Social Stream is a feature that can further enhance your Tokyo Olympics news coverage.
Bringing together the biggest names in more than 40 sports, the Olympic Games will undoubtedly be the biggest event of the year.
And for the first time in the history of the Olympics, the event will take place without the physical presence of an audience.
Indeed, millions of people across the planet will turn their attention exclusively to the screens of TVs, computers and cell phones to follow the disputes for medals and record-breaking performances.
The games are scheduled to officially kick-off on July 23rd.
But the fight for the best coverage, from the Opening Ceremony to the Closing Ceremony, has already started.
Check out below how you can improve your audience’s experience with Arena’s solutions.
Live Blog? Live Chat? Yes, for sure!
If your goal during the 2021 Tokyo Olympics includes audience engagement and revenue generation, Arena Live Blog and Live Chat can be your greatest allies.
Live Blog is the most suitable platform for real-time coverage.
Allowing instant text, image, audio and video content posting, the tool is very easy to install and operate.
Furthermore, Live Blog delivers a unique experience for the audience. Which, in turn, responds with more time spent on the website.
To find out how Live Blog Arena can boost your Olympic Games broadcast, check out the article we’ve prepared here.
Live Chat instantly connects your audience – with your brand and among each other – by exchanging text messages.
It offers features that encourage immediate user participation, such as polls and Q&A.
This gets them deeply involved in the broadcast.
And it can be summed up in just two words that are equivalent to gold in the digital universe: audience engagement.
Speaking of gold, both Live Chat and Live Blog make it possible to monetize your content.
Whether through display advertising insertion, or even direct conversion opportunities, a live stream can easily become a source of new revenue.
Creating a live sports streaming event is vitally important today for two reasons. It helps you to keep fans engaged in your event rather than drifting away to other activities. It is also vital because it is becoming the de facto industry standard, so you need to offer it to remain competitive.
How to Create The Best Live Sports Streaming Events
1. Understand your sports audience
Deeply understanding your audience is the foundation of creating an effective live sports streaming event. Use the following questions to gather information.
What are the most popular pre-event rituals your fans go through?
What do fans like to eat and drink during the event?
This tip is vital if you run a live sports streaming event for a sport you do not know personally.
Which athletes have the largest following and why?
By identifying the best-known players in advance, you can focus your effort on learning about them, highlighting their careers and past interviews.
What frustrates sports fans during live events?
Are there less exciting parts of the game (e.g., disputes over rules) that you could make more interesting?
What are your favorite sports memories, and what made them memorable?
Reflect on what made the event memorable. It might have been sharing a major team victory with friends or family, getting an autograph, or the excitement of attending your first game.
Discuss these questions with your coworkers to gain their perspectives. Based on this information, you can start to develop specific engagement ideas in the next step. By the way, don’t be afraid to look at other sports for commentary ideas (e.g., if you usually focus on football, watch a live basketball game and see how other sports journalists comment on it).
2. Brainstorm live sports engagement ideas
With a better understanding of your audience, you can develop some ideas to enhance your live sports streaming. Stay organized by using the following categories.
Known Pre-Game Facts and Stats
Before the event, prepare a few ideas for comment and other ways you can engage fans. In particular, keep an eye out for fan favorites
Sports Statistics. You don’t have to know every sports statistic. However, it is helpful to know a few critical facts about key players. For a baseball game, you might track the batting average for the top batters.
Notable Absences. Make a note of any players absent from the game due to illness, injury, penalty, or other reasons. The loss of a star player could impact play.
Fan Monitoring
Make a list of at least ten active sports fans’ social media accounts. Ideally, you want to find fans who tend to post different content like data fans, followers of certain players, and humorous players.
Ask an assistant to help you with monitoring fan commentary during the broadcast.
Expert Commentary
Nearly every major sport has analysts and other experts. Make a list of at least five of these experts before the event. You can highlight comments from them as the event unfolds.
As with the fan monitoring idea, ask an assistant to help you with this step.
3. Set up and test live sports streaming technology
In this critical step, you will need to choose and select your technology for live streaming. For this discussion, let’s assume that the video broadcast itself is in place. Multiple channels and streaming services might be showing the same game. Adding engagement technology is one way to make your event memorable.
Two specific technologies are beneficial in creating an engaging live sports event.
Live Chat. Invite viewers to participate in your coverage by using Live Chat. You can install Live Chat on your website in less than a minute by copying one line of code. Are you worried about Internet trolls disrupting your event? You can ban users discretely without drawing attention away from the game.
Live Blog. Arena’s Live Blog makes it easy to encourage live discussion as the event unfolds. You can also post photos and videos. You can also invite your editors and coworkers to join you with Live Blog so that you can cover the eventfully.
Tip: Make sure you choose a technology that has built-in moderation capabilities to keep profanity under control.
4. Reach out to key sports fans in advance
When you first start a live chat, it is vital to have at least a few participants join in the conversation. If your website has high traffic, letting people know about the live chat opportunity might be enough. However, you don’t have to leave the event to chance.
Instead, take a proactive approach and invite a few critical fans to join the discussion. For example, you might want to reach out to smaller influencers (i.e., 1,000 to 10,000 followers on social media) and invite them to your live chat in advance of the event. To make the invitation more attractive, offer to highlight their most insightful comments during the live event.
5. Practice your live sports streaming with a small group
Learning to use new technology effectively takes some practice. That’s why we suggest planning a practice run. In this way, you can make mistakes and master your learning curve in front of a small audience of colleagues rather than tens of thousands of fans.
To make the most of your practice run, aim to simulate the live sporting event. For example, consider playing a recording of a recent game to simulate a live event. Ask some of your colleagues to act in different roles, such as sports fans, sports commentators, and assistants.
6. Run the live sports streaming event
You’ve done your homework, prepared your technology, and practiced your technique. Now you are ready to get down to work. Use the following tips to keep your live sports event running smoothly.
Start Early. Launch your video stream and live blog at least five minutes before the game starts. This added time will give you a chance to engage with the audience before the action starts.
Offer Your Commentary. As the sporting event unfolds, provide commentary on the players, techniques, and background information.
Use Commercial Breaks. Many professional-level sports events have commercial breaks scheduled into the game. Give yourself the chance to take a short break from screens so that you can come back focused.
Leverage Your Research. In a previous step, you researched the teams and players. Whenever the sport slows down, offer some of your findings. For example, you might share some notes from a famous player’s pre-game ritual (e.g. Cesc Fabregas, a Chelsea midfielder kisses a ring given to him by his wife four times before playing).
Highlight Your Guests. As a sports journalist, it isn’t easy to be an expert in everything! Fortunately, Arena Live Blog makes it easy to invite in your colleagues.
Feature social media comments. Take a few minutes to share social media posts from fans in your broadcast.
Now you are ready for the final step in creating the best live sports streaming events.
7. Debrief after the event
Developing mastery in running the best live sports streaming events takes practice. There is one way you can get better faster. Within 24 hours of the live event, schedule some time to debrief about the event. Ask yourself and others who worked with you three simple questions
What went well?
You might have found that content curation from social media was a big success in keeping fans engaged.
What didn’t go well?
Few live events go exactly as planned. Identify what went wrong (e.g., technical problems) and make a plan to address them next time.
What should we keep doing next time? What should we stop doing next time?
This final pair of questions is an excellent place to end your reflection because it keeps you focused on the future. To keep life simple, limit yourself to one or two lessons learned from each event. By repeating this step with each live event, you will keep getting better and better.
Use Arena To Improve Your Live Sports Streaming Event
Make it easy to involve your audience in your coverage by installing Arena. You can install Arena on your website in less than a minute. Not sure if it is right for you? Do it like Fox Sports and sign up today for a 14 free trial. See for yourself how Arena can make your live sports coverage even more engaging.
The boom in online sports media is a two-edged sword for sports broadcasters. On the one side, it is a threat because you have to compete with bloggers, data analysts, and super fans offering their views like Deadspin, Barstool Sports, ESPN, and Bad Jocks. On the flip side, broadcasters have powerful new tools to engage sports fans today.
