032 - LinkedIn Lives: Planning, Launching, and Producing Your Show

Live broadcasts are a great way to build your network, elevate your brand, AND get comfortable on camera. In this solo episode, I take you step-by-step from planning to launching and hosting your own live shows. 

Topics include

🔹Why LinkedIn Lives should be part of your content marketing efforts  

🔹Things to consider when selecting the right day, time, and length of your show

🔹Potential Live show formats - solo, interview, panel -  and the pros and cons of each

🔹Strategies for choosing guests. Hint: guests then topic, or topic and then guest?

🔹Basic Live show equipment and why you don't need to spend a fortune

🔹Pre-show checklist and showtime essentials

And more

Download 25 Content Creation Ideas To Kickstart Your Social Media Posts  (Click Link Below)

🔷 Thank you for listening. I hope you found this episode insightful, educational, and inspiring. If you did, don't forget to hit that Follow to keep learning and growing with us.

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🎦 Video is the fastest way to build that know, like, and trust factor with potential clients. If you're not creating video because you don't know how to begin, DOWNLOAD our new Social Media Video Quick Start Guide (It's Free) Click here to Download

⏬ Download 25 Content Ideas To Kickstart Your Social Media Posts (For People Who Don't Know What To Say (It's Free) Click here to Download

➡️ Need more? Check out the 200+ videos on my YouTube channel Click here for my YouTube channel

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For additional insights, follow Annette Richmond and Black Dog Marketing Strategies on social media.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annetterichmond/
LinkedIn Company Page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/black-dog-marketing-strategies/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@blackdogmarketingstrategies
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@annetteadvises
...

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:45

Hi, I'm Annette Richmond. Welcome to Content Marketing School, where we will dive into content marketing strategy, specifically for coaches, consultants and entrepreneurs. Discover how effective content marketing can elevate your brand and grow your business. And if you enjoy the show, don't forget to hit that follow button. Hi, I'm Annette Richmond and this is Content Marketing School, and I am so excited to be here today and be talking about LinkedIn Lives.

Speaker 1: 1:23

It is one of my very favorite topics because I just love, love, love media. I studied it in college and, although I went into magazine publishing rather than working in television, I never lost my love of all things media, particularly broadcasting. I know a lot of people, a lot of you out there, are uncomfortable on camera, and I get that. I was too. I wanted to be younger and thinner and better looking, and so I avoided the camera. I still have very few pictures of me, but I realized that being on camera, using video, was essential to building my brand and my business, and once I learned from a coach a speaker coach that nobody was really looking at me. All they were doing was listening to the message to see if it was relevant to them. And LinkedIn Lives are one of the best ways to kind of elevate your brand, and so let's get going. So why Live? Linkedin has now jumped to one billion members. One billion members and, yes, you know they're not all on LinkedIn active all the time. But according to LinkedIn, there are 65 million decision makers and 40% of those, the members, are monthly users. 16%, which I find to be actually a lot, are on their daily. But the thing to remember is most people are not online. They're not on LinkedIn for long. The average time spent is seven minutes. Now I know some people will say, well, they think I'm on LinkedIn 24, seven, or people that are influencers that we all know that, if tens of thousands of followers people think, oh, they're on LinkedIn all the time, and the thing is a lot of them are not because they, you know, they have a strategy and they go there and do what they got to do and then they move on.

Speaker 1: 3:34

The benefits of LinkedIn. One of them is thought leadership. You know it is a great way to be on camera, sharing your thoughts, your information, your expertise, to build that thought leadership reputation. It's a great way to build a community and for meeting people that you can then collaborate with. I have met several people that I have gone on to collaborate, to speaking or programs with that I met having them as a guest on my LinkedIn live show. And because you are streaming, it gives you visibility across platforms and I'm going to talk a little bit more about that later. But I stream to LinkedIn, youtube and also face, more recently, facebook. So when I'm streaming I am going to those three platforms all the same time and my content is residing there. And also I want to mention that it is kind of an easy video entry. So if you're nervous about being on camera, doing your own video short form videos going on LinkedIn live, doing your own shows, being a guest on other shows, is a very good and easy way to just start getting used to that whole being on camera Getting started with LinkedIn.

Speaker 1: 5:06

You get off with LinkedIn live. You get off today and you go okay, I'm ready, I'm going to get going. You go over to LinkedIn and there were a few different ways to get started. Now most people I was included in that think that you need to have on Creator Mode. To. You know, use LinkedIn lives, audio, events and whatnot, and the truth is you do not. If you have Creator Mode, you can look down and see that you have the access right there. You can just go to Schedule an event and if you go to Schedule and you see LinkedIn Live there, that means that you're able to schedule LinkedIn Live. Now, since LinkedIn is essentially doing away with Creator Mode this month, it's probably better to not worry about whether or not you have Creator Mode, but just to go to Schedule events, and if you are able to schedule a LinkedIn Live, you will see it available when you do that.

