Why is ‘going live’ so important? Why should people use live video? Which Live streaming platform is best?
On this week’s #MarketingBuzzword Podcast, Ben M Roberts speaks to Chris Strub about ‘Going Live / Live Video’. As always the aim of the podcast is to debunk, demystify and bring back some meaning to the marketing buzzword.
Chris Strub is a leading voice in the millennial social good space. In 2017, Chris visited Salvation Army locations in 25 states in 38 days along the 6200-mile #FightForGoodTour, raising thousands of dollars as a national Red Kettle Ambassador. Chris is the author of ‘50 States, 100 Days: The Book,’ about his solo, social media-powered adventure to volunteer with youth-related organizations in all 50 states in 2015. Chris has worked with Humana, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, and live-streaming app Live.me, and is the creator of the ‘Livestreaming for Nonprofits’ course.
You can find a full transcript of the conversation between Ben and Chris below, but before that I want to let you know that The Marketing Buzzword Podcast is now powered by Talkative. Talkative is a company that brings live chat, voice calls, video calls and co-browsing together, in one package. This allows you and your business to truly engage with your customers, offer quick and effective resolutions to questions and improve the customer experience. You can find out more at Talkative.uk
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Enough small talk . . . let’s talk “Going Live / Live Video”
Event Marketing Interview with Chris Strub and Ben M Roberts
Ben: Hi Chris and welcome to the podcast.
Chris: Hey good morning Ben. How are you?
Ben: Oh I’m absolutely stoked. Buzzing I’m so excited to get you on. How you doing.
Chris: I’m thrilled. I know it’s a little bit later in the day out I’ll buy you then it is here in Nebraska. But I’m so excited for this chat.
Ben: I know you’ve just woken up and putting a long and long and going debate on the crash and burn in this. I’M SO EXCITED I feel like I’m going to be so drained by the end of this.
Chris: Well that’s, that’s the power of social media. No matter where you are in the world you know you have an opportunity connect with with good friends and I’m really excited to be here this morning for this chat.
Ben: Ohh that’s awesome man. So today we get to talk about the buzz word going live. And the reason I wanted to get you on Chris is when we met. We’ve we’ve talked about this a few times when we actually finally met in person. We talk about actually going live and how there’s a big sort of obsession with you must go live. So Chris what is it about going live. You particularly love him why. Why do you believe other people really embrace these going live thing, this sort of wave of being yourself you just just snap chatting Instagram. Do you have stories wherever you are whenever? Why. Why should people do it?
Chris: Ben I think first of all I want to say thanks for having me on again. But I think you just answered your own question in the form of your question which was you talked about that excitement of when we had a chance to meet up in person in San Diego Social Media Marketing World. Live Streaming brings an unprecedented level of authenticity that until we’re really into that next wave of virtual reality. This is as close as we’re going to be able to get to meeting and connecting in person no matter where we are around the world you know. You know. So using live streaming regardless of your business or your brand wherever you might be it gives your fans and your audience an opportunity to connect with you by looking you as our good friend Bryant. And I would say in your digital eyeballs you know that you really can’t hide when you’re on a live streaming video. And these platforms regardless of which platform sure will break down the differences between selling a little bit but going live allows you to connect with your audience in a way that you’ve never been able to before.
Chris: You know I really get that connection that authenticity side of things but really Is it do people start going like too much. Unfortunately I do like videos now and sometimes like come up for me like videos. What was really the best use of time and this is not more useful for expecting more from live videos or do people just seem to go along for the sake of it. Should that always be a purpose for going live or Actually no that’s the point. The point is that there is no purpose and that is that builds of that trust and what you will. How does that work and what’s your thoughts about that?