Enriching sports broadcasting with a Live Blog
A Live Blog is a way to engage fans by providing rapid posts and updates as a game unfolds.
Adding live blogging to your sports coverage matters for a few key reasons. Speed is the first one. If it takes you too long to post expert commentary on scores and players, fans will likely drift away to other channels that give them up to the minute coverage. The ability to engage quickly and easily with fans is the second. Check out how Fox Sports Australia masters Live Blog for sports coverage.
Using a Live Blog matters in sports coverage because it is a fast way to provide coverage. It gives fans a reason to pay attention to you rather than looking at other experts.
Four tips for engaging your fans with a Live Blog
A Live Blog, on its own, will not keep your fans excited to stay interested. It would be best if you had a strategy to keep engaged. Draw from these ideas when you need inspiration to keep your sports audience engaged and following.
1. Provide play by play commentary on the game
Start by closely following the game as it unfolds. Think of your favorite radio and TV sports journalists as role model. Make sure you cover the key developments in the game in your Live Blog.
2. Share short interviews
Commercial breaks, injuries, and other developments sometimes slow down the action in sports. In these cases, share short interviews in your Live Blog. Before the game, interview a few players about their habits and hopes for the game. Share these short Q&A interviews during the game.
3. Explain sports rules
Almost every sport has complex rules designed to guarantee fairness. Sometimes, a dispute over rules can decide the outcome of a game like how many penalty shots a team gets. In your Live Blog, get ready to provide commentary on critical disputes over rules so that even casual fans can understand what’s happening.
4. Pull from the history of sports
Most sports have rich histories that go back decades or longer. Pull out your favorite reference websites and books to share sports history in your Live Blog. For example, if a player sets a new record in the game (e.g., Italy set a new record for final tournament goals in 2021), you can offer a quick blog post on the last person who set the record.
5. Share insights from business of sports
Some sports fans find the business side of sports fascinating. In advance of the game, make notes on important business deals like players signing significant contracts. Forbes reports that the four athletes like soccer stars Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo and Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott earned over $100 million in 2020. Writing a Live Blog on the sports business is a way to deepen your understanding of sports and engage fans.
There is one caveat to keep in mind. When you run a live sports blog, there is a temptation to report every rumor that comes up. If you see a rumor of a potential trade or sponsorship, do your homework to verify the rumor before reporting it.
Talk with your sports audience directly with Live Chat
A Live Blog is a great way to provide up-to-minute live coverage. There’s just one drawback to it – it is more difficult for the audience to join the conversation. There’s a solution to that problem. Add Live Chat to your website so that sports fans can share their comments with you and other fans.
Sports conversations are happening every day around the world – online and offline. By adding Live Chat to your website, you can bring those conversations to your platform. When fans have the opportunity to be heard by their favorite sports broadcasters, they are more likely to stay engaged and loyal to your coverage.
Four tips for connecting with sports fans through Live Chat
When you are first getting started with a sports online chat room, you might not be share how to keep the conversation going. Use the following tips to lead the conversation.
1. Prepare a list of questions to encourage engagement
A well-crafted question is almost impossible to resist! That’s why we recommend asking questions to the audience. For example, you can ask fans if they agree with the coach’s strategy to change players. Alternatively, you might ask fans to share their predictions for a tournament. Preparing at least three to five questions in advance for your Live Chat session is well worth the effort.
2. Ask an assistant to highlight interesting contributions
With Arena Live Chat, you can invite thousands of people to your online chat room. When you have many sports fans sharing their passionate views, keeping up with the commentary may be difficult. First, don’t worry about responding to every comment. Second, ask an assistant to monitor the Live Chat room and pull out interesting questions and comments. By specifically responding to thoughtful comments to feature in your coverage, you will encourage fans to make positive comments.
3. Thank fans for contributing to the Live Chat
As the Live Chat session comes to an end, take the time to thank fans for contributing. When possible, make your thanks specific. Consider calling out a few specific chat room comments that made your life or made you think. This kind of public recognition may help bring back passionate sports fans on your next Live Chat session.
4. Keep the trolls out
Like it or not, some people are troublemakers in the online world. Fortunately, sports broadcasters don’t have to worry about security and riots. But disrespectful comments and profanity are still problems that need to be managed. Arena Live Chat includes features to control your trolls quickly and painlessly. Arena Live Chat also includes a feature to automatically detect and block profanity – a key feature when fans get upset!
Two Steps To Getting Started With Arena
Your choice at this point is simple. Step one: decide whether you want to start with Live Chat or Live Blog. Step two: sign up for a free Arena trial to see how live chatting and live blogging work for your fans.
Arena Live Blog can be your biggest ally in broadcasting the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. Check out how Fox Sports Australia leverages it and, boy, will you be amazed.
Starting on July 23, the Olympic Games are the biggest sporting event on the planet.
After all, it’s not every day that you see the world’s greatest athletes competing for medals and set new records for speed, skill and endurance.
There’s also incredible competition for sports broadcasters and audiences to attract and hold the attention of sports audiences. Simply broadcasting the event with commentary is not good enough. Today’s sports fans expect a more interactive experience.
Arena Live Blog has what you need to enrich your audience’s experience.
Keep reading to find five steps to make your broadcast of the 2021 Tokyo Olympics more engaging.
What Is a Live Blog?
A Live Blog is the natural evolution of traditional blogs. Also called live updates, journalists have been using live blogs to cover events for years.
By bringing together words, images, audio and video, you can offer a unique experience to your audience. The result? More interaction, greater audience and a loyal audience that keeps coming back to your content over and over again.
Using Arena Live Blog In Your 2021 Tokyo Olympics Coverage: Step By Step
Getting started with Arena Live Blog is easy. In the following steps, you will see a few ways to use the app to make your coverage more engaging for fans.
Step 1: Create an event in Arena Live Blog
The first step is to create an event using the Arena Dashboard.
Choose your sport from the list and get started. If you don’t see a certain sport listed (e.g. Track & Field), click the “Other Sports” option.
To stay organized, give your event a name (e.g. 2021 Olympics Coverage – Basketball Game 1), enter the date and time, and description. You can also add tags and image to the event to make it even more visually appealing.
Tip: Is your event starting in just a few minutes? Choose the “Live” event status to start your event right away. If you are planning your Olympics coverage in advance, choose the “Upcoming” option in Event Status.
To keep sports fans engaged in your coverage, there are two critical features you should turn on: Enable Comments and Chat Room.
In some cases – like a high stakes final event – you might want to turn on the profanity filter to keep inappropriate comments out of the chat.
Adding Advertising Revenue To Your Coverage
If you have a paid account, you can add advertising to your Live Blog easily.
Simply add sponsored ads during the post flow.
Step 2: Add Social Media Directly To Your Coverage with Social Stream
Live Blog Arena allows you to add channels and social media profiles to further enhance your Tokyo 2021 Olympics broadcast.
Today, you can enrich your Live Blog with content from:
Twitter
YouTube
Facebook
Instagram
Reddit
web
Other (RSS)
Important Note: Some content may be protected by copyright. Arena is not responsible for any copyright violations. To reduce the chance of copyright problems and complaints, contact social media users in advance of adding them to your coverage and ask for permission to include them in your Live Blog.
Step 3: Plan Ahead For Surprises With Publication Planning
When you cover a global event like the Olympic Games, it is important to be ready for surprises. For example, a country might win its first gold medal. In the Rio Olympics in 2016, Joseph Schooling won the first ever gold medal for Singapore.
It’s not just medals. Athletes can suddenly suffer a surprising injury or break a world record that changes the outcome of a competition.
Anyone covering the 2021 Tokyo Olympics needs to be very well prepared for surprises. That’s why Arena’s Live Blog lets you create content in advance.
