Periscope: Putting the Social Back in Social Media

How to Reimagine Your Social Media Campaigns with Periscope

What is Periscope, you ask? Periscope is Twitter’s live video streaming app that lets you broadcast yourself, or your brand, to all of your followers and others all around the world instantaneously.
Periscope’s unique approach to social media promotion gives brands new opportunities to create and deliver content differently than other mobile apps like Vine or Instagram.  While these competitors only allow users to post short, pre-recorded pieces of content, Periscope lets users post live broadcasts (or “scopes” in Periscope lingo) straight to the web for everyone to consume on-demand.
There are dozens of ways you can leverage Periscope to promote your brand. For example, you could host a private broadcast and invite top influencers in your field to demo your products and give instant feedback.  Maybe you’re a fashion retailer? Use Periscope to offer an exclusive sneak peek of your new collection that hasn’t hit the runways yet!  Are you an auto manufacturer? Use Periscope to host a behind-the-scenes photoshoot of your new 2016 vehicle that has yet to hit the streets.
Here are a few other ways you can use Periscope to help build your brand:

Behind-the-scenes event footage
New product showcase
Interviews with industry experts & influencers
Product creation process
Photo shoots
Exclusive content
Q&A

Best Practices for Periscope:
Boost Interaction
Greet Your Audience: As new people plug into your scope, be sure to greet them by name, just as you would in person. That personal touch is what’s missing from many brands’ social presence these days. After all, social was designed as a platform for fostering meaningful relationships – not for shameless self-promotion of your brand. Periscope is no different. Treat each attendee as an individual, and use this platform as an opportunity to create meaningful engagement with your fans. Emmelie De La Cruz at SumAll drives this point home in her post about building your brand with Periscope:
“You will notice that some of the best Scopers are highly connected to their audience, calling them by name, welcoming them to the broadcast individually and acknowledging all of their comments. This interaction with viewers also allows you to collect some informal data. You can ask them to shout out their name and city, and, if appropriate, age and gender as well.”
Well said, Emmelie!
Chat with Your Audience and Ask Questions:  The dialogue with your audience doesn’t have to end once you’ve greeted them and welcomed them to your broadcast. Now more than ever, people are turning to social media to share their opinions, hoping their voices are heard through the always-on noise that has come to define the digital landscape. What better way to show your audience that you value their feedback than by acknowledging them directly? During your scope, ask your viewers questions, listen to their responses, ask follow-up questions – and always thank each attendee individually for their feedback. Before you know it, you’ll have ignited a conversation about your brand that will leave your audience feeling valued and appreciated long after the broadcast ends.
In this great post on Social Media Examiner, Heidi Thompson provides several examples of how brands are spurring conversations on social simply by asking questions. Since Periscope is a livestreaming service, there’s an extra value-add – igniting conversations isn’t only for the sake of your viewers – it’s also an excellent platform to get real-time feedback for products that haven’t hit the shelves yet, so you can make any necessary adjustments to ensure your official release is a success!
Answer Participants’ Questions: Responding to questions in real time shows your audience that you genuinely want to connect with your customers on a personal level. You may not be able to answer every question during the broadcast, so come prepared with a landing page to send viewers to and a hashtag unique to your scope, so you can follow-up “off-line” and take the time to answer each question with a thoughtful response. Hashtags are a great way to track digital conversations while you’re scoping – but you shouldn’t rely on hashtags alone to gauge sentiment and monitor brand mentions online.
Furthermore, for brands to succeed online in 2015, it’s absolutely crucial to invest in social listening technology. Here at The Search Agency, we have projects set up for each of our clients with carefully built out queries to track all brand mentions from around the web, providing us with a wealth of social listening data – from audience demographics and brand sentiment to influencer identification and customer service issues. As Victoria Edwards succinctly summarizes in her post on SEW: “…use technology to separate the signal from the noise. Find out where conversations are happening, and leverage what you learn.” That last part is key: leverage what you learn. Don’t just listen for the sake of listening (and don’t scope for the sake of scoping!) – take feedback to heart and adjust your strategy based on your findings.
 
Great Equipment? Great Periscope!
Before you start your broadcast on Periscope, make sure you have the following:
A Tripod: No one wants to stare at a shaky screen – no matter how valuable the content of your scope is, a shaky screen reflects poorly on your brand as a whole, and at the end of the day, it’s a surefire way to lose viewers.  However, if the shaky screen effect is what you’re going for… more power to you!
Fully Charged Battery: If you plan on scoping for an extended period of time – whether it’s an event, an interview, or a sneak preview of a new product line – make sure your battery is fully charged or your phone/tablet is plugged into an outlet during the broadcast.  The last thing you want is your scope cutting off mid-stream due to a dead battery – yikes!
 
Leverage Existing Audiences
When you broadcast, it is totally OK to pre-promote and cross-promote by sharing it socially with all of your followers.  In fact, we highly recommend generating some hype by leveraging your existing audience on other platforms. For example, you can schedule out tweets and posts in advance using a tool like Buffer with bits of teaser copy about your upcoming Periscope broadcast in order to increase event viewership and get people excited about it. Use little snippets with value-adds for pre-promotion – in other words, don’t give everything away, but seed out little previews of what’s to come for those lucky followers who tune into your scope! Use pre-promotion to show value for your upcoming broadcast, and make a case for why followers should tune in. When your broadcast is over, post a recording of your scope to your site and follow up on your most active social platforms, thanking users for tuning in and providing a link to the recording for any fans who missed out on the fun.
 
Your Title Makes All the Difference
Pay special attention to the title of your broadcast. Similar to a title tag in the SERPs, your broadcast title is the only thing separating your broadcast from the rest – so be sure to create a title that is clear and descriptive, but also compelling enough to pique the interest of users hanging out on Periscope. A good title will let followers and users searching on Periscope know what you will be broadcasting about. A great title will entice them to click on your broadcast and join in.
 
Hearts, or Likes
On Periscope, we live for Hearts.  Hearts are this platform’s version of “Likes” and when users are enjoying a broadcast, they can double tap the screen to make Hearts appear.  These Hearts will appear in different colors, each color associated with a viewer participating in your broadcast.
No Begging: Don’t beg for Hearts.  If the content you’re scoping is useful, interesting, exciting, or emotion-evoking in some way, you’ll get the Hearts you deserve.
 
The Trouble Makers a.k.a Trolls
Just like on every other form of social media, you will eventually run into troublemakers, also known as trolls, on Periscope. You might find them in your broadcast being rude, disrespectful, or annoying to your viewers and yourself. These trolls are just looking to create chaos. John Brandon of CIO Tech News offers some words of wisdom on how to deal with troublemakers on social media that we agree with wholeheartedly: if you see comment trolls during your scope, just ignore them and move on with your broadcast. By engaging with trolls, you’re drawing attention to them – and consequently creating a ticking time-bomb. Another simple solution – BLOCK! Rid your broadcast of repeat-offender trolls for good with the blocking feature, so you can focus on the people who really matter: your target audience.
 
Thank you for taking the time to read this post and learn more about how to leverage Periscope for brand marketing.  If you have any other tips for getting the most out of Periscope, share them with us in a comment below!
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Source: The Search Agents
Link: Periscope: Putting the Social Back in Social Media