Chris: I’m so glad you asked that question because I know you asked something similar to Brian on episode number 14 about the influx and the wave of live streaming video. Right. So we have to look at it from the different perspectives. If you’re Mark Zuckerberg or if you’re Kévon from periscope or you or you run any one of these live streaming services your goal is to monopolize and to gather as much of people’s time and attention as possible. So these platforms are trying as best they can to make it as easy and as natural as possible for you and for everyone to go live on their platform because they want to maximize the attention and the time that spent on that platform. But you have to look at it from your own perspective you know from a business perspective from a personal brand perspective and make that determination not based on the ease of the tools but based on the amount of results. And you know the true RAII that you’re going to get from that platform. So when you talk about oh are too many people going live. I think that’s a decision that every individual needs to make. I think that you and I are plugged in a little bit more to the digital marketing space than than most others of course. And so we may actually see more live streaming video feeds than some of our friends who are not in this business so to speak. And I think what what each person needs to remember as well Ben is that as my friend Joe Wilson would say we are all famous to a few people right. So when you choose to go live when you choose to create any kind of content on any social media platform. The most important thing for you to do is remember the audience that you’re speaking to and connecting with. Right. And so you and I may fall into more audiences so to speak and others because we we go out of our way to be so connected. But let’s say our our dentist goes live right. That dentist in our community is not trying to connect with people all around the world like you and I are trying to connect with people in their community who may need dentistry services right. And that’s just one example. But that business or that brand may benefit from using live streaming because they’re going to present their ideas their content to that specific audience not trying to go famous and not trying to go viral but they’re trying to achieve a business objective by bringing specific valuable content to a local audience so I know I’m not a little bit there but you know I don’t think that there is too much live streaming video. I think maybe we as users just need to make sure that we’re connecting to the right people and watching the correct live streams for ourselves.
Ben: You know I think you made some incredible points there actually. It’s there. Each video will have a guest and a different value set of very different value proposition to depending on the audience and its aim. As you said the the example the dentist again is a completely different value in that in going live for a dentist than it is go not just for me. I wanted to update people in my life that offer a brand. Nicole Smith Brand it was good to go live and showcase the new products. I guess the point is that actually there always a different audience a different a different reason for going live but If people are going to go live then should people have a reason for going live so should be to you live because you have something to say or she can you go because you’ve got nothing to say and you want to engage in a conversation or is that the purpose in itself. Why do people why should people go live Chris because I love the stuff that you do on live and you go live so much you will have something interesting to say on other people too. There’s nothing going on in my life but actually you know what maybe by going live. Are people able to then generate new conversations he would have had before. Or is going live to find conversations would you have to have something to say to go live.
Chris: You know I appreciate the compliment in there about my content and everything
Ben: I wanted to tell you on Chris.
Chris: I thank you that. Let’s again take our business hats off for just a moment right when we talk about how everybody’s going lives. I’ve really tried to learn as I get older here that everyone you meet and everyone you connect with on line is going through something that we may not understand. Right. And you know everybody’s got problems everybody’s got their own issues in their head in their mind. And also it’s important to remember that we’re all at different points in our journey. Right. Like for a lot of people that are going live that may be their first or second time trying it. And so I wouldn’t I wouldn’t criticize myself. You know a few years ago or you or anybody else for trying something out you know on a social media platform that you haven’t experimented with before. So when you talk about how everybody is going live and it doesn’t seem to have a purpose to you or maybe even to the broader audience I think we have to remember that these platforms are designed you know for the user and they can they can offer a motion you know emotional support they can offer help to people in ways that we not we may not be thinking about right. So if someone goes live and they may seem directionless or they may seem a little confused or whatever. You know there could be an excellent chance that something really emotionally troubling or distracting or difficult in their life just happened and they’re just looking for somebody to talk to you know so if they’re on a live stream for 15 or 20 minutes and at the 10 minute mark somebody who they haven’t spoken to since high school joins in and all of a sudden they’ve made that connection with that person. I would postulate that that’s an extremely successful livestream. You know whether the watch time is 30 seconds and they say oh my god Jenny like I I hear what you’re saying. I’m going to give you a call to me that’s a very successful livestream. You know we may not find that in a business perspective as a success. But again when you think about what the objective is for each individual person going live you know those objectives are going to be vastly different from one another and I’m still not sure if I totally answered your question because I know we’re on the business podcast right. So if we’re speaking to the audience that listens to this podcast on a regular basis right. Like should I have an objective for my business. Yeah I get it. There’s emotional possible benefits there. But should I have an objective from that business. Yes of course you should. You know that you should at least go in with some sort of strategy. I was talking about don’t have a script but you should have a plan of kind of what you want to cover where you want to go with a live stream maybe a rough idea of how long you want that video to go on for. But yeah you definitely want to have an objective so that when people are spending their time watching you or your business they can leave with some amount of value as well.
