Setting up a live event on social media has become much easier in the last couple of years. Platform by platform has 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 has been 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 meet the access criteria
You need to have at least 150 followers, and your page has to be older than 30 days.
Apart from that, LinkedIn Live has to be enabled as a feature in your country.
And, you need to have “A history of abiding by our Professional Community Policies“.
- Check out this LinkedIn Help page for getting all the details about it.
There is no manual request to be sent for getting LinkedIn Live enabled. Once you are eligible for LinkedIn Live you can choose LinkedIn Live from the dropdown during event set up (see below).
2) Schedule a LinkedIn Live Stream Event.
To schedule a live stream in advance, go to this URL: https://www.linkedin.com/events/
In the top-right corner, you can click “Create Event”. You can choose to set up an event from your personal profile or a page you manage.
During the process of entering all your event details, you can choose “LinkedIn Live” as the Event format.
Everything you need is:
- Date/Time of the event
- Title
- Description
- Cover image
- Mention speakers
3) Invite your network/page followers
By default, your newly scheduled live stream event is posted on your LinkedIn page.
Make sure to immediately invite people to attend the event to increase the chances that your scheduled live event will be shown in LinkedIn users’ feeds.
Keep promoting your scheduled live stream by posting updates in the event post, and also ask your speakers to promote the LinkedIn post.
Every LinkedIn user can share your event, like every other post on LinkedIn.
Here is a screenshot showing how I share a LinkedIn live event from the Fresh van Root LinkedIn page.
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.
Note that all posts that promote your event will also show the recorded video, not a static image. This is a post promoting the event one week before the actual event. Once the event was over, the post started showing the recorded video.
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, remember to watch the comments section of your live stream. 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 Fresh van Root (a webinar about building prototypes with generative AI)
11) General learnings
LinkedIn Live established itself as a super-easy way to set up online events and invite your existing network to attend. The Invite followers feature is a gem and very helpful to get the event going.
There are numerous online streaming service providers that connect nicely to LinkedIn Live, making it easy for anyone to set up a live event.
Further Reading: