Tag Archives: Content Strategy

How to live stream the 2024 Olympics

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The Paris 2024 Summer Olympics are just around the corner and, at this exact moment,  millions of sports fans are wondering “Where can I watch the Olympics?”. With over 300 events divided into 32 sports categories, it can be hard for viewers to gain full access to the complete schedule and real-time transmission on traditional TV broadcasting. On the other hand, with so many competitions happening simultaneously, it can be hard for media outlets to decide what to cover. 

It is expected that the 2024 Olympics will have a thunderous impact on the U.S. streaming market, with over a quarter of all SVOD (Subscription Video on Demand) subscribers signing up for a new streaming service just to watch the games, according to new research conducted by Bango. The vast majority (87%) of those paying for sports VODs are also calling for a content hub that can centralize streaming, blog posts and analysis of the competition, further facilitating access to the Olympic events. 

In this scenario, there’s incredible competition for sports broadcasters and advertisers to attract and hold the attention of their audiences. The average viewer not only wants to watch the event with live professional commentary but also interact in a more meaningful way with other sports fans and delve deeper into the Olympics. After all, it only happens every four years, and they need to make every second count. 

Why build a strategy to stream the 2024 Olympics? 

‍The Olympics is a truly iconic occasion and one of the very few global events that is able to unite and engage different sports fans around the world. Starting July 26, the 2024 Summer Olympics are expected to have a global audience of over 1 billion people during its 18 days of competition, which makes it a perfect opportunity for media companies to invest in their streaming services.

The timing to make this investment couldn’t be better, especially after the great success that companies who have betted in Olympics live streams have shown us over the last few years. 

During the Tokio 2021 Olympics, NBCUniversal used its various platforms to launch a special sports coverage, describing it as the “biggest media event ever”. With this initiative, the company saw outstanding results, amounting to an audience of 15.5 million people, with viewers streaming a record 5.5 billion minutes of events across social media and platforms such as NBCOlympics.com, NBC Sports App and streaming service Peacock. 

As for the 2024 Summer Olympics, the games haven’t even begun and the company is already seeing impressive numbers. Months before the opening ceremonies, NBCUniversal had announced that it had already sold $1.2 billion in advertising space during the Olympics, with $350 million coming from first-time advertisers.

If you are a sports, entertainment, or news broadcaster, you are probably wondering which is the best way to stream the Olympic games in real-time. What if we told you that there is an easy-to-use, no-code tool that can help you enrich your audience experience? 

Keep reading to learn more about Arena Live Blog and why it is your biggest ally in broadcasting the Paris 2024 Olympics in a more engaging way. Make sure to check out how Fox Sports Australia leverages the tool and, boy, will you be amazed.

What Is a Live Blog?

‍A Live Blog is the natural evolution of traditional blogs. Also called live updates, journalists and publishers 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, higher viewership, and a loyal audience that keeps coming back to your content over and over again.

How can a Live Blog help you monetize content? 

‍One of the biggest benefits of having a Live Blog set up on your website is the possibility to not only create your own content but also using different sources to enrich your content timeline. What we in Arena call a “Social Stream” allows you to bring your audience from social media to your website, thus having greater control over what they consume, how they interact with your company and each other, as well as choosing the right advertisers that truly connect with your audience. 

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Here are three simple ways you can enhance your content strategy and monetize your 2024 Olympics coverage with Arena Live Blog:

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  1. Monetization Strategies: Arena Live Blog leverages AI to maximize ad revenue through optimized ad placements, leading to higher click-through rates. Additionally, publishers can implement subscription models offering premium. By collaborating with brands, Arena enables the creation of AI-generated sponsored articles and videos, providing new revenue streams through branded content.

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  1. AI-Driven Content Creation: Utilizing AI, Arena Live Blog automates the generation of real-time highlights and event summaries, keeping audiences engaged with high-quality live content. Predictive content features allow publishers to deliver insights and updates on upcoming events, while personalized content enhances user experience by catering to individual preferences and interests.