Ben: Yeah, You know I think it’s an incredible point actually I think actually although you didn’t run through it before you were go on that person that actually you know that is actually incredibly relevant to people who listen to this podcast because it’s actually sometimes you get to enjoy. There is a difference between way people use social media for personal use as opposed to how [Inaudible] business use. Actually sometimes we try and disconnect them too much and sometimes actually they can be one in the same. And they can be used for similar aims or purposes and others and be separate as well. It doesn’t have they don’t have to be completely mutually exclusive. They can be together and it’s it’s an interesting proposition when you look at that people actually go live whatever reason actually isn’t as you’ve got some sort of idea of where you going live and it could be because you are bored and you want to try and connect to people you want to see what everyone else is doing and you want to get them involved. Start a conversation. That’s great. If that’s the plan. Or it could be you know we all want to show a new product or it could be a really cool place. I want to show my friends where this really cool places that they may have not heard before and that each one of those I guess. [Inaudible]
Chris: Well I think Ben not to not to belabor this point but I think that’s an important thing for businesses to remember when they’re are using live streaming in on whatever platform as well is that most people who are on social media are there to see what their friends are doing you know see if their old friends got married or divorced or had a child or had conversations with their friends from around the country or around the world. And so you need to keep that in mind when you’re planning a live stream for your business. You know again there are there are certainly opportunities and there’s certainly you know the right time for a very you know buttoned up black tie sort of live stream. But I think that some of the most successful streams you’ll see are where some of these businesses that may otherwise seem stodgy or may seem you know really kind of stuck up really kind of let their hair down a little bit and provide that access and provide that. But behind the scenes look at what their business is really like. Right?
Ben: Yeah.
Chris: Like again not to turn this into brined fans or us. But if you suck if you suck offline you’re going to suck online. Right. And so live streaming really gives you an opportunity to pull the curtain back a little bit and show what your company culture is about show what the people within your organization are about and those turn out to to really be in my opinion some of the best live streams from businesses that you’re going to see
Ben: I can agree more. I think there’s a couple of points that I agree on. One Brian Franzen comes out with a brilliant quote I’ve quoted way too much in the podcast as well give him a little Maslov like a [Inaudible] and next to me
Chris: Welcome to my life we’re doing the same thing.
Ben: I know he’s a small world is in it? And you think yeah it’s it’s look it’s letting your hair down is not afraid to be a bit different to be a little bit non cool person to be a little bit out there and actually look who’s not and that’s the biggest thing isn’t it no matter what you do. You connect with livestream. You’ve got to have personality and that’s something that is this or this is the point that if you’re going to any digital marketing event and any live that you have at anything they’ve always said to be authentic and real but you just can’t keep hammering it home enough the fact that you we need to have a their personally people buy into you and actually what you are doing and that’s what keeps people coming back. It’s you in the way you deliver because let’s be honest no content is particularly unique. 16000 people could be saying the same thing. But if they did what would they listen to you because of you. And they understand that You are the actor your own story on the use again. But you are you’re the actor and your own story and what you do on these livestream defines who you are and how people perceive you and you need to be that person. I think it’s really important that you have that personality.
Chris: I think it’s a real reassessment and a democratization of brands around the country. I remember around the world that for a lot of people especially for a lot of younger consumers these long standing ideas of what your brand. You may think your perception of your brand is forget about that you know that your purse. The perception of who you are is what you put out there on your social media channels whether it’s live streaming or other content. Right. And so again I don’t want to name names but you know I know Brian worked recently with a huge international multibillion dollar brand and they’re just trying to crack into the social media seeing the live streaming scene and everything and it’s like you know wow I know that this brand is really successful but really I know I learned more about what this brand is about from watching this tape over and watching this livestream than I did from just recognizing what their logo is. You know so it really gives you it. It’s very important. You know when you go live as a business to understand that this may define the entire perception of what your brand is I think that may be what is intimidating to some of these these stakeholders at these businesses but again live streaming has become such a phenomenon that you really need to develop a strategy. As a business or you’re just going to fall behind.