Speaker 1: 6:06

Another way is to go to a third party platform, which I'm going to talk a little bit about later. Those are the studios you see, like StreamYard, that I use, and if you go there and you go to Connect with LinkedIn, you will see whether or not you have LinkedIn Live. Now the basics is really just 150 followers on your profile or on your company page, because you can also stream to your company page if you prefer. A lot of larger companies people that I know they do LinkedIn Lives. They interview people employees and experts on the company page and it resides there. So there is a choice there, although most people get a larger audience, more engagement, when they do it on their profile. And then also, you have to be a good history of being a good LinkedIn citizen, so I trust we all are.

Speaker 1: 7:07

Linkedin has several of what they call preferred partners, and using them is probably the easiest way to get started doing a LinkedIn Live show. I use StreamYard. I signed up for them because when I first started doing my Live show in 2021, you still had to apply and when they listed the partners, they described StreamYard as being the most user-friendly, so I decided to go with that and I love it. Restream is another one. I would say StreamYard and Restream are the most popular. The people that I know all use one or the other, but you can also use Vimo, vimeo, social Live and Switcher Studio, and one of the things that's nice about using one of these preferred partners is it's very seamless. When you go into your studio and you go on a LinkedIn Live, you don't really have to do anything. You set all of your destinations ahead of time and I'll talk to you about that later. So when you go in the day of the show, you go in and you start your show and you're off to the races. Although I've only used StreamYard, I assume that the preferred partners work very similarly.

Speaker 1: 8:27

With StreamYard, you can stream to your Facebook page, your Facebook group, your Facebook profile, linkedin, to your LinkedIn page or your LinkedIn profile. You can also stream to your YouTube channel and to Twitter, nowx and Twitch and other options. One thing I will mention is that you cannot stream to your LinkedIn company page and your profile at the same time. You can set at least with StreamYard, I'm assuming is with the others. You can set up YouTube to stream to different channels, but you can only stream to one at a time and it does take a little while to sort of set those up. Linkedin also has another group they call certified partners, like BigView and BeLive, or you can use Zoom or WebEx or go to webinar to stream. However, I have never used any of those. If you are just getting started, I would highly recommend that you go with one of the preferred partners, the third-party platform, just to avoid any technology issues that may come up.

Speaker 1: 9:46

It's also a good idea to choose the day, the time of day and the length of your live before you get started. When it comes to choosing a day, most of my colleagues, including myself, do our LinkedIn live shows during the week. When it comes to the time of the day, consider your audience. Is your audience available at lunch? If you do 11 to one or two in that area, you can hit the East Coast and the West Coast. If your audience is possibly corporate employees, you might want to do it in the early evening. If your audience is consultants and entrepreneurs, you might want to do it mid-morning or later in the afternoon. And then there's the length. Most of the people that I know, including myself, do a 30-minute show. It's great, because I think it's nicer to feel like you want to keep going and you have to stop than to be lagging.

Speaker 1: 10:55

When I first started doing my show, I was doing an hour and then, after the first six months when I started the next year, I went to 45 minutes and then, at the beginning of 2023, I went to 30 minutes. Think about that, but mostly think about the day and the time, because you do want to have some type of consistency. So there's a few different styles. Now there are people that I know who do solo. I did my first solo a few weeks ago and I was really nervous to be on camera for the first time myself although because you are live and there were people there watching me but I do have a couple of colleagues, friends of mine, who do kind of an ask me anything LinkedIn Live on a regular basis. So that's something you can do, and one thing about doing it solo is it's you and your expertise. So, and I'm going to talk to you. I'm going to talk to you mainly about doing the one on one interview, because that's what I do most of the time and it's what people I think are most familiar with.

Speaker 1: 12:08

So, doing one-in-one interviews, you have somebody with you. The first time I did a LinkedIn Live, I had my friend, lisa Rangel, who I knew forever, to be on my show. When I started my new show this year, I had my friend, brenda Meller to be my first guest on that show. So it is nice to have somebody that you feel really comfortable with, and you might want to start doing LinkedIn Lives with people that you know and you feel comfortable with, rather than people that you know maybe you've never met before. You can also use panel discussions. Now I did a series of those. I will tell you, based on my experience, that it can be tricky to do a panel because you have to have you know the same time. Everybody's got to be there and agree and if people have things come up. So you know, my suggestion to first start would be to go with the one-on-one interviews and again, my shows are very casual. A lot of the shows that my friends do that I've been on. They say it's sort of an interview, but it's really more of a conversation.

Speaker 1: 13:16

If you decide that you want to do a one-on-one interview show, there are a few different ways to go about planning your show. You can pick the topic and look for a guest. You can pick a guest that you really want to have on that you think would be really interesting and then choose the topic based on that. It's a good idea to have a theme for your show. Now, when I first started, my show was Smarter Career Moves, and as my business evolved and my show evolved became Smarter Career and Business Moves, keep in mind that you want to have guests and topics that are going to fall under your sort of business umbrella.