In essence, you can create a “reserve” of content to use when you need. For example, you might ask your assistant to write profiles on the top 10 tennis players at the 2021 Olympics because some of the most famous tennis players like Serena Williams, Rafael Nadal and Dominic Thiem are not competing in Tokyo. By having short profiles on potential winners prepared in advance, you can impress your audience who may not be familiar with less well known players.
By enriching your live blog coverage in this way, you will not be at a loss when a sudden surprise happens. That means your audience will stay glued to your coverage and keep returning to your coverage over and over again.
Step 4: Keep Your Audience Coming Back To Your Coverage
It’s a fact that sports fans have many different options to watch the Olympics. Even if a sports fan likes your coverage, they might get distracted and start watching a different broadcast. Offering high quality coverage is one way to keep fans coming back. But that’s not your only option.
You can also send reminders to your audience to invite them back to your sports coverage each day. Use the Conversion Cards feature in Live Blog Arena to invite fans to stay engaged with your Olympics coverage.
To activate and configure Conversion Cards, click Engagement in the left menu.
Step 5: Set Up Real Time Tracking
Besides sports knowledge, there is one more way sports broadcasters can get ahead: showing their numbers. When you can show your executives and advertisers that your audience is highly engaged, you can get promoted and assigned to more coverage.
The best part? You don’t have to wait for the event to end to get stats. With the Arena Dashboard you can easily follow your streaming statistics in real time.
By clicking on Analytics in the left menu, you can see your audience engagement through metrics such as Page Views and Online Users. You can also track these metrics throughout your session.
By using analytics, you will never have to guess what fans are most interested in. Instead, you can look at the analytics data to improve your coverage.
For example, you might see that engagement spikes up when you respond to comments from sports fans. In that case, you might set a reminder to yourself to glance at the comments every few minutes.
Tokyo 2021 complete Sports List
The Olympic Games are officially set to begin on July 23rd.
From the Opening Ceremony all the way to the Closing Ceremony, a worldwide audience will keep up with the greatest athletes from the following sports:
3×3 Basketball
Archery
Artistic Gymnastics
Artistic Swimming
Athletics
Badminton
Baseball/ Softball
Basketball
Beach Volleyball
Boxing
Canoe Slalom
Canoe Sprint
Cycling BMX Freestyle
Cycling BMX Racing
Cycling Mountain Bike
Cycling Road
Cycling Track
Diving
Equestrian
Fencing
Football
Golf
Handball
Hockey
Judo
Karate
Marathon Swimming
Modern Pentathlon
Rhythmic Gymnastics
Rugby
Sailing
Shooting
Skateboarding
Sport Climbing
Surfing
Swimming
Table Tennis
Taekwondo
Tennis
Trampoline Gymnastics
Volleyball
Water Polo
Weightlifting
Wrestling
Regardless of the results in each one, Tokyo 2021 has already made Olympic history.
Despite COVID-19, the 2021 Olympic Games are going to be the biggest sports event of the year. That’s not all. Since the Olympic organizers have prohibited in person audiences, sports fans will have to rely on coverage from TV stations, journalists and analysts to follow the games.
Whether from television, computer, mobile or tablet, sports enthusiasts and fans around the world will eagerly consume news about their favorite sports and athletes.
As we write this, many of the world’s leading sports journalists have already arrived in Tokyo to start their Olympics coverage. To compete with their coverage, use Live Blog Arena to make your Tokyo 2021 Olympics coverage an unforgettable experience.
If you are about to, or now managing an online business platform, you might have known already or have been researching about the world of content moderation. Also, you must have heard this popular opinion – the online platform kind of business is not that easy.
Well, yes sure! It is not, but if you have the right strategy to operate it, alongside ways to overcome possible problems related to it, as well as the knowledge of some other factors that should be avoided and considered in order to get that fast and efficient result, then you are good to go. But if you don’t have any, don’t worry! We got you covered!
What is content moderation?
There are millions of content online, but not all of them are effective nor meet readers’ expectations. This is where content moderation comes into place. In simple words, content moderation is the process of screening, approving, or removing user-generated content based on some guidelines in order to establish clients’ trust, and maintain compliance with regulatory requirements.
There are lots of reasons why content moderation is important. First, it screens content that is submitted by a certain user to know if the posting guidelines are being violated. Second, it is an effective way for a business to keep a positive reputation which guarantees a decent relationship with clients, thus advances higher accommodation and satisfaction among users and clients.
What is human moderation?
Human moderation or manual moderation is another type of moderating content, however, the one behind it of course – human. Human moderators manually monitor and review clients’ or users’ posts on a particular online platform.
Moreover, human moderators also ensure the protection of all users or clients from scammers, anomalies, or any type of harassment that occurs in social media. They are also responsible for maintaining the quality and standards of a particular social media platform.
What is automated moderation?
Automated moderation is an automatic process of moderation that automatically determines any-user generated content. In this kind of moderation, contents that are being rejected or published are done based on the pre-defined guidelines by a highly intelligent computer bot that closely monitors the system 24/7.
Automated moderation resolves any physical or psychological stress from human moderators as it can minimize the response time, improve the quality of service, save time, and increase cost quality outcomes.
How important is content moderation in enhancing customer experience?
Utilizing social media platforms is an effective way to connect with customers regarding a particular business you have to offer. With social media, you can create customer service and build strong customer relationships without having to meet them in person.
In line with this, effective and efficient content moderation can help you know your customers better, engage with them in real-time, establish customer loyalty with your brand, and achieve user retention as it offers good credibility of the event.
Nowadays, every brand is always active on almost every social media platform. In line with this, content moderation is of great help in monitoring social media accounts, comments, images, and videos, as well as categorizing and indexing business offerings.
Content moderation can also help you with online reputation management. Your online reputation is very important for the success of your business. As you might have known, whatever people post or publish online regarding your business, true or not, all have a significant influence on your business reputation.
And, content moderation can help you fight against harmful content, address clients’ criticisms, and most importantly, feature important and helpful feedback from customers.
Content Moderation in Building Relationships with Customers
As have mentioned above, content moderation can help you build strong connections with your clients or customers. You can use content moderation to make your customers feel satisfied with your services offered by personalizing your responses, as well as keeping them in the loop with any timely news like product updates. With this, the strong relationships you have with them can help you achieve repeat and referral business.
What are the things you should keep in mind when moderating content?
There is a wide range of factors to consider with content moderation. This is very important in order for you to achieve the content that best suits your business. These factors also depend on what platform or site you are using. However, regardless of what site, platform, or business you are having, these are the top 7 things you should keep in mind, or better – do!
Select the best content for your business
There is no one else in the world who knows your business better than you. You know best what your products and services are as well as your users or customers. So, you can use these to help you create the most outstanding content out there that best meets their expectations.
Choose the best content moderation to utilize for your content.
With the best content you have, choose the best content moderation method to utilize. Aim to stand out amongst others. You can do this by using the best content moderation method that is not only suitable for your content and business but also fit your platform’s specific needs.
Always make your content personalized to your customers’ needs.
When your customers feel special, they usually go back to you over and over again. With this, it will drive your repeat and referral business, which often results in more positive business outcomes. That is why, when creating content, make it as personalized as possible, moderate it according to the needs of your customers as this often results in increasing engagement which will lead to more loyalty and conversion rates.
Moderate all your content consistently
Whether you are running your online business via Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms or sites, it is very important for you to make appealing and pleasant content that will surely attract new customers or retain your existing customers. This can be done by moderating your content in a consistent manner. This means that you have to be very meticulous in choosing the right format, images, videos, and other visual factors that will be incorporated into your content.
Establish concise rules and regulations
Establishing concise rules and regulations is one of the most important things to do when moderating content. Therefore, these rules and regulations should be clear for all who are involved in moderating your content, be it from the data analyst to the human or automated moderators.
Utilize all your resources
Every content moderation tool and equipment matters, right? This is why you need to utilize them in the best possible manner. Sometimes, you might see yourself overwhelmed with the available resources in the market, some are paid, some are free.
In this case, it’s very important for you to consider these resources carefully, prioritize the ones that offer innovation and growth as these often boost success to your online platform business.
