From Saturday Night Live and the Super Bowl to celebrity slaps at the Oscars, there’s no denying the thrill of watching events unfold in real time. You just never know what could happen. That’s why social media live streaming is so appealing to viewers and why content creators should be getting in on the action.
Since YouTube’s very first live event in 2008, internet users have grown from lukewarm to fully obsessed with social media streaming. These days, nearly a third of all internet users report watching at least one video live stream each week.
And can you blame them? Live streaming is authentic, engaging, and—we won’t deny it—a little bit thrilling.
What is social media live streaming?
How to go live on social media
8 tips for successful social media live streaming
Bonus: Download a free checklist that reveals the exact steps a fitness influencer used to grow from 0 to 600,000+ followers on Instagram with no budget and no expensive gear.
Social media live streaming refers to real-time videos shared on social media platforms (as opposed to videos filmed in advance and then posted to social media). It is sometimes referred to as “going live” and is most often used by creators and influencers, who can tap into features like live chats, polls, and question prompts to invite viewers to participate in real-time conversations with them.
Because most platforms also allow users to give streamers gifts that can be redeemed for cash, creators can also earn a fair amount of money with social media live streaming.
Source: Facebook
How to go live on social mediaAt some point, you’re going to get that burning urge to go live on social media.
But the smorgasbord of social media live streaming platforms can be downright overwhelming. Instagram or TikTok? Facebook or YouTube? Is Twitch just for gamers? (Side note: no, it’s not.
)
The answer, though, is simple: you should be streaming wherever your audience (or future audience) is hanging out.
Here’s some helpful demographic information on each of the major social media networks to help you address your target audience and figure out where to go live.
Then, read on for details on how to master live streaming on each one.
How to go live on FacebookDepending on your user profile and your device, there are a few different ways to go live on Facebook.
If you’re creating a mobile Live video for a business page:
If you’re creating a mobile live video for a personal profile:
If you’re creating a Facebook Live video on your computer:
Once you’re live, you’ll be able to see the names and number of live viewers and a stream of real-time comments.
When the show is over, the post saves to your profile or page (unless you’ve shared it to your story only).
Source: Facebook
Learn more about how to live stream from Facebook here.
How to go live on InstagramOn Instagram Live (available on the mobile app only for now), you can collaborate with guests, ask followers questions, or use filters. When your session’s over, you’ll be prompted to share your stream to your Story if you’d like.
Here’s how to go live on Instagram:
Source: Instagram
Find more tips for how to use Instagram Live here.
How to go live on Instagram and Facebook at the same timeWhile there’s no official way to live stream the exact same content on Facebook and Instagram simultaneously, there are some third-party that can help.
StreamYard, OneStream are a few of the multi-stream platforms that can be customized (unofficially) to broadcast to multiple platforms at the same time.
Though be warned that Instagram does not officially support streaming outside of its own app.
If you want to keep the solution lowtech (and legal), you could also use two devices to record simultaneously: one for streaming to Instagram, and second to stream to Facebook from another angle.
Keep in mind that double the broadcasts also means double the comment streams to keep track of. You may want to enlist an engagement specialist to help you.
Ugh, we get it, you’re popular!
How to go live on LinkedInAs of September 2022, LinkedIn Live is only available to users who meet certain criteria based on follower count, geographical location, and adherence to LinkedIn’s Professional Community Policies.
To check if you are eligible, tap Event from your home page.
If you see LinkedIn Live in the event format dropdown, you are allowed to go live on the platform.
Source: LinkedIn
Unfortunately, LinkedIn doesn’t have the same native live streaming capabilities as other social media platforms. Instead, you’ll need to use a third-party tool to broadcast live to LinkedIn.
Note: When your broadcast is over, it will live on your LinkedIn feed to attract even more engagement on the rewatch.
Get the complete guide to going live on LinkedIn here.
A video is the perfect way to stand out from the crowd in the non-stop stream of tweets. When you’re all done, you can share from the beginning to tweet the video in full.