Ben: Yeah. This final point I want to sort of talk about on on that note before we move on to some of the mediums some of the the platform she uses is actually the long time to do live video because we talked about actually look how important and how useful live video is. But is there wrong time is there a time where you just go and I wish people could do live with the when when that innocent situation is this is there’s sort of a rough rule of thumb or something you experience it you know what it’s possible but I wouldn’t recommend it watch you know what you should be considering certain elements if you are going to go live by that location where things don’t do in someone is too busy. No one can hear you what are your thoughts around when not to go live when the time if there is a wrong time.
Chris: No I mean I think there’s a practical answer to that question and there is a philosophical answer to that question right. So from a technical side of things obviously you wouldn’t do something like stream in the middle of the night outside where you can’t see anything or if you’re in the pits at a NASCAR race. I don’t know what the equivalent over the pond of NASCAR.
Ben: There’s would be but the Formula 1 Formula 1 is
Chris: A sure formula 1 race right where the sound quality might be terrible. I think just use your best judgment and one of the best things you can do is go back and try and re watch a live stream after you create it to see if you’ve sort of created something that is should disqualifying in the future. But I think philosophically the wrong time to go live streaming is to go live is when you don’t have something to say you know. So you could theoretically again you could go live four-five six times a day if you’re telling me something that is valuable on an ongoing basis. Right. So there is no set number of times that you should go live there is no set period of time that you want to go live streaming for. I t’s a matter of how much value can you provide to your audience on an ongoing basis. Right. Like I’m a big baseball fan. You know if the if the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame wanted to go live every day I think they’d have plenty of stories to be able to tell you know throughout the halls of the building there and throughout the course of history. Now if they wanted to go live 8 times a day might that become a little bit much in terms of their storytelling abilities. Probably. But it could probably be done you know. So I think you just have to think of every case individually. I don’t think it’s ever fair to draw sort of a black and white rule as to you know this is too much or don’t do this or don’t do that. I do think the most important thing is as our good buddy Dan dingus would say just do it right. Just give it a shot and if it doesn’t work it doesn’t work. But as long as you’re not breaking any of your company rules or you’re not revealing personal information or anything you really don’t have. I’m being careful to say you don’t have much to lose. I mean you do have a lot to lose as long as you don’t break some of the fundamental rules of your brand.
Ben: Yeah it is. Yes I know you don’t. You don’t. It is not in keeping with your brand someone is still keeping within certain brand online like not swearing drug smoking whatever whatever it is that’s not associated with your brand and you still just don’t do it it’s just a general almost like a like a rule of thumb I’m thinking of I’m thinking like it to to you know just a general common sense of a little bit of common sense and that you should not it.
Chris: Yeah. Common sense. And I want to throw in one more tip here before we move on then.
Ben: I love a challenge but I love them. Chuck I mean that.
Chris: This is an important knowledge bond. So I worked with a company that has a ton of regulations right. I’m sure a lot of the listeners are going through the same thing. How do I livestream from my company that we have so many rules about what we can talk about and you know probably here’s how you do it when you lay out your plan for your livestream. Lay out everything that you can’t talk about. Right. So instead of looking at what we are going to talk about on the livestream make a list of the things that you cannot cover and that will allow whoever’s going to be live on camera for you to talk about pretty much everything and anything about your brand except for you know personal information or except for this part policy. Right. So when you when your exclusionary when you when you say Ok Jimmy you can’t talk about these three or four things don’t use the phrase this right. All of a sudden you really open up everything else in his vocabulary. You open up everything else in the handbook so to speak for discussion as long as you know what’s out of bounds. Right. But you’re really going to constrict yourself if you only look at what you can talk about because that really puts constraints on the way the conversation might go. So that’s that’s one of my favorite tips with live streaming. If you’re in a highly regulated industry lay out the things that you can’t talk about and that will allow your company to talk about everything else as opposed to trying to do the opposite.
