Setting up a live event on social media got way easier in the last couple of years. Platform by platform added the option to “go live”. LinkedIn was late to the party (as it is often), but the option to create a live online event is now available for quite some time.
Two of our clients asked us to set this up for them, in this blog post we share what we learned while doing so.
1) To live stream from your LinkedIn page, you need to request approval from LinkedIn
Do this weeks ahead of your event, so that you have enough time to schedule and promote your event ahead of time.
We have done this for two clients, ERSTE Foundation and SpecFlow, and both times the request was approved within 48hrs.
2) Schedule a LinkedIn Live Stream Event.
You might think you use the LinkedIn Events feature for that, but you don’t.
To schedule a live stream in advance, go to this URL: https://www.linkedin.com/video/golive/later/
It’s hard to find, so this is the URL you set up your scheduled Live event.
Everything you need is:
- Date/Time of the event
- Title
- Description
- Cover image
3) Invite your network/page followers
By default, your newly scheduled live stream event is posted on your LinkedIn page. As with “classic” LinkedIn events, people can attend
Make sure that you immediately invite people to attend the event, to increase the chances that your scheduled live event gets shown in feeds LinkedIn users.
Keep promoting your scheduled live stream by posting updates in the event post, and also ask your speakers to promote the LinkedIn post.
4) You can really test your live stream just one hour before the live stream happens.
One hour before the live event you got to choose the region you are in and create the URL / stream key. This URL and stream key needs to be passed on to your video team on-site.
You can preview and go live at any time now.
5) When you go live, people will get notified
As soon as you go live, you will see this notification popping up on LinkedIn. You might draw some people to tune in ad-hoc.
6) The live stream will be recorded and available immediately after finishing by default
A very cool feature is the option to trim the video directly on LinkedIn. So if you streamed a static image at the beginning, or streamed longer than necessary, you can trim the video inside LinkedIn.
Good to know: If you make any error, you can revert your recording back to the original.
7) Analytics of LinkedIn Live
LinkedIn provides the data on your live event.
- Views of your live stream
- Reactions breakdown
- Audience demographics
8) During the LinkedIn live event
During the live event, do not forget to watch the comments section of your live stream event. The comments window is right next to the live video on the right.
9) LinkedIn recommends the following live stream partners.
If you do not use a custom stream tool, you can use one of the following partners:
- Restream: How to multistream to LinkedIn with Restream
- Socialive: Using Socialive For LinkedIn Live
- StreamYard: Stream directly to LinkedIn
- Switcher Studio: Livestream to LinkedIn with Switcher Studio
- Vimeo: Go Live with Vimeo
10) Here is a live-stream example
- Check out this LinkedIn Live recording from ERSTE Foundation (a Fresh van Root client).
11) General learnings
The usability/user experience for setting up a LinkedIn live event was frustrating because of the fact that it wasn’t easy to get the difference between a “classic” LinkedIn event and a LinkedIn Live event at first. Only via googling around, we were able to find the relevant information, but not inside LinkedIn.
Some of the pages to configure live events seem not to work in Firefox. Especially the “Schedule a live stream” page was buggy in Firefox. If you run into any problems while scheduling your live event, try to do it in Chrome (that worked for us).
Further Reading:
One Response
Thank you for sharing this post. It is very informative.