How to go live on Twitter:
Source: Twitter
Here’s the full breakdown for how to go live on Twitter.
How to go live on YouTubeYouTube was the first major social network to offer live streaming. Today, it is the most popular place to consume live content.
A webcam or smartphone (if you have at least 50 subscribers) will get you rolling right away.
More advanced streamers can use encoders to broadcast from external devices, or screen share that awesome Mario 2 speedrun.
Any stream under 12 hours will be automatically posted to your Youtube channel for future generations to enjoy.
How to go live on YouTube with a webcam on desktop:
Note: you will have to verify your phone number with YouTube before you can go live from your desktop.
How to go live on YouTube on mobile:
Note: Only users who meet certain requirements can go live via mobile on YouTube. You’ll need at least 50 subscribers, have no live streaming restrictions, and be a verified channel.
How to go live on YouTube from an encoder:
Source: YouTube
Find more detailed instructions on how to live stream on Youtube here.
How to go live on TikTokAs of 2022, TikTok’s live feature is only available to users who have at least 1,000 followers and are at least 16 years of age.
Haven’t reached the threshold yet? Here’s a potential trick for how to go live on TikTok without 1,000 followers.
If you’ve got access to TikTok Live, here’s how to use it:
Source: TikTok
How to go live on TwitchTwitch is unlike other social platforms in that it was built specifically for streaming, which means it’s a must for creators who want to break into live content.
This also means that going live on the platform is relatively straightforward.
If you want to stream videos of yourself or your surroundings, follow the instructions for how to go live IRL. If you want to stream yourself playing a video game, follow the instructions for how to stream games.
How to stream on Twitch in IRL:
How to stream games on Twitch:
How to stream on Twitch from desktop
Source: Twitch
8 tips for successful social media live streaming1. Leverage live analyticsAs with any other kind of social media post, you’ll want to pay close attention to your analytics after you’ve done a few lives. Instagram’s Live analytics, for example, can help you benchmark performance and hone your live strategy.
Make sure you’re posting at the right time to maximize views and engagement. Shameless plug: Hootsuite will tell you the best time to post based on when your followers are the most active.
Make note of views, watch time, average view duration, engagement rate, and reach.
2. Promote your big momentPeople might happen to catch your video as you press that “go live” button.
Letting your audience know it’s coming up is only going to boost those numbers. When you schedule your social media posts, be sure to include information about upcoming lives.
Start a countdown on your various social platforms to hype up the moment: your Twitter crew might need a nudge to migrate over to YouTube when it’s your time to shine.
3. Make it timelyYour live video is competing for attention with the millions of other videos already out there. Having a timely “why now” hook will give your video an urgency more evergreen content will lack—like a one-night-only event (a holiday concert!), a seasonal special (an interview with Santa!) or an exclusive scoop (Santa’s dropping an album!).
Bonus: Read the step-by-step social media strategy guide with pro tips on how to grow your social media presence.
Get the free guide right now!
4. Create a dream teamSharing a live broadcast with another influencer or expert in your field is one way to attract attention.
Whether it’s an interview with someone you admire or a more collaborative production, it’s a great way to leverage your guest’s audience into your own new followers. Sharing is caring, right?
5. Keep the context clearThe hope is that viewers will be watching from the very beginning, but the reality (or maybe magic?) of live streaming is that your audience will come and go throughout the broadcast.
Make sure it’s clear what they’re tuning into by occasionally reiterating the topic. A watermark, text or logo that clarifies who is on screen and what’s going on can be helpful, too.
6. Engage with your audience in the momentThe whole reason you’re doing your video live is to connect with your viewers, right? So make sure they know they’re a part of the show.
Say hello to commenters, welcome new viewers who are just joining the stream and answer questions on the fly if you can.
7. Have a roadmapThe beauty of a live stream is that anything can happen.
But that isn’t to say that you shouldn’t have a goal of what you want to happen.
Financial expert Josh Brown may have been responding to viewers live on Twitter, but the Q&A format gave the off-the-cuff show some structure.