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  1. Multi-Channel Integration: Arena’s AI tools seamlessly integrate with publisher websites and mobile apps, offering real-time coverage and interactive features. Publishers can not only pull content from their social media accounts but also share AI-generated content from Live Blog on their social platforms like Twitter, driving traffic back to their sites. Additionally, the platform allows you to connect your YouTube live transmissions with your Live Blog live streams, providing an opportunity to double your monetization for each piece of content. By using social media as a top-of-funnel tool, this strategy attracts and retains a broader audience, ultimately boosting website engagement and overall monetization.

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Using Arena Live Blog In Your 2024 Paris 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.

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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. 2024 Olympics Coverage – Basketball Game 1), enter the date and time, and description. You can also add tags and images 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.

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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.

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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.

 

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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 Paris 2024 Olympics broadcast.

You can enrich your Live Blog with content from: 

  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Reddit
  • Web content
  • 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. 

To learn how to set up and customize your Social Stream, click here and access the complete walkthrough.

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 and major accomplishments. 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.

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Anyone covering the 2024 Paris 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 2024 Olympics because some of the most famous tennis players like Serena Williams, Rafael Nadal and Dominic Thiem are not competing in Paris. 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.

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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.

And just like that, you have created a personalized event for your audiences, using only a no-code tool and embedding the code to your website!

Prepare to hit the ground running

‍As we write this, many of the world’s leading sports broadcasters are arriving in Paris to prepare their Olympics media coverage. To compete with their reporting, use Live Blog Arena to make your Paris 2024 Olympics news broadcasting an unforgettable experience for your audience.

If you need any help to start planning your Live Blog, make sure to schedule a free demo with your sales teams to understand how Arena can help your company reach the next level. 

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Optimize Funnel Conversions With Engagement: 5 Strategies

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Drawing a person to your website for the first time is a win. Focusing too much on first-time website visitors comes at a cost. You may neglect to build an engaged audience. If you have an effective content strategy in place, your next priority should be to grow engagement.

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Start By Choosing Your “Leading Indicator” KPI For Conversions

Most businesses have a clear end result in mind for their website. They want paying subscribers, purchases, or another critical conversion. Exclusively focusing on this end result can hurt your efforts because these conversions tend to be lagging indicators. They are a result of effective marketing and engagement.

Instead, it is often more helpful to focus on leading indicator measures that you can control more directly. To clarify the difference between leading and lagging indicators, consider sales:  a salesperson is ultimately responsible for achieving a specific sales volume. That sales volume is a lagging indicator and one that is not entirely in their control as very real,external factors can delay or prevent a sale from moving to “Closed Won.”

Instead, effective salespeople focus on lead indicators that predict success, like prospecting activity and pipeline generation. The work of building an engaged online audience is no different. You can’t directly generate engagement, but you can set the conditions that make engagement more likely, including higher conversion rates.

Potential lead indicators that show your website’s online audience is engaging effectively include

  • Time on site. Usually, higher time on site is a good sign that a user is interested in what they see. This metric needs to be balanced with the KPIs noted below/
  • Pages per session. Tracking pages per session is even more helpful because you can see which pages draw the most interest.
  • Opt-in activity. Earning permission to follow up with the user with browser notifications, text messages, email, and other means is even more valuable.

Once you have clarity on your top metrics, use the following strategies to grow audience engagement.

Strategy 1: Build A Comment #1 Strategy To Jump Start Engagement

The “herd instinct” is powerful in the online context. It’s far more appealing to join an existing conversation compared to attempting to start one from scratch. The traditional way to solve this challenge is to optimize the call to action, leverage controversy and make commenting irresistible. All of those efforts are worthwhile. 

Yet, there is more we can do to make commenting more appealing. Instead of leaving comments to chance, develop a “Comment #1” strategy. In other words, don’t just trust to hope that your content will get comments. Instead, use an outreach strategy to engage specific people to encourage comments.

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Your outreach strategy to spark comments will depend on the audience and resources you have. Get started with the following ideas:

Encourage Your Journalists To Start Commenting 

According to the Center for Media Engagement, 60% of Americans want journalists to clarify factual matters in the comments section. That tells us that many people are hungry for engagement from journalists in the comments section.

Even if you don’t have a factual oversight or mistake to clarify, there are other ways to leverage comments. For example, you might ask a journalist who covers a different beat to post a question to spark a discussion. Seeing a comment from one of your well-known personalities can do wonders to lift engagement for the rest of the day.

