Haven’t heard of Periscope? You’re not alone!
Periscope is a new way to live stream events or moments from your mobile device. Viewers can interact with your stream by asking you questions, giving you “hearts,” leaving comments, or just sitting back and hearing what you have to say.
This past Friday, I did my first broadcast on Periscope from the comfort of my home.
I’m going to first highlight a few key tips for using Periscope to interact with your crowdfunding, Kickstarter, or Indiegogo backers.
1. Understand the basics
Using Periscope you can:
- Start a public or private broadcast. Your followers will be notified that your broadcast just started. If your broadcast is private, then you’ll need to select who can view the broadcast.
- Share your broadcast. Aside from relying on your followers on Periscope, you can also tweet your live broadcast and even show where you’re broadcasting from.
- Give and receive hearts. Hearts are like Facebook or Instagram likes and are a great way to show the host of a broadcast that you like what they’re saying or are enjoying the content.
- Leave and get comments. This is one of the most powerful aspects of Periscope! You can get feedback from your viewers or field questions in the comments section.
- Offer broadcasts for replay viewing. Keep in mind that you can only replay a broadcast for on the app 24 hours, but you can save any broadcast that you make and upload it to your website.
- Get broadcast stats. After you’ve completed your broadcast, you’ll get access to stats on the show, like how long it lasted, the number of people that tuned it, how many people watched from start to finish (retention), and the amount of hearts you received.
Most of your viewers are going to come from your Twitter followers and people browsing the app for live broadcasts.
2. Name your scope appropriately
The first thing that new and existing Periscope users are going to see is the title of your show!
This is going to tell them what you’re talking about and a great title is going to give them a compelling reason to click on your show.
If you’re using the app to connect with your existing crowdfunding backers, then just be sure to include the name of your project or product that you’re raising money for on Kickstarter or Indiegogo. This way, they’ll recognize it easily.
3. Notify your followers
Users who follow you on Periscope are going to get a notification when you start a live broadcast. You can also share this broadcast with fans who follow you on Twitter.
But, the best way to get more viewers to tune into your broadcast is to prime the pump.
Let your email subscribers and social media followers know that you’re going to be doing a broadcast. Make it dead simple for them to tune in by including the time and timezone.
This way, you’ll have more viewers watching at the beginning of the broadcast. If you don’t notify viewers ahead of time, you might find yourself talking to an empty room or have viewers tune into your channel during the middle of the broadcast.
4. Plan for viewer lag
Not everyone is going to start watching your broadcast from the very beginning.
You’re going to have people log in to Periscope and check out your channel throughout the duration of the broadcast. You’ll have people consistently leaving and arriving.
Dedicate the first few moments of your broadcast to Q&A or to covering some very basic topics as you wait for people to arrive.
Once you get the feeling that people are starting to show up, then you can launch into any talking points you have or go into a more in-depth discussion about the progress of your crowdfunding campaign.
Keep in mind that since viewers will be showing up throughout your show, it’s a good idea every 5 minutes to remind viewers what you’re talking about, re-engage the audience, and answer a few questions.
5. Engage viewers
While it’s true that Periscope is a great way to get a message out to the crowd or to distribute information, it’s also an awesome relationship building tool.
Your goal should be to build relationships at scale. You do this with your crowdfunding video, campaign text, your project comment’s section, your social media, and website.
However, all great relationships are based on two-way person to person communication.
Here are a few ways to engage with your viewers throughout the duration of the broadcast:
- Give shoutouts. There’s no better feeling that hearing your name mentioned! Take a second to welcome people who are just joining the live stream or who left a comment.
- Survey your audience. Why not ask people to decide between two or three choices and participate by entering the choice into the comments section?
- Q&A and AMA (ask me anything). The easiest way to engage viewers is to give them some say as to the direction of the show. They could ask you questions or provide feedback on a particular point.
- Ask questions. Where are people viewing your stream from? How did they discover you? Asking your viewers questions and being genuinely interested is an awesome relationship building strategy.
- Show tangibles. Show people where you’re broadcasting from. Show them an early prototype of your product. Flip the screen and give them a look at an exciting email from a manufacturer. This is the time to be transparent, authentic, and show people that you’re working hard on your product or campaign.
6. Set up a call to action
You’ve captured the attention of a viewer, now what?
It’s your job to get them to do something, whether that’s follow you on Periscope, give you a heart, leave a comment, check out your crowdfunding campaign, or go to your website and opt-in to your newsletter.
I don’t think it’s a huge ask for viewers to give you a heart if they like the topic that you’re covering or if you ask them to leave a comment.
However, it is a big deal to get them to take action, pull out their laptop, and go on your crowdfunding campaign page or your website.
I would recommend only including one big call to action to minimize confusion. When you include too many, I’ve found that you can confuse your audience and they end up taking no action at all!
7. So how can you use Periscope?
Ultimately, you can use Periscope is to engage live with an existing audience and to attract a new audience.
In the online world, developing relationships at scale is king, and in my opinion, live scalable person-to-person connection is a game changer.
Treat Periscope like your own personal TV channel. You can use it to:
- Answer questions that pop up in your project’s comment section.
- Show prototypes and progress.
- Make announcements.
- Give your backers an opportunity to get to know you better.
- Go in-depth into your personal story and how you made this product.
- Clear up confusion about your rewards.
I don’t think this is just a fad. There are already 10 million accounts on Periscope.
My handle on Periscope is @crowdcrux. I look forward to connecting with you!
My First Periscope
Title: Kickstarter 101
Duration: 12:42
Replay Viewers: 12
Replay Hearts: 26
Live Viewers: 51
Live Hearts: 314
I covered the basics of launching a Kickstarter campaign and things that you need to be aware of prior to hitting that launch button.
In the future, I looking to answering more questions and cover more crowdfunding topics!
In the meantime, take a second to follow me on Periscope! You’ll be notified the next time I go live!