Jot down your key points or segments before you go live to keep yourself on topic. Think of it as less of a script, more of a road map.
8. Optimize your setupWhile on-the-fly filming definitely has its charm, videos that are inaudible or poorly lit can be a struggle to stick with.
Set yourself up for success by doing a sound check before you go live. Seeking out bright, natural light whenever possible, and using a tripod if a shaky arm is too distracting. (Why do they make those phones so heavy?)
Promote your live videos in advance with Hootsuite, an easy-to-use dashboard that lets you schedule posts to all the major social networks from one place. Then, engage with new followers and track your success.
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Facebook owns Instagram, and they both have methods to livestream. With Facebook, you end up doing a Facebook Livestream. With Instagram, it’s a Live Video, either as a normal post or as a Story.
It stands to reason that a user of one platform might be a user of another, and it’s entirely possible that you might want to stream to both platforms simultaneously. After all, you want to reach the largest possible audience with each broadcast, and you can only do that if you reach both platforms.
So how can you broadcast to both platforms at the same time? Let’s discuss your options.
Phone Solutions
Hybrid Solutions
Instagram on PC
PC-Only Solutions
If you’re broadcasting via a phone, you may be out of luck.
It depends on the resources you have and the effort you want to put into it.
There is no way to broadcast a live stream feed to two different platforms at once from your phone. It’s simply not possible, for one technical reason: one app can’t be accessed by more than one other app at the same time.
What this means, specifically, is that you can’t use your phone’s camera from two different apps at the same time. Since you would need to be using both Facebook and Instagram in app form to broadcast, they would both need access to your camera (and microphone), and your phone will not allow that.
Even if your phone did allow simultaneous access, encoding and broadcasting video is very hardware intensive. Some full-size computers have issues with it, so a phone with much lower specifications will have a correspondingly harder time. Granted, a computer is likely doing more processing, adding more effects, and broadcasting at a higher quality level, but the fact remains.
If you’re not able to use a desktop computer of any sort to do your broadcasting, and are limited to just your phone, you have two options. Option 1 is to pick one platform and broadcast to it, then save and upload the video to the other platform once it’s done. This is less than ideal, because it loses all of the real-time engagement from the secondary platform.
The other option is to simply use two phones. Set one phone up to broadcast to Facebook, and the other phone to broadcast to Instagram. Set the two devices side by side in front of you so you can see the chat feeds from both, and so that the cameras are roughly in the same place, so you don’t look or sound dramatically different from one to the other.
This isn’t necessarily an ideal solution either, since needing two phones means needing two expensive technological devices. There are plenty of other uses you can find for a second phone, even one that doesn’t have a cell data plan and relies entirely on your wifi, but it’s still an expense you don’t really need.
Plus, if you have two different phones rather than two copies of the same phone, you might run into differences with configuration, video or audio quality, memory, or another issue that can hinder one stream while the other works fine.
As is, I consider this more of a workaround than an actual solution. If you want to broadcast to both platforms, I highly recommend using a computer.
Another option is to go with a hybrid solution. One phone cannot broadcast to both platforms, but you can use a phone to broadcast to one and a computer to broadcast to the other. This has the advantage of only using devices you probably have on hand, though you may need to purchase a webcam and a microphone or headset to broadcast via your computer.
The primary downside of using this option is that one stream is going to look and sound somewhat worse than the other, depending on the devices you’re using. If you’re using a powerful desktop computer with a good camera and a good microphone, your phone stream is probably going to look and sound significantly worse.
If you’re using a good modern phone, but an old webcam and a headset mic, your computer-based stream might look and sound worse.
The primary advantage, as I mentioned, is that you likely already have everything you need to set this up. If you don’t have a webcam or a microphone, a cheap headset and webcam – or even just a webcam with a serviceable microphone built in – will only run you a small fee, likely under $100. The software necessary to broadcast to either platform is free, though I’ll discuss that more in the next section.
