Welcome to Event Broadcasting - You Ask, We Answer

Video has become a huge part of how the internet is used and therefore defines how best to engage with people.  In 2017 for example, 300 hours of video were uploaded to YouTube every minute with almost 5 billion videos being watched every single day.

So how does this fit into your event?  Well, here are some key use cases we have been involved with that applied web streaming into a live event.

Internal Communication – Town Hall meetings

Do you run a large team or need to communicate to your entire workforce.  Live streaming your smaller event from Head Office can allow you to reach members of your team who can’t be with you, and this can include global organisations as much as field force colleagues based in the UK.

Public events

Streaming an event live on a public distribution platform such as YouTube or Facebook Live allows you to reach a much bigger audience than you would otherwise have been able to, tapping into the live nature of something happening right now – keeping people connected.

Engagement

Live streaming an event is a great way to bring people closer to the action in a way that makes them feel part of it.  This is particularly good if you want to build on that engagement in a corporate environment.

Webinars

Doing away with the live event entirely, you can simply broadcast to the internet from a room you can treat as your own TV studio.  This is a complete change of dynamic and great for presenting data sets since you can capture these and make them available offline as well.

In 2017 300 hours of video were uploaded to YouTube every minute with almost 5 billion videos being watched every single day.

So you can see how it can work for you, the next question is how.  It is worthwhile starting by considering who your audience is and how they will watch the stream. Corporate events are often delivered in a private way, allowing your team to watch the stream while excluding the general public.  The best way to achieve this is to stream to an active frame (a simple piece of code), which can be placed on your own website or intranet.  In this way you restrict access while maximising the availability and compatibility across supported devices in your organisation.  While this puts you completely in control, it does mean that you have to pay for the bandwidth – this is the amount of “internet data” consumed and is calculated as a product of the quality of the data stream, the length of the programme and the number of people who watched it.  Bandwidth data is relatively cheap and certainly if you want to stream regularly, significant cost savings may be achieved.

For public events, where you want to reach the widest possible audience, it may be better to consider the use of a pre-existing public platform like YouTube, Facebook Live or Periscope.  The advantage here is that they will often be cheaper, avoiding your bandwidth costs described above.  However you now have other restrictions to consider, such as the use of copyrighted material.  Even when you have achieved a prior agreement to use the copyrighted material from the copyright holder, platforms like YouTube may decide to pull your stream down in the middle of the event just to be on the safe side so it is best to find a way to work without using this content.

It is worthwhile starting by considering who your audience is and how they will watch the stream.

If you really want to focus on the delegate experience or leverage maximum engagement with your audience, you may want to consider developing a dedicated page, or “micro-site” for your event.  Rather like a bespoke event app, your delegates can be sent an invitation to join the event at the appropriate link which can include other related material to view or download such as presenter content or schedules and agendas.  In this way you can also embed elements such as question and answer modules as messaging panels right next to your live stream.

Ground:zero can assist with your next event, taking you through the opportunities and guiding you to a really exciting event with measurable engagement.  Take a look at some of our case studies which hi-light the different ways live streaming can be used to maximise your event potential.