Speaker 1: 13:58

When it comes to booking your guests, there's a few ways to do that as well. I automate my booking. When I started having guests on and I'd let them pick the topic and the time because my umbrella was kind of large, I created an automated booking system which is really just having a calendar. So I have a calendar that's specifically for my show. So if I invite you on my show and you look at the calendar, it will only have the show times available. On that I use security. I'm sure you can do that with any calendar and it really saves a lot of the time. Like any calendar does going back and forth and since the show that you're going to do is going to be likely the same time the same day of the week, it saves time going. Well, how about this day? No, that doesn't work. You're going back and forth and wasting the time that none of us have.

Speaker 1: 14:54

So there's a thing about questions too. If you have questions, should you share them with the guests? Should you not share them with the guests? Now I have done both.

Speaker 1: 15:03

When I first started, I did not share the questions and then I heard some you know LinkedIn live guru say oh, you should share the questions, it makes for a better show. So I thought, okay, I will try that. And so I started sharing the questions that I had, and I will never forget I had a guest on my show, a coach, who's actually local to me. I have known this person for more than 20 years. I know they know their stuff, but as I was giving them, you know, starting the conversation, as they were talking to me, they were reading from papers on the side and it was just really I think it made for a really bad show. So at that point I stopped sending questions. And so you know, obviously do as you like, but I think that if you do send questions, you run the risk of having a very stilted conversation. I also had a time where I wanted to ask something that wasn't on the list and the person's like oh, I'm not prepared for that. So you know, it depends on how you want to, obviously, run your show.

Speaker 1: 16:11

I just want to share my experiences, what has worked for me and what has not. Since I get asked a lot about what equipment I use, I just want to share a few of the things that I have. First of all, I don't have very much and it's none of it was particularly expensive. I did invest in a Logitech high-def camera and I also invested in a Blue Yeti microphone. Now, blue is a company that makes a variety of equipment and the more entry level is the Blue Snowball, which is really inexpensive. That's what I started with and then I later on invested in the Blue Yeti microphone and then I have some inexpensive lights, but you don't need to spend a lot of money on equipment.

Speaker 1: 17:03

I'm going to finish up with a few pre-show and during show sort of checklist things that you need to think about to have a more comfortable experience for yourself and for your guests. So I have a pre-show checklist and you know it helps me prevent having a phone ringing when I'm in the middle of my live show, which has happened to me. I turned down my cell phone. We have a landline where I take the landline off the hook, turn off my email, turn on my lights my show lights close the curtains, get some water, you know open the event page, etc. So you might want to have a checklist like that just to make sure to avoid interruptions and problems during your show.

Speaker 1: 17:56

I want to share also a few tips for when you are actually doing your live show. It's very normal and natural if you're interviewing someone particularly that you want to be looking at them when you're talking to them. But if you're looking at them and people viewing it, it does not look like you're looking at them. It looks like you're looking to the side, so you have to look at the camera. I will tell you that it's very uncomfortable. It's still uncomfortable for me, but it's something that you just get used to doing.

Speaker 1: 18:39

And keep an eye on the time, because if you're on a half an hour show, it goes by really, really fast, particularly if you're having a good time, which you should be. So just keep an eye on the time, because one of the things that I like to do is to have my guests give their final thoughts, let people know where they can reach them before we end the show. So you would. You know that's always a good thing when you see it's getting down. You have five minutes left.

Speaker 1: 19:10

It's time to you know kind of mention that I want to close by mentioning a few essentials, things that I really consider to be the absolute most important part of any show Listen to your guests. I know for all of us, certainly for me if you're talking to someone, you may be thinking about your response while they're still talking. And sometimes if you ask a guest a question and I always tell them that my questions are just talking points to keep the conversation going, so if they start going in a little bit of a different direction. If you can and it's sort of in that same realm you're going to want to be able to go with them and follow the conversation where it goes, because sometimes it can go into something more interesting than what you had planned. So, again, I think that's so important because you want guests to want to come back and want to suggest other people to come on your show and go with the flow.

Speaker 1: 20:22

Stuff happens, stuff happens. The worst thing that ever happened to me. It was a couple of years ago, actually, and Brenda was on my show. She was my guest and somehow I hit something and I went into a different desktop. Now I could hear her talking, but she couldn't see me and she just started talking away about something and kept it going and I had to just figure out how to get back. Stuff happens. Dogs bark, kids cry. So go with the flow, with it and relax, relax and have a good time.

Speaker 1: 21:03

I will tell you if you were sitting there thinking about okay, what am I going to ask next? What's going to happen here? You're really missing out and you're not going to have the fun that you really could have. So if you are engaging and talking to your guests someone, hopefully, you invited on because you want to talk to them. It will make it so much more fun for you and fun for them and fun for the audience, who will see that true engagement. Thanks so much for joining me for this episode of the Content Marketing School Show. Linkedin Lives are one of my favorite topics and I hope this step by step going from planning to actually producing your show will be helpful to you and, if they are, be sure to share this episode with someone else because they will thank you. Thanks for tuning into the Content Marketing Show with me, annette Richmond. If today's insights have inspired and resonated with you, please share this episode and, if you haven't already hit the follow button to keep learning and growing with us.