Ben: I think that is absolutely incredible. I mean I know my present experience. I worked in the financial services insurance company and the amount of red tape regulation in there was really difficult. I actually found quite constricting although we never got into live video. That was one of the things I tried to map out with try look at if we exclude everything that we can’t ever let whatever is left when theory we can’t we can do that. Would you say that we would want to do not talk about any of this stuff we know is all covered. That’s the reason why it’s almost it’s like not glass half full glass half empty sort of thing. If you take out the stuff that you can do whatever the left is it [Inaudible]. So I think that’s an incredible point. But to move on that I want to move on and talk about the mediums I think the suddenly you’re quite passionate about and again is another reason not to be one that you want because you use a huge amount of me different mediums to talk me. You and I have both massive fans of Twitter. We love doing that. But we all see there are so many different mediums and platforms now in which to live streams. How do people decide which platforms to use and decide do they split their time evenly. Do they go all in on one platform what is your advice around going live in certain platforms. Is it in platforms, that’s a good to going live with a certain way of going live that makes sense now.
Chris : Again there’s no one straightforward answer right. You know for me the default answer the way that I tend to lean these days is using Facebook Live Right. And this is a database decision. You know when you look at the numbers the daily active users and everything. And again maybe maybe this is soured a little bit over the last few weeks with all the news about these Facebok privacy concerns and everything but in the end of the day Facebook is still going to be the giant when it comes to you know social media usage. Right. Facebook makes it incredibly easy for you to go live. It’s actually the first button you can push there when you open up the Facebook app on your own or on your iPad. So they very clearly as we were talking about before they want you to go live they want you to try it. You know whether it’s for your personal brand or for your business. Now are there other options to go live. Of course there are. And I think there are some very intriguing benefits to these other platforms that are worth exploring. Right. I’m actually in the process of possibly launching a new show breaking a little news here on the podcast. And if I do that it’s probably going to be on Instagram live. You know I think that there’s a lot of possible benefits to connecting to your Instagram profile you know connecting directly with other people audiences so you can do a dual livestream on natively on Facebook now which is something that I will say fans nor I disagreed upon I said they’re definitely going to do this and he said that’s no Knot’s put out a Strub column.
Ben: We praise him too much anyway.
Chris: Given the ability to go live with somebody else or even with another brand. I think is very special and that’s something that you can do again natively on Facebook. That’s something that you can do natively on Instagram live. I think I’d be remiss not to mention YouTube Live and again my friends like Roberta will remind you that YouTube is owned by the world’s largest search engine and Youtube search results are incredibly important to being found. You know discoverability and more importantly connecting and delivering value to people who are looking for it and looking for you. Right. So there’s a lot of value in creating live streams of live content or even repurposing recorded content onto something like YouTube Live. If you want to get a little more dense and making that content with SEO optimized so that people can find it on YouTube. And then of course there’s periscope right which I personally I’m not very bullish on the long term viability of periscope as its own separate app. So there’s been plenty of discussion about you know whether or not periscope will even continue to be its own thing. Maybe by the time this podcast comes out but more realistically probably by the end of 2018. Myself and many others wouldn’t be surprised if periscope sort of gets folded into what we refer to as Twitter live.
Ben: I agree with you though I do. I don’t have the viability and I think I think it is was nice to look at someone why it happened with me account was around. I just don’t items you don’t want to invite it in as a separate plot from using it is unnecessary.
Chris: Yeah it seems unnecessary now. I don’t know that we would have made that same statement two years ago.
Ben: Yeah
Chris: For 2 years ago. But I think that the way that Twitter has approached live streaming video. And again there’s a lot of you know we might we might be downplaying one app or one platform or another here through the course of this conversation. But there’s there’s tens of millions of dollars to be added in Twitter live and all these different and even some of the other smaller platforms. You know the lives of the world and some of these other channels that you may hear about but I’d say that those for now are going to be your sort of big for options. You know I love periscope again because it’s connected to Twitter. So there is still value in that especially with something like a social media event. You know we’re trying to connect with a lot of other people who are social media savvy. You know I use periscope at Social Media Marketing World and it’s great. But again those those I would say would be your options and I would recommend if you’re trying to determine a strategy for your company to do some research maybe connect with one of these live streaming professionals you know like me or Brian Fonzo or some of the other folks that we’re referencing to have a conversation because the correct answer is going to be whatever is specific for your business. And that’s not something that Ben and I can answer through the course of a podcast.
