Home / A how-to guide to live cam promotion. Gain more and more viewers for your stream
A how-to guide to live cam promotion. Gain more and more viewers for your stream
01 Feb 2018 - 14:32
Does your stream have what it takes?
There are millions of nice videos on the internet but, before you jump into live cam promotion, take a realistic look at the value of your stream. Compare it with others and fine tune it so you really have something to promote.
Try to ask yourself questions like:
- Does my live cam really offer something beautiful, funny, or out of the ordinary?
- Is the technical and image quality of my live video good enough?
- Is the streamed scenery too static? Would it be worth livening it up, maybe by using infographics in the video?
Don’t be fooled – an interesting and successful live cam for you viewers is not just a view of Rome at nightfall or elephants playing in the zoo. Often, it’s enough just to place your cam in a slightly different position or buy a model with higher resolution and your stream will take on a whole new atmosphere and appeal, helping your traffic grow. Don’t have a view of the city’s panorama? Then try a joke and stream something out of the ordinary, like kebab meat roasting on a skewer.
Show your cam to the right people
You’ve fine-tuned your video. People like it, and that’s great, but don’t forget to think hard about its purpose and target audience.
A live cam used in a restaurant to show its “kitchen in action” will have a different purpose than a stream of an animal shelter that survives on donations. The purpose of the video determines who your primary viewers are and the viewers in turn determine the forms in which your live cam will be promoted. Sounds easy, right? You’d be surprised how many people underestimate this!
If we stick with the examples above, the restaurant will mainly interest people in its close vicinity or tourists travelling through the city. Ideally, it’ll attract people who correspond to the description of your average customer. An animal shelter wants to use its live video to draw the attention of potential donors, animal lovers, or people who just aren’t indifferent to the fate of lost or injured animals.
Be visible. Everywhere. Every chance you get
We could list off all the different methods and forms of promotion on the internet and beyond, but it’s important to maximize one requirement:
THE VISIBILITY OF YOUR CAMERA Ꙭ
This has to be done across all communication channels that can be used to promote your stream. Which are the most important?
Live cam on your website
Do you have a page with live video directly on your website? Can you get to it easily, ideally in one click from your webpage? If so, is it visible enough and not hidden away somewhere at the foot of the page?
It’s not a rule for the link to your video to be in the main menu, but it’s often a good method. Promote a stream on your website in context and distinctly, e.g. by using a banner in the middle of articles on your blog or just below them. If your webpages are short, it makes sense to have a prefooter in the form of an aesthetically designed content block.
Or, how about putting your video on your website as its background? Or putting it as a header? If you want to minimize possible technical issues, animate a few images as GIFs or put a video sequence into the header. Then use a button for viewers to click on the real live video.
Share your video as much as possible on social networks (share buttons) and, if possible, allow viewers to react in the form of commentary under the video or in a live chat. Make your stream a place that people will want to return to thanks to the nice community there.
Search engines: YouTube, Google, Bing and others
SEO is still alive and it would be a shame not to take it into consideration. That’s because YouTube, Google, Bing, and other domestic search engines like Russian Yandex or Czech Seznam work according to similar algorithms – so do various directories and aggregators of live cams from the whole world. Here’s a how-to:
1. Key word analysis
You’ll find a huge number of good instruction manuals on the internet on how to analyze key words. The result of the analysis should typically contain words like live cam, live broadcast, live video, live stream, stream 24/7, webcast, and others in combination with the name of your company or the place you stream from. You should use both official and unofficial place names like Prague, New York, Venice Beach or just the Zoo, but also general names like city, sea, mountains, beach, animals, etc.
2. Use key words wisely mainly in these areas:
- Name of the video or page (YouTube, website)
- Description of the video and other accompanying text (YouTube, website)
- Tags and categories that the live video is included in (YouTube)
- Title and description of the page where the video is located (website)
- URL of the page (website)
- Text of the links that lead to the stream
In short, you need to wrap your video into a sufficient amount of text content. However, we’re not suggesting that you cover your page with a classic SEO text like “Live video Prague brings you live video from Prague, where you can see the city of Prague…”
Be creative and provide your viewers with interesting information. Build the necessary key words into the text naturally. Use various word classes, synonyms, and related words. You can have a look at our own 24/7 Prague stream description for inspiration.
Live Cam Prague – a city of a thousand spires which reach to the stars
Not many live cameras in Prague will offer you such views of the Lesser Town and Hradčany.
The famous panorama of Prague dominated by the monumental St. Vitus Cathedral illustrates,
among other thing, why the Czech capital ranks among the world’s most beautiful cities.
The camera overlooks Prague from the Pachta Palace located in the Prague Old Town near
the right bank of the Vltava River...
Register your stream on a live camera directory
If possible, register your video on directories. Not only will it reach a wider audience, you’ll often receive a backlink to the original location of the video – be it a website, YouTube, or other streaming services. Don’t underestimate portals with a web design that doesn’t instill much confidence in you at first glance. These camera directories often have a long history and an extensive community of viewers. Thanks to their amount of information, they carry considerable weight for search engines.
For starters, you can try these sites:
www.webcamgalore.com/submit.html
www.webcamsmania.com/addwebcam/
www.wunderground.com/webcams/signup.html
www.webcampedia.com/add.php
www.camscape.com/addawebcam.html
www.weatherusa.net/skycamnet
www.the-webcam-network.com/submit.html
Emailing
Do you send out a newsletter? Then you should mention your stream there as well. Also, don’t forget to provide a link to your live video in yours or your employees’ everyday email communication. An interestingly designed link in an email signature can work wonders.
Social networks
Video is social, and that’s why social networks are an ideal place to promote them. You can draw attention to a video on Facebook via regular posts or even your own tab. You can also upload a video recording in place of a cover photo for your company‘s page. You can also use Instagram or Twitter in a similar manner. In places where you can’t play video, you can add a photo of the best moments of your stream (Pinterest) or place a link there to a webcam using a URL.
Offline advertising
Video is a matter of the digital world, but you can also promote yourself on company stationary, shirts, or roadside billboards. How about a business card with a QR code linking directly to your live stream or a large-sized ad by the exit of the local zoo’s parking lot?
When providing links offline, don’t forget to use short, clear URLs and make sure that your live videos are easily findable in full-text search engines like Google. Again, this is a matter of SEO, and everything is interconnected. Be active in your promotion and your video’s traffic will soon become a viewing blockbuster.
CamStreamer Team
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