Past Commenters

Reach out to past commenters and ask them to comment on your latest content. While you can use manual methods to invite more comments, automation is even more powerful. For example, you might collect first-party data about the types of stories that your audience is interested in so that you can invite them to be the first to comment or share about future articles.

Use Social Media

Share your content on social media platforms and invite people to ask questions. The downside is that these social media responses may not always lead people back to your website. The risk of engagement happening away from your website can be mitigated by giving your audience a reason to come back and see the original content.

Finally, try to get the first comment fast, ideally within an hour of the content being published. When other people see comments on your content, they’ll feel more safe sharing their thoughts.

Strategy 2: Highlight The Best User Generated Content (And Hide The Worst)

Larger websites and publishers suffer from a different challenge – a high volume of comments. Inevitably, only a tiny portion of these comments are engaging and relevant. In other words, you have to face the challenge of moderating user-generated content.

Let’s say you’re running an online event with Arena Live Chat. Your audience is engaged and sharing a wide variety of questions and comments. Then you see that some of your audience is distracted from the core themes, like the new features you’re announcing. Arena gives you a few ways to shape the flow of the conversation.

Crowdsource Moderation

Keeping track of all the comments in a chat session in a significant online event may feel overwhelming. You can solve this challenge by inviting your audience to participate in the moderation process. Take a few moments at the event’s start to explain your ground rules, including when and how to report inappropriate content. In this way, your audience can help to turn the tide of irrelevant comments.

Use Moderation To Maximize Brandsafe Experiences

Some online events call for a different approach. Let’s say your online experience includes important customers and executives. To ensure a brand-safe experience, it is wise to take a more active role in moderating user content. Arena supports this need by allowing you only to display comments and questions manually approved by your team. This approach takes more effort, but it yields a great result.

In some cases where emotions are running hot, your event might face a different problem: profanity. Arena can help you to manage this threat as well with automation moderation. The built-in profanity filter and AI moderation automatically allows you to set a sliding scale for brand safety to blog and prevent a wide range of offensive, and potentially offensive content.  

Use The Power of Praise

Restricting user content isn’t your only way forward. You can also use your status as the event host or moderator to praise relevant, engaging content. To ensure you apply this practice, make a note to look for quality comments and questions as the event unfolds. When a great comment comes in, take a moment to recognize it and thank the participant.

By showing appreciation for quality audience engagement, your audience is more likely to stay focused on the event.

Strategy 3: Remove Speed Bumps From User Registration

Sometimes, our efforts to deliver a great audience experience have unexpected consequences. For example, many publishers require users to register for a free account before commenting and engaging. That small speedbump helps to discourage “Internet trolls” –  to a degree –  but it can also stop casual website visitors from engaging with your website’s content.

The solution is to take a fresh look at your user registration process. For example, give users multiple opportunities and places to register for an account. Taking the time to clear roadblocks from user registration is important because registered users are much more valuable.

According to International News Media Association, about 10% of registered users on news websites typically convert to paying subscribers. That’s far better than typical ecommerce conversion rates, which rarely exceed 3%. 

Strategy 4: Mine Your Comments For Future Engagement Ideas

Past comments on your content – especially on your website – are a rich source of insight. That information can help you to lift engagement quickly. Reading the comments on their own will give you clues about your audience. For example, commenters who share personal stories are more likely to trigger others to respond. If you see that pattern, look for ways to encourage readers to share more stories in future comments.

The true magic happens when you look at comments as one part of a broader first-party data strategy.

Strategy 5: Leverage First-Party Data Across Platforms

Personalized marketing and engagement strategies are some of the most powerful ways to lift conversion rates. The key to doing personalization work at scale is using multiple forms of first-party data to verify your audience engagement.

Start with the following types of user data to inform your personalization efforts:

  • Content Interactions. Look for patterns in how your users engage with your content, such as comments, votes, and shares. 
  • Email/App Interactions. Some of your audience may engage with your content off your website. Check to see if those patterns are significantly different from website interactions. 

Get The Right Tools To Increase Conversion Rates Across Your Funnel

Converting a passing website visitor is tough. You don’t have to suffer single-digit conversion rates, though. Developing an engaged audience is one of the best ways to drive more traffic and revenue. Find out more about Arena’s solutions for publishers.

