Best Practices for Your Livestream

Best Practices for Your Livestream

Congratulations on deciding to host a livestream as part of your virtual event! We've seen a lot of livestreams on the BoothCentral platform, based on what we've observed the following best practices will set you up for a successful broadcast!

Practice ahead of time. Once you receive your stream key from BoothCentral, you can practice broadcasting to BoothCentral at any time. Make sure you go live at least once before your event and think through the following:
Do I know how to go live?
Have I sent the invite link to my guests?
Am I comfortable with the way my browsers are displayed on my screen? For example, are you able to see comments on the BoothCentral page while you broadcast?
Do I understand how to bring guests and pre-recorded videos in and out of the live stream?
Is my livestream muted on the BoothCentral page so there aren't audio issues?

Start your livestream before your event begins. Starting your livestream early will ensure your video is live when your attendees enter the event.

Regularly address the new attendees. Remember that you'll have a flow of people entering and exiting your event as you broadcast. Every 10-15 minutes you'll want to welcome new attendees and give them instructions on how to enter the virtual booths. If you are broadcasting to Facebook or YouTube at the same time, invite those viewers to click through to the BoothCentral event.

Have a plan. Make a detailed plan of what you will do during your broadcast. You will feel more confident during your livestream knowing what you'll be doing. If a segment goes long or short, you'll be able to look ahead to how you'll make up the time. It's also a good idea to have additional content ready in case a segment goes short or an interview doesn't show up.

Contact information. Make sure to have two ways contact your guests. If there's an issue during the broadcast you'll have multiple ways to get in touch with them.

Computer/Internet Connection. Streaming a broadcast can put a heavy load on your computer. Follow these steps to ensure that you are making it as easy as possible for your computer to broadcast well.
Restart your computer the morning of your event.
Only have essential programs and browsers open on your computer.
Make sure no one else in the house is using your internet, for example, Netflix or video games.

Create Backgrounds and Banners. Create backgrounds and banners to display when you aren't broadcasting. You could create a Welcome message that attendees see when they arrive saying "Welcome! The broadcast will begin in 5 minutes". Or, you could have a banner that you display on a break that says "We'll be back at 11:00 AM! In the meantime, please visit the virtual booths below and say 'Hi' to the exhibitors!".

Audio. The audio for an external microphone typically works better than the microphone that is built into your laptop. For the best audio experience, we recommend an external microphone, the microphone on your headphones will usually be adequate for most events.

Marketing. The livestream portion of your virtual event can be very marketable. Remember to be advertising the livestream in the weeks leading up to your event. On your social media accounts, introduce the people you will be interviewing and tell your followers when and where to tune in to hear more. You can also mention interesting broadcast segments in your press release.

Post-event. On request, BoothCentral will put a recording of your livestream on your event page after your event has ended. Use this to drive return traffic to your event. For example, after your event you could send an email out to your audience and tell them that if they missed the event the livestream is now posted on the event page, they can watch the video and visit the virtual booths (although the booth hosts won't be live in their virtual booths).

Bonus Best Practice: Have fun! If you're having fun with your broadcast, your audience will be having fun. So, don't put too much pressure on yourself, part of the charm of a live broadcast is the "live" aspect of it, so if something doesn't go quite right, embrace it, and it could be an unexpected memorable part of your broadcast!

Updated on: 18/08/2021