5 Tips to Building an Audience for your Commencement Live Stream
While it’s easy to worry about “how” you will live stream your commencement, it’s probably more important to think through your viewing experience. What should they do after watching your stream? What can the do before the event?
After all, the internet isn’t about one way communication. It’s supposed to be two way, and so it’s important to find a way to engage your audience. Here are 5 tips to help you power an engaging live stream.
1. Brand Your Stream
Perhaps this one seems obvious, but if the purpose of the live stream is to engage your audience, then keep the stream on your website. You can use a streaming service like Wowza Streaming Cloud that will give you a white label player that you can embed on your own website.
2. Create an Event Portal
Don’t just stream the event to a page on your website — build a portal to engage people. Graduation is not just about the ceremony, it’s about the accomplishment. Create an area to help people share their experiences and engage with the stories of your students.
3. Keep the Page Active Everyday
Get students to participate in the page daily. Collect stories and post them to the page to keep the content fresh, and send out reminders to get people to visit. Make this a destination to check out, and not just something they need to remember the day of the event.
4. Get Social
Create an event hastag and spread the word. You can even embed a Twitter feed on the page to see in real time how people are talking about graduation. Also, don’t be afraid to host a Facebook Live or Periscope broadcast to give people a behind the scenes look at everything it takes to make a graduation ceremony come to life.
5. Think mobile
Graduation ceremonies are often on weekends and during the day. It’s also a very busy time couple of weeks for students and families. You should expect your audience to engage with you from mobile devices, and this means it’s really important that you have a responsive website design.
Most importantly, have some fun with the event. This is an exciting time of year and it can be contagious.