Live streaming has been around for quite a few years, steadily making it to the top as one of the world’s most preferred forms of connecting with their audience. For brands and artists especially, live streaming became an invaluable way to engage with fans, whether to give important updates, answer questions in real-time or hang out. This has become especially important during the coronavirus pandemic, when the option to live stream also doubled up as a way to release new music or products, host events and keep up the momentum of an audience without having to be physically proximate.
However, it was quickly realized that live streaming can’t function on its own. It needs a supplementary service to realize its potential — and that happened to be live chat. This simple feature opens up a lot more avenues for brands and artists looking to tap into their audience base for whatever reason. It creates a two-way interaction between fans and streamers, to afford a real conversation that couldn’t have been possible even during a physical event.
Despite the popularity of the duo, many brands and artists are still struggling to pin down what the best way to leverage these features is. To learn that, it’s essential to understand how they work and what benefits they offer.
From passive viewers to engaged participants
Having an audience is well and good, but its potential isn’t realized if the proper measures aren’t taken to engage them. Many organizations big and small—including the likes of Reddit and Nexon—have discovered that the key to engaging an audience the right way, and towards the right goals, is to use live chat in tandem with live-streaming. While the latter is one-sided, the additional live chat layer allows for two-way interactions, making the audience feel heard and having their questions answered only a few moments after they ask.
Live chat allows for the stadium experience to be replicated in some ways, overshot in others. Hosting giveaways, announcing messages, playing games live, and converting viewers to fans are just a few ways that artists or brands can use live chat to unlock higher-level engagement.
Reap the benefits of the live chat-live streaming duo
The intangible distance between a producer and a viewer is successfully bridged by live streaming in many ways. But over all, it provides the listener with a sense of genuineness and makes the deal more meaningful — and that’s something no other mode of communication can emulate.
Higher levels of engagement
A chat feature during a live broadcast allows people more space to be more involved and articulate. It erases the prospect of streaming becoming a stilted one-way affair and offers the audience a chance to give back in conversation.
Convenient monetization models
Live streams make for convenient monetization channels, especially if you’re using a platform that supports such plug-ins. Subscription tokens, donation links, ads, and pay-per-view are just some of the ways to reap financial income from your livestream while still engaging with the audience in an authentic manner.
A loyal subscriber base
By chatting among the audience, a brand and artist can make themselves more accessible and easy to talk to. This goes a long way in ensuring on-the-fence viewers become long-term loyal subscribers. This, in turn, means steadier revenue streams.
Higher network reach
The more a brand or artist engages during a live chat, the higher their chances of tapping into extended networks beyond the audience base they already have. This is invaluable to organizations looking to break free of their current audience, attract more eyes and make their products or services available to a larger market. It also helps to build an international following, which a brand or artist can’t achieve through regular methods of engagement such as concerts and fan meetings.
Choosing the right chat solution for a live streaming platform
Building a live chat solution from scratch is a lot of hard work and very investment-intensive. That said, there are plenty of service providers which provide live chat APIs and SDKs that integrate seamlessly into live streaming platforms. When choosing, it’s always safe to pick an option that has a ready-to-use infrastructure and smart algorithms to integrate with ads, subscription options and pay-per-view models.
MirrorFly allows artists and brands to leverage customized chat solutions that integrate seamlessly with live broadcasting platforms. They have a team of more than 300 skilled developers that help not only to integrate live chat into your platforms, but also to leverage it in the best way possible to reap the most benefits. When you choose MirrorFly’s white label solution, you’re guaranteed outstanding UI and UX, highly secure frameworks and scalable infrastructure that supports any number of users at once.
The final word
It has never been easier to add live chat to revolutionary streaming services as it is today. High-tech tools meet powerful customization options to create advanced solutions that help organizations take audiences from passive, to highly engaged!