Instagram has historically always been a mobile-only platform, and that includes limitations on their streaming. As of right now, as near as I can tell, there are only two ways to broadcast to Instagram via a PC. One is to use their official cross-compatible app that only works in Windows 10. The other is to emulate the app using a phone emulator like Bluestacks.
In either case, to broadcast to Instagram with anything more than a basic camera feed – for example, if you want to use overlays, alerts, or a picture-in-picture feed – you need a streaming software to output to a single feed you can pick up as a virtual camera.
You can configure this with any of the software listed below, but it’s a bit too advanced for me to go into right here.
If you don’t want to broadcast from a phone for one reason or another, that’s perfectly fine. I personally have found that phone streams are only really worthwhile when you’re doing a stream on the go. Tourist streams, streams of life as you experience the town or a party, those kinds of events. For a premeditated stream in the comfort of your own home or place of business, a PC setup is much better.
When using a PC, you essentially have two options. You can use two instances of the same software, or you can use two different pieces of software. In addition, there are a few goofy workarounds you might need to use, depending on what you’re streaming.
If you’re streaming a piece of software, a game, or anything that doesn’t require a peripheral like a webcam, you can often just configure two pieces of software to capture the window or application, and broadcast just fine.
Your microphone audio will be picked up by the operating system and be broadcast from there, so you don’t need to add your microphone as a source directly.
Using a webcam or peripheral camera for your broadcast makes things more difficult, because you run into the same issue as with a phone camera. The camera can only broadcast to one destination at a time. The main workaround to this is to broadcast your stream to a server you control, and then capture that stream to broadcast to your other locations, though that requires even more tricky setup. The other alternative is to use a camera specifically designed to have multiple outputs, though these tend to have one high quality stream for security purposes and one for monitoring. As you might suppose, this too is less than ideal.
Personally, I prefer Open Broadcaster, or OBS. OBS Studio is a great, free, open source piece of software that has a ton of control options for streaming. Plus, it’s easy to get more than one instance of it working.
Actually, let’s talk about that before digging too deep into software. With any application that typically only has one instance available, you can force it to open multiple instances. Right-click on the application .exe file and click properties. You will see a file path, something like C:\Program Files\OBS\OBS.exe. You will want to edit this line to add -multi to the end of it, so the final line looks like “C:\Program Files\OBS\OBS.exe -multi”. This allows you to open more than one instance of the program.
This option works, but will encounter difficulties using the same devices or the same captures. Just because you’re opening more than one instance of the software doesn’t mean you’re using different versions of the dlls or other file associated with the program. To do that, you will need more than one installation of the software.
You can also install more than one piece of software. For example, you might install OBS Studio and OBS Classic.
OBS Classic is an older version of the program with fewer features, but it includes all of the basics. You’re free to use both at the same time, though again, you’ll run into conflicts trying to use the same camera feed for both.
Here are your software options:
It can support as many sources as your computer can handle, includes conferencing features, can add in widgets like scoreboards and timers, and has a lot of additional filtering and control options. It’s also not a free option, though. The studio version, with unlimited inputs and destinations, two remote guests, and standard support is $700. The pro version includes more inputs, more outputs, expanded capability in every zone, and higher caps on conferencing, but costs you $1,000.
Picking two free options, a free and a paid option, or a single option that supports multiple outputs can all get you the same result: broadcasting to both Facebook and Instagram at the same time.
Article provided by Utify, a YouTube promotion automation service through Google Ads.
Broadcasting video content on multiple platforms can save time for a blogger and remove issues related to recording lectures/speeches and further content resizing. For example, in the company's text blog on the website or in Zen, as well as in your personal one.
We'll show you two easy ways to simulcast to any venue you like. nine0005
Instagram airs* are used to promote a product, conduct useful training events, broadcast from the scene of important events, or simply communicate with the audience and answer questions from subscribers.