Ben: Yeah. You know I agree nothing. Actually one of the things I think you actually covered and when you touched on it like the nothing into things you get caught in a lot in terms of life as well as the tools. And actually I think there was a perception before that when you went live it was essentially a just have to be you as a single person holding up a selfie stick and just talking into it when actually the tools out there do so much more not to be live. Tools like e-commerce. Well we were actually bring in different people you can bring live discussions with 3 4 different people at the same time and it’s all like so Social Media Examiner do an incredible job of this. They do that weekly show where they bring on different people new unpause Social Media Examiner society and they have different trainings and they would bring in different people see you know just look it doesn’t have to be boring and one person story. I’m not saying those are boring because I know I’ve done them myself. You love doing it and they are really interesting. But some people will see it unnecessarily that way. So what. There are silly ways of mixing up live video these days and actually going Oh look we can be live Ecom. we can do all these different things bringing different streams you can do animated things on the new Amanda Kelly and Amanda Kelly ‘s live show they do all sorts of ways to make things really fun and interesting and it’s almost to make sure that we really getting rid of that myth where it has to be what. How old was how long did you start it when there were new options. It was just one person holding a selfie stick. And I think people need to understand that live video is moved on incredibly in the last even last year. [Inaudible] two years is moved on. It’s completely changed.
Chris: Yeah you know. And I think just to sort of redefine live streaming you know live mobile participatory video really in my opinion took off in the spring of 2015 with meerkat and Periscope. Right. So when we talk about live streaming live streaming is a medium that’s been around for decades because live streaming technically if you think about it you could turn on your television or you could watch the live streaming news at 6 o’clock you know on a local station right. So what’s really changed over the last three four years has been that participatory elegant. Right. And when meerkat and Periscope came out and as you talked about the the selfie stick idea the hold up your own And drive the conversation yourself. That became sort of a skill in and of its on its own. You know that a lot of us in the industry developed that particular skill of being able to drive a conversation with a lot of people. You know that the one to many phrase right. You know I can talk about doing that during my 50 states 100 days adventure. But a lot of people got acquainted with as you said hold up your phone use a selfie stick whatever and just speak one to many. But the magic in that and where things that were the landscape really started to shift was at the end of 2015. Actually I think it was August 2015 where Meerkat introduced this thing called cameo where you can press a button you could actually introduce someone else your peer here on livestream right you remember what I’m talking about?
Ben: Yes
Chris: And so you have multiple people on a livestream at the same time. So it was a mind blowing moment to be able to download an app and broadcast live. But I would argue that it was even a bigger moment for Meerkat to be able to introduce that cameo feature because then you could actually have this to a conversation and that’s what we as humans really crave. So when you talk about things like the Amanda Kelly’s go there are so many shows out there now that thrive using these new tools you know like be live is one that we both know and love and I’ll be on be live a bunch of times this week. But why are cast and OBS and Ecam and all these different more advanced tools. Give you an opportunity to provide your audience with what they’re really looking for which is this human interaction. Right this is why you know Ben has guests on his podcast right. We can listen to each other talk with 45 minutes and really get value out of that interactivity. Right. And that’s where the value really starts to come in. When you talk about two to many in and those two people are monitoring the comments and keeping everybody else engaged with the conversation and some of these platforms allow you to do more than that right snap chat in the last couple of weeks has introduced a platform where you can really you can live chat with up to 16 people at the same time which is incredible you know. But platforms like house party which is the evolution of Meerkat you know that is really where the power in the value comes in. Right. As you know you and I might talk about trying to do a livestream that gets millions of views and that sort of thing and it’s doable. I mean this past weekend was Coachella I didn’t look and see how many millions of views they ended up up with their live streams. But really the value and the volume of the data to live streams that are going out there now are going to be you know one or two people speaking to their small group of friends or that that really targeted audience you know the dentist’s office you know talking to the six or seven people who might be prospective customers in Omaha Nebraska you know and that’s where I think all of the money lies. These days these smaller groups these targeted actionable live streams that are really just people talking to people. You know
Ben: I think this is a really important way that people to people thing. I think actually an element of live, going live that people don’t quite appreciate thing is quite a new technology one that we’re working with in my company at the moment and we’re looking at utilizing called Web RTC. But web real time communications what we’re really pushing at the moment is video chats for websites so essentially people are actually going on the Website and actually initiating a speech to exploit inability to get into a browser which allows users your Website to click a video call and they can video call doing in the business. I’m not saying that we’re really pushing the moon because we understand the element on going live not personality and actually going live doesn’t have to be necessarily going on to social media platform and presenting to the world. It can be we talked about that a lot but actually can be as simple as actually going on that and actually doing a video reply actually doing a live video on it. You did me recently for brand to other and brand before but before that individual video posted. And people don’t actually know either of those would necessarily the rule recorded live. Do you recorded and then upload