Quality over quality
Sometimes you have a lot of ideas, and you want all of these to be utilized. This often happens to almost everybody, but always remember that quality is more important than quantity. Quality content builds your customers’ trust, resulting in acquiring more revenue and success for your online business platform.
Customer Interaction
Your interactions with your customers are vital to your business success. Customer experience can make or break your business. That is why you as the business owner have to make these interactions as smooth and flawless and possible.
There are various ways for you to engage with your customers, you can do this through Live Chats, Live Blogs, posts, tweets, comments, etc. Regardless, when interacting with them, you should be timely when responding to their inquiries, make it personalized, maintain positive emotions when commenting, reposting, and retweeting, and most importantly, always include available links for FAQs in your content.
Conclusion
Nowadays, the online platform business is very competitive. Therefore, you should moderate your content for you to stand out amongst the others. Always think ahead, know the strengths and weaknesses of your business, and engage with your customers frequently in order for you to be able to know them well, alongside their weak points and needs. Try also to utilize the tips mentioned above.
Additionally, you can also utilize Arena when engaging with your customers through Live Chat, Live Blog, and other Customer Engagement ideas. Arena is easy to integrate, perfect for conversations, community chat, as well as ratings and reviews.
Are you ready to drive more revenue to your business?
You have heard how important customer engagement is for so many times now. But what does having an effective customer engagement strategy really mean? Is it all about giving your prospects and customers a seamless experience with your products and services? Or is it all about keeping up to date with your latest offerings?
Today, we will talk about taking your business to a whole new level by understanding in depth what customer engagement is and employing effective strategies that will make them advocates of the brand you are building this 2021.
What is Customer Engagement?
Customer engagement is a facet of Marketing where external customers or companies interact with a brand through various channels – offline and online. Simply put, it is when a prospect or a customer “connects” emotionally with your brand.
One of the goals of every marketer is to keep the customers engaged even after they have successfully closed the sale.
Besides growing your revenue and boosting your brand awareness, customer engagement is all about treating your customers like a gift that keeps on giving because according to a study, 84% of customers say that being treated like a human being and having their needs met by a business is crucial in their buying decision because 70% of buying decisions come from how customers feel at the time of their purchase.
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There are many factors to consider when we think about the statistics but if we provide a platform that will help our prospects feel that they are prioritized, then all the more that we can expect sales closures of your brand.
Putting your customers’ needs first will always bring good business. Once you get this part covered, it will deliver benefits to your business, like increased customer loyalty, customer satisfaction, and more positive reviews when it comes to word-of-mouth marketing.
Before implementing any automation for your business, try walking into your customers’ shoes and see if it answers their needs and if it leads them to your ultimate goal of making a sale.
2. Implement automation to increase productivity
As part of optimizing the customer experience, it is very important to implement features in your business that will make your customers feel prioritized with less amount of hassle on your part.
Using Arena’s features and technology like Live Chat and Live Blog where you can customize your brand’s responses to customer’s possible queries, publishing content real-time in a blog format are some automation examples that not only will it improve customer engagement but will give your customers a better walkthrough of your brand but will save you a lot of time and manpower requirements.
3. Collate data on points of interaction and customer behavior across your platform
The implementation of this strategy starts by asking the question, “At what point do my customers start inquiring and at what point do my prospects abandon the usage of my platform?”
There are tons of ways to gather these types of data and with the help of analytics, you will be able to pinpoint the instances on where you are going to focus interaction and where you are lagging for you to act.
4. Offer personalized service
There is nothing better when customers feel that the products or services they use are meant for them.
As we have discussed earlier, customer engagement is enabling an “emotional connection” between the customer and the business with the intent of them not just continually purchasing but for them to become advocates of your product or service.
In observation of this strategy, companies like Arena help businesses ease out their operations by providing customers with Live Chat features that are easily customizable and will fit the needs of your target audience.
5. Take feedback seriously
In this day and age, we are able to deliver products and services to our customers even without seeing their faces. But that does not mean that we can slack off on resolving customer feedback, whether it is positive or otherwise. Because of this phenomenon, you must consider feedback as your friend.
There must be a reason behind customers not pushing through with the purchase. And it is our duty as marketers to identify what went wrong, in which part did we lack support, and how to further meet customer expectations. Just sending out short surveys will do.
Remember, feedback is a gift. Customers are not required to respond to our surveys but once they do, it is their message to us that there may be areas for improvement and they need to see changes. That is one characteristic of customer-centric service.
The Five Stages of Customer Engagement
Marketing practices today have changed a lot of decades before. And with similarity to a business entity, Customer Engagement also has a life cycle.
The intent of identifying the five stages of customer engagement will help businesses simplify which action plan to take and make it more manageable because not all business models are alike and customer engagement data can come from an infinite number of sources.
1. Discover
Before you get sales closures and make a lot of money, your product or service must first be heard by your potential customers. The initiatives of this stage include sending weekly, bi-monthly, or monthly newsletter of your latest offering, publishing current updates from the company, and so on.
This is basically the point where you cast your net to see which fishes will take interest in your offering.
Conceptualizing and formulating content for this stage proves to be both time-consuming and demanding of manpower, it is noteworthy though that companies like Arena offer services like Live Blog, among others, to further improve your level of customer engagement.
This stage also, is where you use analytics to track customer behavior and how they respond to every point of interaction you employ.
2. Shop
This stage will be realized once marketing efforts from the Discovery stage are effective. It indicates that your prospects are interested in your product or service and they find value in what you provide.
It is nice to know that customers visit your shop online and offline, but for us, marketers, identifying the source of that traffic is crucial to proceed to the next stage.
Once sources of traffic are identified, it is a must to push further the strategy to keep prospects coming. Afterward, evaluate both online and offline data together to further illuminate your actions as to how the customers are attracted to your platforms.
3. Buy
In this stage, marketers must be able to answer the question as to which part of the sale happens and as to which part of the sale is abandoned. Are there features to the sales process that are lacking in the platform? Are there common payment gateways that are unavailable when customers try to check out which leads to the fallout of sales?
With Arena’s Live Blog solutions, there are several ways to follow through with customers and improve customer engagement.
Using the Live Blog structure, Arena provides businesses with added tools that serve as points of interaction, retain customer attention on your page, and further allow user participation with real-time content.
Marketers must as well be ready with follow-through solutions to customers that abandon their basket and robust outbound support to address customer concerns that will eventually lead to conversion.
4. Own
In other words, retain. Perhaps this stage is one of the most misunderstood and misinformed stages on the part of the marketer. Even sophisticated marketers do not really understand the depth of importance this stage gives.
At this stage, the marketer has to identify the level of attrition – usually from first-time or first-year buyers. In this way, we will be able to fully understand the triggers that discourage first-time buyers from becoming repeat customers.
Remember, a customer’s successful purchase is also an investment on their part. If there are concerns or issues that these customers encounter in the first-year purchase, surely, they will expect the same issues to arise on their second-year purchase unless these issues are resolved immediately by the business.
5. Advocate
Proficient marketers understand that customer engagement does not end when the prospect successfully checks out their purchase. Rather, it is an ongoing cycle of continuous information to the point where customers become loyal to your brand based on the metrics of loyalty that you will set.
In time, these loyal customers shall serve as your advocates and shall be the ones to help you out in your marketing efforts because who knows the customer experience better than those actually bought?
After all the exhaustive discussion on customer engagement and the effective strategies that need to be implemented in order to level up your business this 2021, it is undoubtedly a vital aspect of your marketing practices.
But knowing that there are platforms like Arena which offers technologies like Live Chat and Live Blog, among others, is assuring how the ease of implementation from this platform presents a huge and positive impact on the growth of your business this 2021.; Try Arena for FREE now!
Do you ever feel like your company could have an upgrade in Customer Service? Or that you could sell more and drive more engagement if Customer Experience was a little better on your website? Trust me, this feeling is more common than you would expect.
