I did my first YouTube Live Stream for 9 months yesterday. It went well and I had good engagement from viewers and subscribers.
These YouTube live streams provide a lot of benefits for my business and brand. They are popular and have an evergreen aspect that makes doing them worthwhile
When I say they have an evergreen aspect I am referring to the actual video of approximately 1 hour staying on YouTube and being surfaced to YouTube visitors over a long period of time after the actual Live Stream.
Earlier Live Streams which I have done continue to bring me traffic, comments, engagement, subscribers and clients.
A lot of people don’t know or forget that YouTube is a search engine. In fact, it is the 2nd biggest search engine on the planet, after Google itself. And it is owned by Google.
So the chances of videos featuring in search results when a searcher is looking for something or making an enquiry ‘of the internet’ are very high.
One of the things that has held me back from doing more of them, and more frequently, is the answering questions element of it. When you decide to do a Live Stream one of the ways to get the show on the road and prompt engagement, and encourage people to show up, is to answer questions.
But this can encroach on my paid work inasmuch as I am advising all persons who contact me to arrange a consultation in order to obtain legal advice on whatever issue is bothering them. Yet on YouTube Live Streams I am answering questions for free.
I think the best way to justify it is to distinguish between giving legal advice to a paying client who puts me in possession of all the facts of the case as opposed to giving general information to someone asking a question on YouTube. But doing the latter with a heavy, clear disclaimer that this Live Stream is for informational, entertainment, and educational purposes rather than the dispensing of legal advice.
On this basis I will probably do more of them in 2022 than I did in 2021 as they are a valuable tool in the marketing arsenal of any small business or entrepreneur seeking to build their brand in a cohesive, effective, enduring fashion.