We just released live streaming on our platform, and today, we’re sharing an expert-led tour of these exciting new product features.
Live streaming is a powerful way to reach an audience, right now. With the SproutVideo platform, you can leverage our video marketing and privacy tools to gain precise control over how your live stream is accessed and viewed by your audience.
In this post, we’ll share the details of how live streaming works with SproutVideo, and showcase ways you can use it for video marketing, or secure sharing to a limited audience.
Why Use SproutVideo for Live Streaming?
There are many options for live streaming platforms out there. The most popular options are major social media platforms, like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Youtube. There are also platforms for specific types of live streaming, like Twitch, which is focused on gamers, and more.
So, why go with a professional hosting platform for live streaming your content? The answer is surprisingly simple: control.
In this recorded live stream, Nick LaClair and Ikey Ajavon walk you through our new live streaming features in a detailed product tour.
To recap the main points from the video, on social media platforms, you can’t control how the player looks or behaves. Your live stream might have ads before, during, or after it runs. It also might appear alongside other content that’s at best distracting and at worst, negative for your brand.
Further, any viewers that engage with your live stream are actively encouraged to stay on the social platform and to keep scrolling through other content. While you might grow your audience in terms of fans and followers, it’s harder to market directly to engaged leads.
Finally, social platforms aren’t a fit for all business needs for live streaming. If you’re broadcasting a town hall or reviewing the numbers, you probably won’t want to share it on social media.
If you’re using SproutVideo for live streaming, you stay in control of your content and how it’s shared. You can create custom players, and use video marketing tools to capture leads, or secure sharing tools to reach a narrowly defined audience. We have never, and will never, run ads on content on our platform, and put your brand front and center rather than ours. Here are more details on all our new live streaming features.
Live Streaming for Marketing
Live video is incredibly powerful for video marketing. It’s inherently exciting, and can be an amazing tool for driving engagement.
There’s a premium on live content that just doesn’t exist for on-demand video. Viewers have to tune in right now, or they’ll miss something. That’s a strong motivating factor for getting people to watch.
All of that makes live content a perfect fit for video marketing campaigns. From product announcements, to special deals, or as a part of a blog post, live video offers many opportunities for reaching viewers.
Specific Live Stream Features for Marketing
In terms of specific features that can help grow your audience and your sales, SproutVideo has a lot to offer with live streaming.
Before your stream even starts, you can customize the video player to match your branding. If you’re sharing on our landing pages or video websites, you can also add your logo and enable commenting for your live streams, which can help drive engagement.
You can also help drive SEO by adding the URL where you’re sharing your live stream to your sitemap with our easy video SEO tool.
Another option before your stream starts is to require viewers to submit contact information in order to view. This information can be passed directly to a marketing platform integration for further targeted campaigns.
Once your stream begins to play, you can display a message during your live stream with our in-player CTAs. This is perfect for directing viewers to a specific link, like a product, special offer, or blog post. You can also encourage viewers to share it with built-in social sharing and embed code sharing player features.
Finally, when your stream concludes, you can display a custom post-play message. It could be as simple as a link to another landing page, or a completely custom HTML design, like a survey or a form.
Securely Sharing Live Streams with a Select Audience
Live streaming isn’t just for public promotions. There are plenty of ways to use live streaming to reach a limited audience. For instance, company town halls or announcements, exclusive content, or paid content are all examples where you may not want your live stream to be public.
Live Stream Privacy Features
SproutVideo can help you control access to your live stream with several options for privacy settings.
Private live streams only appear where they are embedded. This is a simple way to ensure your live stream is only published in your company intranet or on your website, for example.
Password protection is a simple way to require all viewers to submit a password to view your live stream. The same password is shared among all your viewers. Anyone without the password won’t be able to access your live stream.
Login protection provides more options for restricting live stream access. With login protection, viewers have to enter an email address and password combination to view your live stream. The credentials are unique to each viewer. You can set a window of time for login access, limit how many times the login information can be used, or set download permissions for individuals for the recorded live stream.
Similar to login protection, single sign-on (SSO) requires viewers to enter credentials before they can view your live stream. The difference is that viewers are authenticated by your company’s identity provider, like Okta or ADFS or Google Apps, then redirected your video website on SproutVideo’s platform.
In addition to those privacy settings, you can layer on more security depending on your needs. Domain whitelists prevent viewers from sharing your live stream on another website, IP address whitelists prevent viewers on unapproved networks from loading your stream, and GEO whitelists restrict viewing to specific geographic areas.
Measuring Live Stream Performance
Once your live stream starts, you can view real-time analytics on your audience, including:
- How many viewers are currently watching
- The peak views for your live stream
- A count of the unique viewers that have tuned into your live stream
- The average time each viewer has watched of your live stream
When your live stream has finished, you can review more detailed analytics:
You can also check viewer engagement throughout your live stream to see when the most popular moments were, or when viewers dropped off:
Once your live stream has ended, a recording is automatically posted to your SproutVideo account. This recording is an on-demand video you can repurpose in many different ways.
The analytics and engagement metrics for the on-demand recording of your live stream are completely separate from the stats collected when your stream was live. You can replace or delete your on-demand live stream recording, and it won’t impact your past live stream’s data.
Update: Check out the latest feature updates for live streaming on SproutVideo!