Companies might have good services and products, but the truth is “good” is not enough in today’s competitive scenario. Most brands rely on standardized approaches and interactions that are impersonal and time-consuming both for your customers and Customer Support agents.
Think about the “love brands” worldwide: Amazon, Apple…you name it. They all have great Customer Experience (CX) and go beyond the basics in customer support. Actually, most of them offer one thing in common: Live Chat.
Live Chat can be used across many steps in the Customer Experience, whether to answer questions about products and services or to assist customers after a purchase. Another trend is to use Live Chat proactively to display personalized messages and offers while the customer is browsing.
In this post, you will learn all about Live Chat and how to use it to drive customer loyalty and more business results.
Some people might confuse Live Chat with a Chatbot, but there is a slight difference between them. While Chatbots work only with automated answers, Live Chat is a tool used by human agents instead.
Some Live Chat sessions can start with automated messages, like greetings and basic introductory questions, but then the customer is routed to an actual human professional.
Live Chat can serve many purposes, from Customer Support to Sales and Marketing. The classic way of using it is in Customer Service, where the approach is mostly reactive. That means the Customer starts the conversation in order to solve some problem.
Live Chat can also be used for cross-selling and retargeting tactics in a proactive way – when your agents start the conversation, not the customer.
Why should you pay attention to Live Chat software?
Live Chat has become the new standard in Customer Service, and companies from all segments have relied on it to provide high-level engagement and humanized interactions with customers. From e-commerce to media brands, Live Chat offers the possibility to optimize companies’ communication channels and improve customer experience (CX) altogether.
Think about your company. It is likely your brand has multiple direct and indirect Customer Service touchpoints, from email to social media, for example. Sometimes it might be hard to manage requests coming from different places in a fast, efficient way.
Live Chat can be a cure for this pain point and act as a hub for customers, allowing them to solve doubts and requests quickly without having to leave to other channels. From a business standpoint, Live Chat can help you give life to omnichannel strategies and optimize service costs.
Imagine answering (and solving!) customer requests in a single chat session with Live Chat, with no more back and forth emails and lengthy calls. Trust me, your support agents and customers will thank you!
What about the outcomes of adopting Live Chat? You can expect an increase in support team productivity and Net Promoter Score (NPS) — which ultimately means more customer loyalty and good referrals.
Live Chat allows your brand to be available 24/7 in a non-intrusive way, once the customer can call out for an agent whenever he needs without being flooded by emails and phone calls.
Personalization
Personalized messages are key if you want to engage customers and surpass their expectations. With Live Chat, you can serve a more personal approach instead of serving customers with standard and automated messages. In fact, research shows that people prefer to talk to real human agents instead of chatbots.
By integrating Live chat with other platforms, such as CRM and Customer Data Platforms, your support team can know the customer’s name, buying history, and more! With that type of information in mind, it gets much easier to personalize messages and fasten problem resolution.
Some brands take this optimization to the next level and categorize Live Chat options for different types of customer issues, just so the customer is routed to the right agent before the conversation even starts. We’ll show you a few use cases later on in this post.
Customer Support and Live Chat: statistics behind this combination
If you are considering a Live Chat tool for your company, you probably want to quantify the type of results you can get from it. You will need to justify the investment to your boss, after all.
While e-mails get 61% of customers satisfied with Customer Service, and phone calls get 44%, Live Chat gets up to 73% of customers satisfied.
63% of customers said they are more likely to return to a website if Live Chat is available.
83.1% is the average customer satisfaction rate globally with Live Chat.
When asked about what made them happy in Live Chat support, 79% of customers said they like this type of support channel because of the real-time component, while 51% said it was because they can multitask while talking to the support agent.
Live Chat Examples
There are many examples of companies that are using Live Chat in a creative way. Some are more sophisticated and others are simpler, but all serve the same purpose: improve customer experience and customer service. Let’s look at a few successful cases below:
Facebook Messenger
Facebook Messenger’s plugin is perhaps one of the most common Live Chat integrations for businesses. It was launched in 2017 as a way to connect brands to their customers via Messenger, which is widely used by the audience.
By opting in via their Facebook account, customers can ask questions and communicate with brands, without having to reach out via the company’s website. Facebook’s plugin, along with tools like WhatsApp Business, aligns with Facebook’s strategy to provide more and more services dedicated to corporate communication management.
Facebook Messenger’s integration can represent an important source of insights for companies, and even a good channel to start Customer Service procedures. The bad news is that the plugin’s interface is very basic and doesn’t allow much personalization from CX managers.
Besides, your company cannot let multiple agents work from the same Facebook account, use response templates, or assign a conversation to the most suitable support agent in your team. While Facebook Messenger can be a great tool to start a conversation, you can take better advantage of it by combining it to more complete, integrated Live Chat tools.
The company offers a variety of support options: customers can browse through FAQs lists about popular topics, quick solutions, and a community forum. That is very helpful not to waste agents’ time with common questions that are easy to solve in a self-service model.
Then, if customers can’t find the answer to their doubts in Amazon’s knowledge base, they can reach out to a real person via Live Chat.
Users are routed to support specialists according to different request categories. How it works:
the customer can choose the topic he wants to chat about (memberships and subscriptions, ordering and shopping preferences, Login & Security, etc) before being redirected to a specialized agent.
By narrowing down the customer’s case, Amazon optimizes Live Chat sessions and agents can go straight to the point in the conversation, improving the overall customer experience. The combination of real-time service and FAQs provides a great balance, just so the customer can solve simple doubts on his own and reach out to human agents for more complex issues.
Apple’s Live Chat
Known for its great service design, Apple is also on the list of companies that use Live Chat for Customer Service. On Apple’s Support Page, the user can choose the product or service he is having issues with.
From there, the customer can choose to talk via phone or Live Chat to an Apple expert who specializes in their exact area of request. Everything happens within Apple’s website, so the customer doesn’t have to send requests through other channels and wait too long to solve their problems.
That’s a great example of how intuitive and specific Live Chat can be, helping solve customers’ unique needs in a convenient way.
Arena’s Live Chat: why you should test it to enhance your Customer Experience strategy
After showing a few use cases to inspire you, let me introduce you to Arena’s Live Chat, one of the most complete tools in the market. It might be difficult to choose a Live Chat tool that best suits your needs, but Arena has a flexible and intuitive enough to help any company, no matter the size and complexity.
Let’s explore some of Arena’s Live Chat features:
Multifunctional Live Chat
Our Live Chat tool can be used in different formats to better suit your engagement strategy. Arena offers the classic one-on-one Live Chat tool, used in Customer Support and proactive Sales, but also a Live Group Chat tool that can be used for specific events or permanent discussions, like a community forum.
If your brand generates proprietary content, for instance, it can use Live Group Chat to engage audiences in blogs and Live Blog pages, for instance.
Simple Setup
Setting up Arena a Live Chat tool is super simple, all you have to do is paste a line of code on your website to embed it to your page. Our tool also works both on desktop and mobile pages, including Google AMP, and supports more than 17 languages.
Scalable
Arena’s Live Chat can help you handle Customer Service no matter the scale of your company. Our enterprise-grade platform will handle chatrooms with thousands of hundreds of concurrent users, so your support team doesn’t have to worry about the stability and availability of the program.
Customizable
Our tool allows you to choose where you want the Live Chat to be displayed on your website, and also customize it to match your brand’s identity and design.
Social Features
Unlike other cold Live Chat tools, Arena’s Live Chat tools are somewhat similar to messaging apps customers are used to. It has social features to make communication between your agents and customers more dynamic and personal, such as emojis and avatars.
Control Dashboard
Our Live Chat tool offers a complete dashboard to help your team control chat rooms. With such a dashboard, your agents can see which customers are online, moderate, and delete messages if they need to.
Try a free live chat now
If you think it is time to adopt Live Chat support in your company, why not start with Arena? The best part is that you can try our Live Chat tool for free! Click here to access our free trial and upgrade Customer Service in your business.