Chris: Recording uploaded. But I think you make a very valid point and I want to cut you off and ask the question. But when we talk all the time. I think one of the most common responses that you’re going to get for her asking anyone for advice is provide value. How do you provide value provide value. Right. And we do this whole big this whole big conversation this whole podcast about live streaming video you’re your point you know video it comes down to creating video. So you make a super valid point there which when you put those two things together how do we provide value to our audience. Well let’s provide them with customized video you know and that used to be such a mind blowing idea right when we talk about customer service right. Oh well we can’t we can’t provide value. We can’t provide video to every individual customer but why not. You know again the barriers to entry with creating video and again we’re branching off just a little bit from Livestream. But to be able to as you talking about press a button and actually do a live video chat with a customer. When you look again you’ve got to look at the cost benefit analysis of what you’re creating there. Now if you can create a truly transformational experience for your customer that they’re going to get up and they’re going to talk to their friends about how special they feel because that company provided them this exquisite and this outstanding customer service. I think that’s a huge win. Right. So the fear of course is that your customer service team may not be prepared or may not be comfortable or whatever the obstacles are they’re solvable you know. But I’ve I’ve always thought about stuff like this where it let’s say your company has a mascot. Right. Like why can’t we put the mascot in the customer service center for an eight hour shift and then when people are tweeting to our business we allow them we give them a customized video reply from the mascot. You know that this is a truly transformational idea that would allow you to bring the full power of your brand and of that that logo of that that mark of mascot to this person individually. Right. And then you allow you allow your audience to carry your message around for you. You know through the power of their social shares.
Ben: Yeah I guess. Is it surprising a lot that customers they think that standing out doing things a bit differently. All these things have a really positive impact on the business and sometimes just really difficult to get done by anyone from the C Suite down and sometimes it’s difficult. But actually look there is incredible value in there and actually doing that stands out is a little bit different more and little bit more exciting. Yes as you can all be in love and you’ve run value we’re not talking about going out of the room. But like you said it could be as simple as getting a mascot to sit in in a cool center actually do you do or sit in an office and do video replies. I mean we’re not talking about something mind blowing that going to cost you millions and millions of pounds. It can’t be that simple. And the live video is really simple and it can be really complex. We want to be but you can still do incredible things without having a huge bulge on you need to do is how to bet fuse a little bit impersonality not can do wonders nomish changed the world and change opinions with just by being you and being just doing something just doing it to almost go him again. No no can’t with it just push the damn button front [Inaudible] says. Yeah I know. I mean isn’t it great it’s just going out there and just going and doing it. And not it look you’ll get through loads from it.
Chris: Yeah I mean I think it’s important you know as you talked about how that personality and that enthusiasm. And I think a lot of the listeners may say oh well we have personality we have enthusiasm. I think it’s also very important is to remember the principles and the philosophy which is as you mentioned surprise and delight and bringing value directly to your customers. And remember remembering that you may not be. You may not be able to scale and bring a personalized video to everyone that you that is interacting with you and that’s fine. But I think if you’re providing as much value as you can and you’re reaching your limits so to speak and you’re doing it to as many of your customers as possible then the rest of your customers and more importantly your potential customers are going to see the effort that you’re making and they’re going to want to be a part of that. I mean let’s let’s just take a moment and think about what Gary Vaynerchuk is all about right. Like Gary is this this incredibly smart powerful obviously rich you know social businessman here based out of New York and now he doesn’t he literally cannot reply to every single tweet every single Instagram comment. All of the messages that he gets but what people really value about Gary is that he spends every possible moment that he can replying to as much as he possibly can. Right. So no no no reasonable person is going to be disappointed that Gary didn’t reply to a particular tweet. What they’re excited about is the possibility that the next time he does it that he may actually reply. So as long as you’re doing the best that you can to be responsive and be interactive and engaging as a brand. I think that’s where we’d all love to get when you look at the volume imagines. He’s obviously doing something right. And I think sometimes we forget just how important it is that he takes some time every day to monitor and to reply to and sometimes even some videos back to as many people as he possibly can.
