Did you know that Team Edgar hosts daily Facebook Lives? Join us daily as we chat about social media, marketing, business, and entrepreneurship. Here’s a recent Edgar Live sharing live streaming tips so you can feel confident and comfortable on your next live stream.
Do you have a limiting belief? You know what we’re talking about here. It’s those labels that are things like, “I’m not smart enough to do that. I’m not fast enough to play that sport.” For a lot of us in social media marketing, that label is: “I’m not good enough on camera to do live streams.”
It’s time to get rid of that limiting belief!
Feeling confident on camera is not a natural ability for most of us. It’s a skill that you build over time and anyone can do it. If you can talk to a real person in real life, I promise you can talk on a live stream on social media and your community’s waiting and eager to hear your tone and to get that face to face connection rather than just seeing your blog posts, your quotes, and your value-adding social media status updates go by.
Here are our favorite live streaming tips from our resident live stream expert, Megan!
It’s All About the Message
There is true power in social media videos and the world needs your message right now. So step number one to realizing how you’re going to be confident on social media video is remembering that. It’s not about what you look like and it is not about what you sound like. It is about the message that’s going to impact your audience that matters most. Being confident on camera comes from getting comfortable with your message, so take some time to focus in on the true value that your message is caring for people in your community.
Know Your Audience
If you’ve niched down and identified a target audience that you’re speaking to and you have a company mission that’s driving why you create the content you create or the product that you have, you already have all you need to build your confidence on camera. Be sure you know who you’re speaking to and why you’re doing what you do. Sit down and write those things out and put some feeling behind it as to why it’s so important for you to get your message and to get your marketing out to the people who need it. Are you solving a pain point that’s going to bring more joy or save more time or save people money in the long run? These things are really important to people’s lives and it’s your responsibility to get that message out there.
Our first tip to stop feeling uncomfortable on a live stream is to have your audience persona named and write that person’s name on a sticky note and stick that right on your computer. Stick it there so you think you’re talking to that one person because that’s the true power of marketing. When you do it right is that every single follower feels like you’re speaking directly to them. So have it in mind that you’re really just speaking to one person and there’s no reason to be afraid.
Have a Great Hook
We have attention spans of a goldfish. We all know that. We scroll by videos all the time. So if that first sentence you say can really hook people in, that’s going to be really helpful. I started this video out asking you if you had a limiting belief rather than jumping on and explaining, “Hi, I’m Megan, I’m an onboarding coach at MeetEdgar.” You see how that might actually be a bit more boring for people than if I asked if you had a limiting belief, which is a question that makes you do some curious self-reflection or it makes you want to keep watching the video to learn what it’s about. Think of starting out the first three seconds of a way of really hooking someone in.
You can also do things with movement as a hook, such as you can knock on the screen to get someone’s attention or move your hand to your ear for a sound on prompt because so much of the social media consumption done these days is done on mute. Get creative about how you hook someone into your live stream because you have three seconds to grab someone in and to hook them strong.
Promise a Result
After you grab someone in, you want them to stay on your live stream. To do this, you need to promise them some sort of outcome and result from what you’re going to be teaching. This is going to help make sure that they stay to the very end. So I’m going to then tell you the outcome of this is you’re going to be way more confident about jumping on a live stream and growing your audience. It’s more powerful to remind you of the benefit of sticking with us on video here and of seeing that outcome, audience growth, because I know our audience persona and who you guys are and what you want.
Include a Personal Story
Another really good thing to add in at some point in the first couple of minutes of your live stream is a personal story. This makes it so that you’re relatable and that you’re not just talking down to someone and relaying your information but you’re telling them about the journey of how you got here to make it relatable to your audience.
For example, I know that a lot of people struggle with just getting started with the video because you feel like it’s something you either have or you don’t have. So I could tell a story about a social media follower who had success on video because she followed certain steps and what she was feeling during these times, or I could tell my own personal story about how I became more successful doing live streaming videos. These things help viewers positions themselves in a mindset that they’re ready to take action on the steps you’re going to take. They’re ready to get results, and, if you get people results through your social media content, it is more likely they’re going to come back and consume more of your content because you’ve proven those results and when it comes time to buy your product or service, you’re the logical choice for them to go to because you had them have received results of before.
Behind the Scenes Content
You can really drop small golden nuggets of behind the scenes content and personal stories in live streams so much better than anywhere else on social media. Behind-the-scenes content drives a connection to a brand because there is a human emotional connection that happens when you can humanize your brand. Behind-the-scenes content is really strong because it gives your followers a sense that they are getting something exclusive by following your social media pages. We want to feel like we’re getting something other people who are not following are to make sure you’re retaining the followers that you have.
Share Actionable Tips and Have a Call To Action
There’s this law of reciprocity that if you give someone something, they immediately feel like they owe you something back. It’s just human nature. So if you have given the step or if you’ve given a tip that someone can take and they actually get those results, it bonds them to that brand.
Once they see results, they’ll feel grateful and will want to reciprocate the help. So you can encourage them to follow or like your page or subscribe to your newsletter.
Have the Resources and Props You Need
You can do things like use slides if you’re afraid you’re going to lose your train of thought, or you can go back and forth between slides and your face because I know some people like to follow along with a speaker and with text on the screen.
Other things that I do and something I’m doing right now, is I’ll have my notes app pulled up on the majority of my screen with just keywords of where I want this discussion to go. Don’t write out long sentences because you don’t want to have it look like you’re reading, but just put those keywords as a reminder that can be triggers for your brain on what you want to say next. Put big spacing in between them. You’ll notice sometimes that I can even scroll a little. I’m sure you see my shoulder move, that’s because I’m scrolling because I have big spaces and I want to know what I’m going to hit.