At the same time, live broadcasts can be saved to IGTV, but this is not always possible due to problems with updates to the application itself. Therefore, at the end of the broadcast, you may be in for an unpleasant surprise in the form of the absence of the desired video. You can lose useful information from subscribers, record a joint lecture with another specialist, and so on. nine0005
If you keep a record, then you can:
For example, save the broadcast, and then make several videos for TikTok, posts on Instagram * or videos for advertising on YouTube using Utify based on it. Simultaneous broadcasts save time and allow the blogger to be in several places at once. This is especially convenient if you need to ensure the interaction of subscribers on different sites.
What you need : phone, computer, access to the YouTube account from which you are going to broadcast, installation of BlueStacks and OBS Studio programs on your PC.
How works: one program creates an emulation field for your phone on the computer, and the other broadcasts everything that happens in it to YouTube.
How to start:
Download and run OBS Studio. Close all dialog boxes and go to the "File" tab, then to "Settings".
You can move freely with your phone and don't worry about the video not being saved If you just need to record the broadcast, then click the "Start Recording" button.
What you need : an account in the SMMplanner service, a phone, the OBS Studio program and a little time.
How works: the service sets up re-streaming of broadcasts from Instagram* and other social networks to any platform. However, while it is in development, access to it must be requested from the support team. nine0005
How to start :
Now you can broadcast on several platforms at once and not waste time repeating the same information for subscribers.
Broadcasting online broadcasts to several social networks at the same time is available only on paid plans. Broadcasts are not available on the trial plan. In 2022, the broadcast limits in SMMplanner increased by a factor of
- "Starting" tariff - 2 hours daily.
- Tariff "Professional" - 5 hours daily.
- Tariff "Small business" - 12 hours daily.
- Tariff "Medium Business" - 24 hours daily.
- Tariff "Big business" - 72 hours daily.
More details can be found in the section with tariffs.
And here you can read the detailed setup instructions.
You can read more about live broadcasts in our blog:
Successful promotion!
nine0000 How to livestream on Facebook – GmodZ.ru
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Facebook is one of the most popular social networks for many reasons, one of which is responsiveness. Developers listen to users and often come up with new, interesting features without changing old ones that have proven useful.
One feature that has been around for a while is Facebook Live, which allows users to live stream videos. Even though it was first introduced in 2015, this feature still continues to amaze with an ever-expanding list of features. nine0005
If you want to learn how to livestream on Facebook, you've come to the right place. This article offers a step by step guide on how to do this. We will also explain if you can live stream to Facebook from different apps.
Follow the steps below to broadcast live on Facebook:
Although there is no "official" ability to stream videos to Facebook and Instagram simultaneously, there is a way to do it using third party apps.
We will show you how to live stream on Facebook and Instagram at the same time using two applications: Yellow Duck and Restream. Before we dive in, keep in mind that you need to purchase a Restream subscription if you want to broadcast to a Facebook page or group. nine0005
Here are the steps to live stream on Facebook and Instagram at the same time. We have divided them into two parts. The first is to connect to Facebook:
Now you have successfully connected Facebook to Restream and it's time to add Instagram:
Restream offers many useful features for live streamers. You can add people to your streams, switch cameras, and share your screen, apps, Chrome tabs, and more.
If this seems too complicated, another option is to livestream on Instagram, save the video, and share it to Facebook .
Keep in mind that you can only download it after streaming is complete. While this method is useful, it does not allow you to save comments, likes, or viewers; you save only the video. nine0005
Zoom allows you to broadcast meetings or webinars live to Facebook. To do this, you need a Pro, Business, Enterprise, or Education account.
Follow the steps below to live stream to Facebook from Zoom:
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OBS Studio is a freeware program used for recording and streaming video. It offers dozens of useful features to customize your layout, connect to numerous platforms, and create high-quality content.
We have divided the steps into two parts to make them easier to follow:
Once you've set up your sources, it's time to connect OBS to Facebook:
vMix is a popular video creation software available for Windows. It has a direct integration with Facebook, which allows you to stream videos without using third-party apps and programs.
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Follow the steps below to stream live to Facebook using vMix:
If you want to view the browser inside vMix, follow these instructions:
It is possible to schedule a live broadcast on Facebook using the Facebook Live Producer.