Live Chat has been around for some time now. But why is it everyone talking about it all of a sudden? For starters, more than customer support, it can also be used for marketing and sales.
Despite not being a new tool, it is being used in different and more efficient ways now. Even when it was already used for customer support, it was not really the best of channels since it promised real-time answers, and that didn’t really happen.
However, with the digital presence’s growth, many customer-related services and marketing strategies needed to evolve. Before, companies were more centered on presenting and selling their products.
What’s different today? Strategies are customer-centric! That means that most content is focused on the customer’s journey. Instead of just showing them the product, marketing needs to work around the pain points and how to deal with them.
And what does Live Chat have to do with this? Since it’s a communication channel, it’s a path that will give the customers what they are looking for: a quick and efficient service. Plus, it’s a benefit for the company.
Through Live Chat, you can get to know who your consumer is, what they are looking for, and store important information that will lead to the brand’s following marketing plans.
Why is now the best time to invest in a Live Chat solution? Let’s learn a bit more about it!
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Why does marketing need Live Chat?
One characteristic of the Live Chat is the capability of personalizing the initial message. Every system gives you the possibility to do that. Even more than one message can be included to be sent according to the customer and navigation made.
So, if someone visited a product page, you can send them a message offering a discount. But if it’s the person’s first time on your page, you can simply say, “welcome! What can I do for you?”.
This feature is excellent because it allows you to work according to the current strategy and moment the brand lives. Additionally, you don’t need to use the same messages for the rest of the company’s existence. The decision is not that dramatic. It can and should be updated as your brand grows.
Many companies have difficulties using Live Chat, they have and use the tool, but they know they could be doing more and better with it. If that’s the case for you, I’m glad you are here to find some ideas to improve your tactic.
What are Live Chat features?
You can talk to customers, sell products, and work your marketing plans through the chat. Overall, all of these features will follow your chat’s first message. That’s the link we make here that explains why I’ve talked about it in more detail earlier.
That happens because that’s where you catch the client’s attention to start a conversation. From then on, it’s on the attendant’s hands. The conversations need to be helpful and flow naturally, always thinking about the customer’s needs first.
Does Live Chat have anything to do with Customer Experience?
To sum up: it has EVERYTHING to do with it.
Every bit of interaction someone has with your company is already a part of their experience, so it wouldn’t be different with Live Chat. Though it does have something more: it’s a tool that allows you to communicate directly with the consumer.
It’s a means to help them and make their entire experience easier and better. If you’re having trouble with customer services, Live Chat can help you transform your image for the better as long as you follow some best practices, of course.
More than installing this tool, you need actually to have a strategy to work with it. To help you understand what kind of approach is the best for your brand, here is some more information on the benefits of this tool:
What are some Live Chat benefits for your company?
A happy customer
When you put the client at the center of your strategy, things tend to get better magically. And Live Chat is one of the tools that help that magic happen. It gives the consumer convenience of having their questions answered without the need to make a call, send an email, or even leave the page.
More than that, customers can:
be attended while multitasking;
have real-time and efficient answers;
get their questions answered before, during, and after the purchase;
have a closer relationship with the brand.
Higher satisfaction levels
Because of the reasons mentioned above, you could only get this consequence: a higher customer satisfaction level. It’s considerably better than other support channels, like through email or phone.
Besides, with the real-time factor in action, customers get a more positive and complete experience. Thus, increasing the chances, they will recommend your brand to friends and family.
Sales strategies
By using Live Chat, it’s possible to create automatic messages and practice complementary sales strategies. So, through this, you can rescue abandoned carts, offer discounts on products that were visited but not added to the cart, and use the cross-selling strategy.
All of these alternatives are made with the first message coming from the brand itself.
How does that work? For instance, if you have an abandoned cart, there’s a reason for it, right? So, what was it? Maybe shipping costs were too high. Perhaps they tried using a coupon that expired, or something like that.
To know exactly what message will affect the customer, you need to track what actions were taken by the consumer on your page. On this note, you should also know that working with Customer Data is essential.
If the expired coupon was the reason for an abandoned cart, what can you do? One option would be sending a personalized message offering a new coupon.
Customer’s journey
Because it provides service for any customer, it works the entire life cycle, being a complete tool. In other words, it works the customer journey. If they’re in the discovery phase, the chat can work to lead them to purchase faster. But if they are already considering a solution, the chat can be used to convince them your product is better — or at least to give them an extra push with a discount.
Even if a decision isn’t made right away, you can still generate qualified leads through the use of Live Chat. For example, if someone comes asking details about a product, you can say you’ll send all the information through email.
There are many ways to work the customer journey here and it’s better that you talk with the marketing team so you can line up the best strategy for your brand.
Faster decision making
Because Live Chat can influence the customer journey, it can also be used to help consumers make faster decisions. That is one reason why your conversion rate increases by up to 42% by using this chat system.
Everything should be done in a way that doesn’t pressure the client, of course. However, this method to lead them to purchases in a quicker way is quite efficient.
Basically, when someone asks for shipping costs of a certain product, you can offer some special advantage — for example, free shipping to buy that product + some complimentary item like, let’s say, a smartphone and a personalized case.
Instead of spending weeks thinking and analyzing if they actually do want to buy that item, the client will take advantage and purchase at that very moment, hence making a shorter customer journey than it’d be without the help of a Live Chat.
Offline configuration
Despite many companies already knowing the impotence of using Live Chat, they recognize they are not using it at its full potential. More than that, they end up disabling the chat during some periods when there are no attendants available.
Why shouldn’t you do this? I mean, yes, you can make a form available where clients will share their email and share what is their question, but when will they be answered? The real-time chat is what really gets them satisfied, so this might not be the best choice.
So, how will you deal with this problem? One alternative is the use of chatbots when there are no human agents to chat. They are not as efficient as humans, but they keep the instant messages going and, if you choose an AI bot, most problems will be solved.
A lot of Live Chat tools have the chatbot available within their system. Make sure to check that information when choosing the tool for your eCommerce.
Longer relationships with customers
Have you ever had issues when purchasing online? Who did you go to? Was there someone you could talk to? If there’s no one available, the chances you lose purchase and a customer are high.
That means, when offering a Live Chat solution, you’re giving yourself a treat: a better relationship with your consumers that will have a great purchasing experience. Therefore, maintaining a relationship with the brand.
Cost reduction
First of all, acquiring a Live Chat system is not as expensive as other software might be. Moreover, it pays itself really fast. What does that mean? It has an excellent ROI.
Besides, when you used to invest in 6 telemarketing agents, now you can invest in just one attendant for the Live Chat. According to research, an attendant can talk up to 6 people at once while keeping a quality service.
Do you see now how Live Chat is perfect for helping your business’ marketing?
Do you want to use Live Chat for your brand’s marketing?
Then you’re in the right place!
The job of a marketing team is, essentially, listening to the customer. The more you know your audience, the better you will work with Live Chat. Here, I should also add that having a trustable database is crucial to understanding consumers’ needs.
Also, real-time tracking of the customer’s actions on your page will help act at the right time and guarantee a higher conversion rate.
Best practices for a more efficient Live Chat
An important action to succeed with the use of Live Chat is to make your CTA the most attractive. Thus, the initial message needs to be a trigger to the consumer.
Moreover, you can and should program different initial messages according to each consumer and the phase of the journey they’re in. After all, people visiting the website for the first time need a different incentive than the ones who have already purchased previously and are coming back.
One of the most critical factors is: train your attendant team!
But first, who will have access to the chat? Will it be the support team? Or the marketing team? Whoever is responsible for talking directly with the customers needs to have both the capacity to support and sell. When this information is defined, you’ll know exactly what type of training will be necessary.
What else needs to be done? You should definitely create a protocol and some answer models. However, make it clear for the attendants to personalize the messages, not only copy and paste. They should never sound like a robot!
Does your company have a tone of voice defined? If so, the chat should stick to it. If not, you should immediately work on it. Keep it professional and helpful, adapting to your public’s language. For example, if it’s a younger audience, use slangs and emojis or keep it a bit more formal if it’s an older public.
