for on-demand viewing.
Where should you go live? If you are a Business-To-Business marketing, LinkedIn, with more than 774 million members across 200 countries, is the platform to connect and build a community and hence start using live video.
LinkedIn Live allows you to build deeper connections and drive more engagement with the world’s largest professional community. Live videos get, on average 7x more reactions and 24x more comments than native video produced by the same broadcasters.
Going live on LinkedIn hasn’t been around as long as other platforms and you will need to apply to go live. A scheduled live stream will automatically create a public event post. When you create a scheduled live stream from one of LinkedIn’s third-party streaming software partner platforms (Restream, Socialive, StreamYard, and Switcher), it’ll automatically show up on the LinkedIn feed as a new LinkedIn Event post. This change combines the discovery benefits of LinkedIn Events with the viral reach and engagement of LinkedIn Live. Although engagement at the moment is not incredibly high, now is the time to dive in to take advantage of this growing trend.
Here are 3 Effective Ways to Leverage LinkedIn live for building your brand and growing your community
Be Prepared
Before you go live, make sure that your internet and wifi are ready for it. If you have low bandwidth and it takes time to load you are going to lose people. Like any video recording ensure you have a good setup with sufficient lighting and proper sound. Finally, test everything before you go live.
Be Engaged
The aim is to build your brand and your community. When you are live, say hello and give people shoutouts, answer any questions, ask questions and try and engage in a conversation. It is suggested to broadcast for at least three minutes to reach more people.
Provide Value
Remember audiences are looking for relevant and valuable content. Share your knowledge and expertise to add value. Perhaps have another subject-matter expert live with you to interview to share their expertise with your audience. 43% of viewers say compelling content is the primary motivator for live online viewing. Give viewers a reason to engage by providing compelling content that matters to them.
LinkedIn and visual storytelling through live video offers a fantastic way to build your brand and grow your community. 45% of consumers want to see more live videos from brands on their social media. Start your LinkedIn Live broadcasts today!
