There’s a live video streaming trend where you start your live video show, broadcast and tweet or you login to Facebook, start your live video show and post to your status that you’re live. It’s easy, fast and a great way to let your followers or friends know that you’re live streaming in “real-time”. New twitter live stream web apps such as Twitcam, camtweet and ustream.tv mashup with Facebook have launched recently providing these new instant web broadcasting sites giving non-technical Twitter and Facebook users an easy way to broadcast. But why not broadcast live from your own website/blog to maintain branding and vistor retention? It’s just as easy to send a tweet saying go to “YOURWEBSITE.COM” to watch me live vs saying I’m live now go to this camtweet.com/url or even go to ustream.tv/channel/YOURNAME.
For example take a look at Gregory NG Freezerburn live page at http://live.freezerburns.com . He has the Ustream.tv embeded video player and live chat window below the player. I’m sure that when he starts to broadcast that he’ll send out a tweet and a facebook messages as well on his fanpage and personal status update. But by hosting the live video on his site visitors have an opportunity to see some of his other post, links to resources and his brand stays in front of his visitors eyes. Also I’m somewhat surprised with the recent growth with music artist and athletes using ustream.tv that their marketing agency, agent or managers haven’t setup live video shows on their individual website versus having it go to a ustream.tv/channel/yourname url. They are loosing tons of website traffic opportunities.
There are special cases if you’re reporting breaking news or if you’re mobile and using live video services like Qik.com to send video to Twitter. But when you have an opportunity to send eyes to your website, my recommendation is to do so. I’m not saying never use CamTweet or even services like TinyChat that now offers live video conversations but depending on your website and branding goals host your live shows on your own website.
How are you live video streaming online?