Instruction to not pressure the client should be clear as well. Nobody likes to do anything under pressure, and, if that does happen, chances are you will never see that person again. Knowing who the best leads are is an ability to be trained too.
Usually, when consumers ask about payment means or ask for more information on a product is an indication of a qualified lead.
Lastly, it’s not only about answering right away. Just as important is actually resolving the customer’s problems. Most people won’t mind if you take one minute longer to answer them if they get the information they want.
So, if you create this combo of velocity and efficiency, there are no brands that will beat your customer experience!
Why should you choose Arena?
We have over 6,000 clients worldwide that will tell you just how much Arena has helped them improve their customer experience and grow in the market with Live Blog, Live Chat and more.
Besides, you can try our platform for free! It’s all about advantages right from the start.
Start testing our tool today and try all of these Live Chat marketing strategies we’ve talked about!
Everything you need to know about Live Blog for e-commerce is here. This practical solution for real-time engagement provides better customer experience and brings many benefits to the company — from audience growth to an increase in revenue.
In this connected era, people have become accustomed to a certain speed of consuming content on the internet. They want to know about things as they are happening at the moment. For this reason, Live Blog has been gaining more attention.
This tool is an alternative to provide interactive, real-time content to a brand’s audience. Rather than publishing static content, a Live Blog platform facilitates several sources in a single post. In other words, it pieces together information like images and inputs on social media.
A Live Blog solution is perfect for a strategy that aims regular updates posting, live events coverage, and breaking news coverage. Furthermore, Live Blog in the year 2020 has been used as an audience engagement tool for guaranteed success.
Curious, right? Keep reading to learn more about what Live Blog is, how it impacts e-commerce, and why you should use Live Blog for your e-commerce.
Live Blog is a type of platform where content can be published in real-time.
Even though the format remains a blog post, it works as an interactive piece, putting together information from several places online — images, videos, tweets, etc.
It’s an excellent tool for brands and companies that work with a high number of live events. Instead of writing insights about it for the Blog only after it’s finished, it’s possible to do it while it’s taking place. Moreover, it’s great for breaking news coverage as well.
Seeing it can create high-quality content from different sources, it becomes an advantage for both parts: company and visitor. That’s because the person would have to go all over the internet and do a thorough search to find all the information they now have in a unique blog post.
Reaction buttons, comments thread, sound notifications, and interactive pools are just a few possibilities with a Live Blog structure. All of these features make your content more interactive, thereby increasing audience engagement.
But how does Live Blog make a difference when we talk about an e-commerce company?
It helps in many ways, either increasing sales and revenue or improving customer retention and relationships. But, before we dive into the reasons why you should use Live Blog in your e-commerce, here’s a bit more about this new live commerce notion.
The concept of live commerce
With the advent of this publishing technology, many other things have started to change and modernize too. Online shopping is one of those things. Since it’s possible to work with live content now, e-commerce has begun to find ways to apply some Live Blog strategies to their benefit.
Thus, the concept of live commerce gained life. China is already a leader in this method of sales. If you look it up, you’ll see that most of their e-commerce is done through live content, primarily live streaming.
However, in the US and Europe, people still tend to turn to social media to learn more about products and services.
People love when things are done in the simplest way possible, and live streaming of products brings the benefit of the one-click purchase. Suppose the company already has a register of the customer with the required information (like name, email, card number, and address). In that case, they can easily buy anything they want from live content.
Overall, there are many benefits a Live Blog can bring to your e-commerce company. These are 20 (yes, TWENTY) reasons to acquire a Live Blog solution to your brand.
1. Be up-to-date
We live in an era of technology and immediacy. People don’t want to wait until the end of the day to hear about the news. They want information as it is occurring. Having that in mind, acquiring a Live Blog platform will showcase your business as modern and trendy.
It’ll always be on top of the news, sharing brand-new content and displaying products as soon as they come out.
2. Real-time engagement
Since publishing happens in real-time, it means everyone online at the moment will be able to see your content and talk about it while things are happening. The system of a Live Blog has features for real-time comments, shares, and reaction buttons. As content is being updated, people are talking about it.
3. Use Live Chat
When we talk about real-time engagement, there’s no way to leave out the use of Live Chat. Customers can interact with the brand and with each other to talk about the content, products, or events occurring right there and then.
More than that, a Live Chat can also be used for immediate customer support, marketing, and sales strategies. This research shows that companies that use Live Chat have a 48% increase in revenue and 40% in overall conversion rates.
4. User-generated content
Because a Live Blog can collect content from several sources, it can also use content that the users themselves are sharing. This approach connects the audience and makes them eager to share more and mention your brand online.
This is another reason to create hashtags in your online community. That way, people will share using your hashtag, and every content will have a category you can put under to make posts more organized inside the Blog.
5. Create a human connection
These factors, such as real-time engagement, sharing user-generated content, and communicating over Live Chat, make it easier to create a brand that’s closer to the audience. It builds a more human connection.
After all, the editorial team is a bit more vulnerable when they work with live content—going live means more significant chances of making mistakes and having unforeseen situations. Thus, the audience will see how the brand behaves in true-to-life scenarios — making the brand more sympathetic.
6. Improve customer relationship
When you build a human connection with the public, you get as a bonus, the improvement of customer relationships. Live Blog is highly associated with bringing a better customer experience.
You are sharing great content and creating a place where customers can feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and opinions with you and all other visitors of the page.
7. Watch live streaming
Like any other blog, a Live Blog can also share video content. Only in this case are we talking mainly about live streamings.
They are a big plus to increase sales. Remember when we mentioned China earlier on? While in the US, customers mostly use social media for product information, they go straight to live streaming in China.
If people can see the product being used in a real situation, with no cuts or edits, they are more likely to complete purchase since they know it’s “the real deal.” That’s why, among all these other reasons, e-commerce can benefit from a Live Blog acquisition.
8. Increase sales revenue
Simultaneously, the more people are connected and interested in your content, search engines like Google notice and value this. SEO tactics make a difference to rank your posts, but so does audience engagement. Because of that, your e-commerce will gain a boost in revenue.
Also, it’s possible to work with embedded links and promotional codes inside a Live Blog. It is increasing, even more, your revenue.
9. Launch new products
The release of new products will be exciting with a live stream and real-time interaction from the audience. Can you picture showing that brand-new item and capturing real-time reactions? This is doable with a Live Blog.
People love discovering new products, and they look forward to trying it as soon as possible. So providing them a live stream, with a real person showing what it is about and how it works will be a motive to keep them on your page — and interacting — for a long time.
11. Perform interviews
In the same way, you can use live content to show new products. You can use it to perform interviews. Whether it’s with the brand’s CEO or someone famous, that can be somewhat related to the product.
While the interview is happening on your blog, people can comment and even ask questions for the person being interviewed during the event.
10. Q&A panel
Likewise, question-and-answer panels are an excellent way to catch people’s attention. The audience loves it when they are heard and have their doubts answered. Nowadays, this mostly happens on social media since personal profiles seem more reachable than any other digital media.
However, with Live Blog, you will no longer need to depend on Facebook, Instagram, and so on. You just need to make sure to have a strategy that will lead traffic to your Blog, and then all your content, live streams, and event coverage will take place in a unique platform.
12. Branding
When a brand starts being seen as an expert in the field, things tend to only get better for the business. Sharing live content makes you look updated and concerned about bringing the top news for your public.
A branding strategy includes demonstrating the brand’s position in the market, purpose, and value proposition. All of which will be presented along with the content approach.
13. Dynamic communication
Because it’s simple to interact and share the content on a Live Blog page, the communication between customer and brand becomes more dynamic.
Liveblogging allows the delivery of interactive content at all times. Instead of having a static page, the public can feel like they are a part of what’s happening.
14. Make users spend more time on your page
With real-time engagement and having their actions show up on the streaming feed, the website visitors get so involved in the experience they end up spending more time on your page than they usually would if you were presenting static content.
