You may have heard about Periscope, a new Twitter-owned company and app that’s been generating quite a buzz lately. It’s a live video streaming platform, sort of like Skype or FaceTime or Google Hangout. However, instead of streaming to a specific contact, you stream to any of your Periscope or Twitter followers who want to see what you’re livecasting. And, because Periscope is a mobile app, people are using it from all sorts of inventive places for all sorts of interesting reasons.
Periscope has only been available for a few months, and as with every other social media platform, its initial use has been very exploratory and organic. However, as Periscope is beginning to find a wider audience, many businesses are starting to consider using it for their marketing efforts. Should your company be using Periscope? Let’s take a look.
Ways to Use it
How you decide to use Periscope to further your business’s marketing efforts really depends on what type of business you’re operating. If you create new products, you might show a live product demo or tutorial. If you sell products, you might use it to announce a flash sale or offer discounts only to those who tune in. To connect with your customers on a more intimate level, you could use Periscope for a live talkback session with your CEO or any other top person at your company. And of course, if you’ve got an event or performance coming up, Periscope is perfect for giving those who are watching a preview of what’s to come in the form of set-up footage, live rehearsals, and soundchecks.
Clear Benefits
Of course, for Periscope to benefit your company, you’ve got to know how to use it from a technical point of view. Fortunately, it’s simple to use, and a test run with a safe and non-urgent livecast should get you up to speed on how the app works. Then, you can reap the benefits.
What are these benefits? Well, there are many. First, any time there’s a fresh and new way to reach people, you’re going to have an audience that’s interested in checking it out. Use Periscope for your marketing right now (seriously, today), and those people who are interested are going to hear your message. Next, the real time social interaction that Periscope affords adds a human, approachable element to your marketing endeavors.
Continuing, Periscope offers a sense of urgency, since you never know what might happen on a livecast. Despite its immediacy, though, what you shoot with Periscope isn’t fleeting; you can save the videos and upload them (to YouTube, for example) so that anyone who missed your stream can catch it later. Finally, using Periscope, especially right now, makes your company look like it’s a thought leader. After all, if you’re among the first in your field to use a new technological tool, you present yourself as a forward-thinking business that embraces the new and isn’t afraid to forge ahead.
Who’s Already Using It?
Even though Periscope is still relatively new, there are lots of examples of businesses using it for marketing. For example, the Paris Opera Ballet has used Periscope to stream its rehearsals in an effort to raise interest for upcoming performances. Spotify has used it to show followers some behind the scenes footage with favorite and up and coming musicians. To the delight of science geeks everywhere, GE used it to stream a conversation between Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye. Plus, lots of entertainers like Ellen Degeneres are using Periscope to give their fans a glimpse of what happens in their day to day lives; these individuals are maybe not a business, per se, but they are definitely their own brands.
Use Periscope?
Smartphones redefined the way in which we cover live events, and Periscope is taking that perspective a step further. For businesses, Periscope has the potential to change how you market your events or how you share information with clients and consumers.
Periscope is free, so you’ve really got nothing to lose by trying it out. And, we’re confident that once you become comfortable using it, you’ll find it to be a great and innovative new marketing tool that will greatly benefit your business.