Top 3 Strategies for Better Church Live Streaming

Church live streaming is a great way to bring your content front, right, and center, developing a sense of belonging and community for your congregants.

Whether you’re a worship leader, a faith-based organization, a pastor, or an individual worshiper, here is your guide to increasing your outreach for existing and new congregants through church live streaming.

First things first; why do you need church live streaming anyway?

Church services have always been sacred to worshipers. They abandon their everyday tasks to attend congregations, pray, and seek hope and positivity. Yet, many are barred from attending these ceremonies in person due to several reasons — health issues, lack of mobility, lack of transportation facilities, limited physical access to churches, family responsibilities, and a lot more. Church live streaming is the go-to solution for all these marginalized communities. What is even more interesting is that the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly increased the popularity of church live streaming, aiming to reach out to people stuck at home due to health concerns or the social distancing directives. Live church broadcasts bring the church to them, wherever they are. From kids to the elderly to the bed-ridden, church live streaming gives everyone a chance to engage and keep up with their faith.

Read More: How Can Churches Benefit From Live Streaming?

3 Strategies for Better Church Live Streaming

#1 Use an Efficient Live Streaming Set-up

Church live streaming is a professional business. Hence, you must invest in efficient gear; depending on your budget, it can range from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars. Here’s the essential gear requirement for better church live streaming:

• Camera — While you can easily live stream church services through a smartphone, taking the image quality up a notch would require a DSLR, a webcam, a camcorder, or a high-end live streaming camera. The objective here is to create a great live streaming experience for your congregation.
• Audio — You must necessarily invest in a high-quality mic to capture the sound well. If the viewers cannot hear you clearly, your live streams are destined to lose their value.
• Internet — We advise using an ethernet wired connection to ensure stable internet through your streams. Alternatively, you can also go for a high-speed Wi-Fi connection.
• Video Switcher — Switchers allow bringing footage from all your cameras into a single video feed. Ultimately, this will reduce the video processing load on your computer.
• Audio Mixing Console — Capturing and mixing high-quality audio for church live streaming might appear a significant challenge. An audio mixing console will come in handy, especially in converting all the mixed signals from the mics into one audio stream.
• Lighting — Perfect lighting is a must for efficient live streaming of church services; neither too bright nor too dark. While natural lighting might appear the best option, you can also use the three-point lighting set-up to ensure clear video and avoid shadows.
• Professional Live Streaming Tool — A professional live streaming solution like OneStream Live can help your church manage and distribute your live streams on 40+ social media platforms and your church’s website. This means OneStream Live can become your trusted partner for reliable church live streaming, be it pre-recorded videos or real-time.

#2 Focus on Engagement

The most widely cited benefit of church live streaming is the ability to engage with the worship leaders in real-time. Hence, focusing on audience engagement must be a top priority of the churches and an integral component of the live streaming strategy. Here’s how:

• Use unique hashtags — using hashtags is a catch to make your content more accessible by the congregants. You can use your church’s name as the hashtag and benefit largely when it goes trending — e.g., #BethelChurchServices, #CavalryChurch, etc.
• Interact with the Audience — interacting with your audience by responding to their comments and queries will make them feel valued as ap rt of the community and improve the overall engagement level of the church.
• Ask Questions — post questions to prompt your viewers and foster engagement. Questions like “What do you like about today’s worship service?” and “Is there anything you want us to improve in our church live streams?” can fetch you valuable feedback.
• Offer Help — let your viewers know that they can reach out to the church for any information, counseling, or help.

#3 Make Intelligent Use of Analytics

Keep a check on your church live streaming analytics to make the best out of your live streams. Poor audience outreach and engagement can undermine the confidence and trust of your viewers, and your analytics will aptly depict these analytics. That’s why you should actively check your live streams’ insights to see how well your live broadcasts are doing and find areas for improvement. Keep a check on the:

• number of followers
• total live viewers
• engagement levels
• average watch time for each of the live streams

You can also find out the segments where you experience the most drop-offs. Keeping an eye on all these critical metrics can help you understand your audience and their preferences better.

OneStream Live offers intuitive analytics that you can deploy to tweak your church live streaming strategy and enjoy an excellent level of viewership for your church service online.

Read More: Top 3 Strategies for Better Church Live Streaming

OneStream Live is a cloud-based solution to live stream across 40+ Social Media Platforms simultaneously. For queries and feedback, Live Chat with our team or write to us at care@onestream.live