Ben: Yeah. You know I can agree more. I get it it’s not personalization just the active. You can see it’s so difficult for people to follow up the father is deftly making. And actually you know what you know that’s going to be you eventually. I think that was the critical point financial crisis and I think that sort I don’t go round and sort of go from there to a point I think is incredible to mention actually the life is such a powerful tool is so much broader than people realize that the applications should be on your own by being other people by actually just doing one to one through a business and actually different locations and different tools. I think it’s the incredibly huge topic that is only I go change. I think we need to get you on again almost in a year’s time. Chris you look at the vote and how things changed in the last year about going lots. Thank you so much for the will the consult of you today.
Chris: I will do a man I know you’re well on your way to 100 episodes as you were talking about the other day. So I can’t wait to be back for episode 73 or something off in the distance this has been an awesome conversation. I’m so grateful to you and congratulations on the podcast. Man I can’t wait to see the new video chapter coming out at the end of this month.
Ben: I know it’s exciting. The old things but Chris before I let you go I’m going to ask you the question I ask every single person the in the end of the episode is apart from you know you love sort of going live so what are the buzz words out there right now. Do you absolutely love him. What sort of things you hear now that you think you know all I love that one and want to do more of. I mean I wish people would start using that simple phrase.
Chris: You know I think one thing that I’m presenting on a lot and that is similar to some of the things that we’ve talked about today is Instagram stories and I think a lot of people might be curious about how this video is focused medium is different and stands out from a pure livestream. Right. So the ability to create a video that is strung together over 24 hours and create a story that your audience can watch onto I think is another thing that we could do a whole separate podcast. You know quite frankly but you know I think what really matters the most is authenticity right. I think that’s another. I don’t know if you’ve done an episode on authenticity but that’s that that’s really where it all comes down to these days. Right. Why. Why did you and I connect why my guest on your podcast right now. Because when you came over and said to me and you were the first person that I saw when I walked into social media marketing world I could tell that you were just a super humble genuine honest and down to earth guy right that you were authentic right. And I strive to be authentic in everything that I do as well. You know you can portray that through livestream and you can portray that through Instagram story you can portray that through text or through whatever medium you think your best that you think your message is best carried upon. But I think the single most important word that I would stress is just be authentic you know. You know. Be who you are and allow that to shine through and good things will happen for your business for your personal brand for whatever it is you’re trying to achieve on social media.
Ben: Oh I absolutely love that. I think actually when missile expand on the point Nick we met we met for the first time. I think I’d seen a lot of your live videos and I saw you were doing it and I thought that’s why I saw walk into the room. Chris Stroeve I need to speak to you was like not because I like seeing what you were doing and sso how authentic I love the stuff you were saying to me it was a no brainer. I really wanted to speak to you and I think that’s almost test me to the power of live video and actually being authentic. So now we can test for that because that’s how we met and of how our conversations are started and now we don’t stop talking to each other. It’s ridiculous,
Chris: I think I appreciate that so much and I’m so glad to call you a good friend now. You know I think it’s a testament also to the idea that we are all famous to a few people right that there are so many people out over there what is it 3000 people or whatever it is social media marketing world and everybody is going to see somebody else at some point during a conference like that and evoke that same emotion that you and I felt when we saw each other you know in the registration room there. Right. So everybody has moments like that. And I think when you take the time the energy the effort to put yourself out there consistently and you are true to who you are at every step of the way. You’re able to multiply those moments right. And I was very grateful to have several of those type of interactions in San Diego when my goal is to have ten times more next year. You know by trying to continue to pursue to you know being who I am and what I’m about. And I look forward to connecting two more podcasters and more people like you know Amanda and Kelly right. And more just genuinely good people and the more that you put yourself out there the more that you commit to using live streaming in these different platforms. We talked about the better your odds are of finding a diamond in the rough like Ben Roberts
Ben: Thank you so much Chris. I think we’ll end them all. I’ve done the most compliments me. Thanks so much.
Chris: You got it brother. Thanks so much for your time.