I personally love using the notes app, especially because for these live streams we use a program called StreamYard that shows you how many people are watching live at once and sometimes that can be a little bit intimidating, not only the large number but also if you see people dropping off or coming in and it’s distracting. So I have the notes app that right over the screen so that I don’t see my face talking and I don’t see the followers coming in or coming off of the video.
Review Your Insights
You should review your live streams, especially on platforms like YouTube and Facebook that offer you these kinds of insights. Look at if there is a big surge in when people drop off and perhaps consider what you said or what kind of topics you covered because this could be a really great nugget of wisdom to tell you if that’s a concept that your audience wants to hear more about or less about. So I would suggest doing things like going back into your insights afterward to where people dropped off or where you retained the most followers to give yourself clues on more types of content and more categories that people want to watch, but don’t do that during the live stream. It’s going to mess with your head and that message that is going to really hit the right person might not get out because you’re too concerned about the followers that you’re not speaking to. The golden rule of social media applies to live streams as well, and that is you need to show up for the followers that you have and not just focus on growing your audience for the followers that you don’t have.
Be Enthusiastic
Don’t underestimate the power of enthusiasm. People do not want to listen to monotone. Enthusiasm is going to be a tool that you can use that’s just as strong as making sure you have great content because people want to be entertained and they want to be having their energy levels heightened by consuming your content. You don’t want to be a drain so that people are thinking, “When is this video going to end?”
Get a little bit animated and get excited about the message that you’re putting out there so people will feel that energy. Ways that you can do this is to remember to smile when you’re talking. It really does come across much better and it can boost your signals to your brain to be more enthusiastic.
Another thing I love to do before I hop on camera, and this is done from research that’s been shown confidence-building research, is that you get really big. You open up your arms and you tell yourself an affirmation or a mantra that’s really going to help you build confidence, but stand in that big outstretched, arms out, chest puffed out so you are building that confidence for a minute before you hop on a live video. You’ll feel your energy levels and confidence go up and then tell yourself something to build your confidence. I love to tell myself that people need to receive the message that I’m putting out there and I’m worthy of receiving the attention because we’ve done so much research and we’ve done so many experiments on social media that the knowledge we have needs to get out to our audience.
Don’t Try to Be Perfect
Perfection is not a human trait. Perfection is not a relatable trait. Saying “uhms,” stuttering, losing your train of thought, those are relatable experiences, so if that happens on your live stream, just own it. People understand. So don’t let that stop you from pressing go live on any social media account because the boring, relatable things in our lives are what people resonate with. They do not expect perfection, especially right now. It is going to be a disservice if you let your perfectionism stop you from hopping on video and sharing your face and your message with your followers.
You are not forcing your followers to watch your content either, so don’t let that stop you. This is a reminder I have to make for myself all the time. They can scroll on by. It’s not like in real life if I’m having a conversation with someone that they have to sit there politely. If someone is not diving and with your message, that’s fine. They can leave because the people who are listening, are meant to be there. Don’t get too afraid of the people who your message is not hitting right. You want to show up for the followers you have and not worry about pleasing everyone because your messaging needs to please the people that your product or service is going to solve a pain point for.
Up-Cycle & Repurpose Your Live Stream
Video content is some of the best content to upcycle your social media research. Upcycling is the ability to take one well-researched piece of content like a blog post or a live stream and turn it into 5 to 10 social media status updates. Live streams get your face out there to have that human to human connection with your audience. You can extend the life of that live stream and have a connection with more of your audience by downloading the stream, editing it into several short clips, and creating 5 to 10 social media status updates about it.
You can also repurpose that blog post into a podcast. Here at MeetEdgar, we have a podcast called Social Posts and it’s truly just reading the blog posts that we’ve had. It’s a great way to have people consume our blogs who aren’t going to actually read it but might love to listen and get some social media tips on a run or on a trip to the grocery store. Use the work you already have and repurpose it into a live stream for your community.
Just Hit “Go Live”
Finally, just try it. Go live. It gets less scary the more you do it. The anticipation of what you’re building enough to be scary about is truly worse than what it is. And you can see here even I’m speaking to a significant amount of people who are afraid of video and afraid of live streams. However, that’s not all of our audience. A lot of our audience is better at live students than I am and more seasoned at it and more interesting and that is going to be something that they see this video and scroll right by, but that’s okay because this video is meant for you, the person who has been really putting the brakes on doing their first live stream because they are a little bit afraid. I want to give you that confidence of trying these tips here and realizing that you need to have that growth mindset, that this is a skill that you are going to have to build up.
I’m going to leave you here with a super cheesy quote, so don’t tune out, don’t leave me here because it’ll make sense at the end. There’s this concept of the beauty of a butterfly is when it turns into a butterfly, but the growth comes in the cocoon stage when it’s messy. When there’s growth happening, things look a bit messy. So your first couple of live streams, you might be talking to an empty room, you might be talking to no viewers, you might stutter a lot, your feed might cut out because you haven’t found the right program for you. It might be super dark, or your dog barks in the background.
These things are okay. That’s the growing pains that are going to bring you to that beautiful butterfly moment where you feel confident and your message comes across perfectly. Go through those steps in order to build to the moment when you feel confident and your audience will forgive you for those couple of stumbles along the way. Don’t let them miss out on what you can provide during a live stream just because you’re a little bit scared. After a couple of times, I promise you’re going to figure it out and I promise that it’s going to be better. So let me know too. Go ahead and let us know when you’re doing your first live stream. We would love to come to watch it!
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The post Live Streaming Tips: How To Feel Confident On Camera appeared first on MeetEdgar.