Additionally, a Live Blog can be used as an area where people can go to talk about overall subjects. It’s up to the company to decide what topic makes the most sense for the business. For example, if you’re in the sports field, your blog can become a place where fans come to share their ideas on games and teams.
15. SEO Optimization
Even if the content is being shared in real-time, you can still work with optimizing it to have greater reach in research tools. First of all, the time people spend on your website already counts as an SEO indicator. That’s because it makes Google recognize your page as important, giving it a better ranking on keyword searches.
The interaction and real-time conversations happen not only between content and readers or readers among themselves but also between brand and customer. In particular, by using Live Chat, customers can easily talk to an attendant to better understand the product, discounts, and shipping information.
17. Create an online community
By using this dynamic communication tool, people will start to give your blog more attention. Just like you can create a community on social media through hashtag use, you can do the same thing (or even better) in a Live Blog structure.
For instance, in collaboration with FoxSports, Arena’s live blog solution gave them a place where basketball fans could like and share updating posts about the NBA.
18. Make the audience more loyal
When you provide high-quality content, readers notice it. Even more so when they can easily interact and talk about it. Moreover, have a consistent and coherent content strategy to offer personalized themes for your audience.
More than that, listen to their feedback—customers like being heard and having their suggestions implemented. Keep an eye out for their comments, and make sure to answer them.
19. Customer retention
Providing a great customer experience is what makes a customer stick to a brand. Building a customer loyal is side-by-side with increasing customer retention. For both cases, your strategy will be to give them updated content, answer questions, solve problems, and give them a voice to be part of the overall experience.
Of course, personalized notes and emails are essential for this approach. However, Live Blogs are so connected with the customer experience that it plays a big part in making retention happen.
20. Promote user interaction
It’s more than the company creating a connection with the audience. It’s about creating an online community and making customers interact with each other. Liveblogging enables users to pose questions and have other users answer them.
Readers can also reply to pools, leave comments on your page, and retweet your content to their Twitter profile directly from the blog post page. All of this is done without the need to promote interaction, but it’s still worth applying some CTAs in association with the content.
How to acquire a live blog solution?
Arena has everything you need. Our Live Blog solution will help you stand out from competitors in the market and grow your audience with minimum effort.
In order to get the best Live Blog tool for your business, some factors must be taken into account. They include:
usability for the audience and editorial team
integration and features
flexibility to run on multiple devices
data privacy and safety
Of course, Arena offers all of that and even more. You can find out more about our platform by accessing the Live Blog tool’s FREE TRIAL. This is an opportunity you can’t refuse!
The first Arena Customer Experience and Data Live Event is happening soon! Arena GO will introduce you to the tools that connect all user data dots to create world-class customer experiences.
The Future of Customer Experience
In the digital era, capturing and owning the right data is the recipe for success. Business solutions must be integrated and condensed in a single touchpoint, instead of being pulverized and lacking coherence. A-list services platforms, such as Arena, understand the importance of guiding strategies throughout the entire customer journey.
This unique 360º view of the user allows the brand to follow the customer along the entire buyer’s journey, from lead acquisition to purchase, until post-sales services. That’s because Arena provides the right tools to create a data driven and highly personalized customer experience.
At Arena GO you will explore our real-time customer experience data platform, discover our tools, and link them to serve relevant, meaningful, and engaging content.
You will be able to create an environment with powerful triggers to achieve your purposes, whether it is a purchase, a new subscription, or whatever else you need.
Learn how to explore real-time possibilities better, and exceed your customers’ expectations.
At Arena Go, We will walk you through product demos and use cases to give you a glimpse of the future of customer engagement.
Customer Experience
What does your audience want? Why do they want it? How? When? If key-questions like those aren’t guiding you through your CX strategy, the odds of failure are higher.
That is because you are not building a connected experience for your customer. Although, when you count on tools, such as Customer Data Platform (CDP), that provide you high-quality data analysis, you can tailor each stage of the strategy based on real demands and information.
Customer Data Platform (CDP)
A strategy that is not data-oriented can’t really be called “strategy”.
Having Arena’s Customer Data Platform (CDP), a unified data source that gathers all your touchpoints in a single place, will offer you the most reliable insights to build up a killer strategy for your audience.
Besides gathering the data, Arena’s CDP analyses it and creates organized clusters of customers with matching information. As a result, you will have much more depth of knowledge about your customer. It will feel like you are looking at a picture of them to truly understand their needs.
Live Chat
As we have said before, using real-time solutions is the way to exceed customers’ expectations. So, having Arena’s Live Chat allows you to engage in real-time with the audience while they are browsing on your website. That will enable you to create meaningful approaches, increasing the value of your customer’s experience.
Whether it is a reactive contact (which is when the customer looks up to you when they need something; to get a question answered, to get more information, etc.); or a proactive one (when your team approaches the audience to offer something able to raise the value of that browsing moment) Live Chat can be the most strategic and successful way to do it.
Live Blog
Still following the steps of creating meaningful real-time engagement, Live Blog is the answer companies needed to increase browsing time.
Through Arena’s Live Blog, you can create live coverage of an event, display updated news, use text, audio, video, and extra-sources. All on a single screen!
Your audience won’t need to look up for updates on other pages or keep refreshing the website to check if there is anything new. Also, using Arena’s Live Blog, the audience will be able to simultaneously engage that content on their social media pages without shifting tabs and bouncing off of you.
Rogers Media increased engagement by 64% using Arena
One of the world’s largest communications and media companies, the Canadian Rogers, was looking for a smarter and more efficient way to make their audience engage with their content and, thereafter, increase retention. They needed straightforward ways to integrate other tools used by more than 50 teams.
Combining the power of the Live Chat, Live Blog, and the Content Wall to cover real-time events, Rogers was able to promote users’ interactions in their multiple domain channels. At Sportsnet, for example, Arena’s Live Blog covered all the matches with exclusive content, and Live Chat enabled fans to engage with passionate discussions during the games.
As a result, Arena helped Rogers to increase their engagement by 64%, and retention by 28%. Besides, their ROI skyrocketed, increasing the numbers of new subscriptions, app downloads, and advertisement revenue.
Globo brings real-time coverage to the next level with the NBA
The second-largest commercial TV network in the world, Globo TV was a pioneer by adopting two of Arena’s Customer Experience solutions to broadcast the NBA Live finals. Globo was looking for fresh and real-time alternatives to provide relevant and valuable content to their audience.
By using Arena’s Live Blog to cover NBA Live matches play-by-play, with Arena’s Live Chat to create an environment of enriched engagements, Globo had audience peaks of tens of thousands of users simultaneously.
Arena helped Globo understand the importance of delivering dynamic and interactive content for such an amazing event, during all the restrictions imposed by the pandemic, which was the key to a successful strategy.
Providing multimedia content and an innovative experience paid off well for Globo. Their user engagement had amazing growth, as well as the time the audience spent on their domains and the higher ROI.
Tecmundo covered Amazon Prime Day and boosted engagement
One of Brazil’s most popular technology websites, Tecmundo, combined Arena’s solution to bring massive traffic to their page and increase revenue during Amazon Prime Day.
Creating a unique environment, what Tecmundo did was pretty much comparable to a real store during Black Friday season: it had customer interactions, conversations, and lots of sales.
Prime Day is the most profitable day of the year for eCommerce. On that day, Tecmundo created a hot site to cover Amazon’s best deals in real-time using Arena’s Live Blog. To stimulate users’ engagement, they also had Arena’s Live Chat.
The audience could get the offers while they had ongoing discussions about them, the products, and providing honest customer reviews.
The complete solution made by Arena to Tecmundo also used the Customer Data Platform (CDP). As a result, they gathered data from different touchpoints, enabling companies to find out where their potential customers were. By doing that, a more assertive approach was made and better deals were closed.
Arena GO
To dive into the possibilities of Arena’s real-time customer experience and data platform, Arena GO is an open event to walk you through the construction of consistent and effective customer engagement strategies.
