It's not all doom and gloom if you're trying to host an event at the moment (despite how things may seem). Lots of people are moving their events online and live streaming the content to their audience, avoiding the need to gather all your guests in one room, no matter how many beautiful venues there are for live streaming in Oxford.
If this is something you're thinking of doing, here are 5 things to remember to make sure your live stream runs smoothly:
1 - Internet connection
This might seem obvious but make sure your internet connection is good enough! If you're trying to show presentations or videos, the worst thing would be for the connection to be stuttering and for people to miss some of the information you're trying to relay. It's best if you're plugged into a wired connection rather than running on wireless, as this gives more of a guarantee and is less likely to suffer connection issues. It's always worth checking with venues, because not everywhere will have suitable internet. If you want a good idea of which venues are good for live streaming in Oxford, just ask!
2 - Audio
Chances are you've got a lot of important information to relay and potentially some great speakers at your event, so your audience deserves high quality audio. Making sure that the microphones are running directly into your cameras will avoid any issues with delay or things being out of sync. It's also important to make sure your speaker is mic'd up appropriately, using a microphone on the camera at the back of the room won't cut it. Make sure you've either got a lavaliere mic clipped onto the speaker, or you've got a boom mic right nearby them.
3 - Which platform you use
Think about what platform is best for you to stream your event. Is it a public event that you want lots of people to engage with? Perhaps Facebook is a good platform for this. Alternatively if you want to be able to limit access and only send the link to certain people (if you want to charge access to the event, or if it contains sensitive employee information for example) then you can send out private Youtube links only to a selected group of people. You could also potentially have a password protected stream for added security.
4 - Promoting the event
It's no good just launching into an event without having let anybody know. This is a great way to guarantee that nobody will watch your live stream. Youtube allows you to create the event well before launch, so that anybody can see it's happening and put the date in their diary. You'll also want to let people know directly. Sending an email to potential guests, posting on social media that the event is happening, and event publishing it on your website. These are all great ways of generating interest in the event and making sure you'll get good engagement, which leads me on to my final point.
5 - Engagement
You want to make sure people viewing the live stream can get involved. This could either be through calling up, through comments on the live stream, or perhaps through a #hashtag on Twitter. All of this will need to be decided beforehand, and will of course be dependent on which platform you're using to stream. If you're streaming on Youtube, the comment section is a really good opportunity to get some great engagement. You can also post a link to the stream on Twitter and Facebook and encourage people to ask questions on here, either by adding a specific hashtag to their tweets, or by tweeting / commenting directly on your posts.
There's a lot to think about that I haven't covered here as well, like running presentations and videos as part of your live streams, so if you're thinking of live streaming your events then get in touch and see how we can help everything run smoothly.
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