Increase Live Stream Engagement: 11 Tactics That Work

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Do you want more live stream engagement from your target audience? It’s getting more complex. The competition for viewer engagement is significant.

For example, in a 2020 study, the top three distractions for US employees working from home include social media, smartphones, and binge-watching content. These distractions make it difficult to maintain high levels of live stream engagement.

Whether you are focused on a product launch or other types of virtual events, video streaming technology can help. When you have the right content ideas, delivering engaging content gets much easier. Use these live streaming tips and examples below to create your rough plan to lift streaming engagement over time.

What Is A Live Stream?

A live stream is an online video broadcast where an individual or group of people appear on video to engage with their audience. As a rule of thumb, the live stream experience often includes screen sharing and individuals appearing on camera.

Typically, there are two ways that companies use a live stream to earn revenue. Some companies earn revenue by selling advertising space or sponsorships, especially in entertainment. Most live stream companies use it as part of their content strategy to attract prospects and fill their sales funnel.

Why Now Is The Time To Add Video Streaming To Your Marketing Strategy

Streaming sessions have fast become one of the best ways to attract prospects to your sales funnel. By 2027, the live stream market is projected to grow to $250 billion. The most successful early adopters of livestream video have been in the entertainment niche. Millions of people watch gamers play their favorite video games on Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook.

The stream experience is not limited to gamers, though. Live stream sessions are increasingly being used to sell products (i.e., live shopping), promote products, and supercharge influencer marketing campaigns.

The growth of Live Stream Video Sessions is Booming, as Shown in the Following Statistics:

Investing in live streaming now means you have the opportunity to win in the marketplace as an early adopter.

This finding reveals that live streaming video experiences can become a profit center! Take note of media and entertainment brands looking for ways to grow their subscriber base!

There’s a reason why so many YouTubers and other online content creators encourage their viewers to like and comment on their videos. These techniques are proven to grow their audience.

That doesn’t mean you have to improvise every moment of the session. By all means, script out your content ideas so that you have a rough plan to follow.

Live stream content must be part of your marketing strategy if your target audience includes younger consumers.

This pattern is especially common in industries like apparel, fashion, and beauty, where a video demonstration adds value. It can be difficult to imagine if a piece of clothing or makeup is right for you. Seeing a popular influencer try out these products can make a big difference in conversions.

To grow engagement in your online events, live streaming deserves a place in your strategy. The good news is that you probably already have plenty of content ideas if your company has already published successful social media posts, blog posts, and other forms of content.

Four Companies Winning With Live Streaming

If you’re excited about the potential of adding live stream engagement to your company, your might be wondering: who else is succeeding with live streaming? Several businesses have are successfully using the power of live video to sell products, generate leads and grow their audiences.

The following examples show different types of online events where live streaming played a role

Bloomingdale’s Uses Livestreaming To Sell Products

The major US retailer invited Sandra Choi, creative director at Jimmy Choo, to present a 45-minute live stream session in 2021. To encourage immediate sales, the retailer offered a free personalized product for buying. All told, the company has run dozens of live streaming events to engage customers.

Burberry Partners With Twitch For A Live Stream

Promoting a product for immediate purchase is just one way to use a live stream. Luxury fashion brand Burberry streamed a fashion show in 2020 in partnership with Twitch. This event builds on the brand’s commitment to online events – it ran its first online event in 2010.

SAP Connects With B2B Customers With LinkedIn Live

SAP, a multi-billion dollar technology company based in Germany, has successfully used live video to grow its audience. The tech business has run its online show – SAP BTP Better Together: Customer Conversations – for over a year. Season 1 of the live stream show featured interviews with customers like Ferrara, the Gates Corporation, Evernex and others.

Eaton Answers Customer Questions Live

Eaton, a multi-national power management company, is successfully using LinkedIn Live to create live content. The business has created an “Ask the Experts” video series on various topics like career growth and diversity and inclusion. Eaton’s success shows that you don’t need to have celebrities or influences to make your live stream events interesting. Your employees have amazing expertise that is just waiting to be unlocked!

Outside of fashion and retail, live streaming experiences take different forms. For example, many B2B companies use webinars and other online events to connect with their prospects.

There is one challenge associated with focusing more resources on live stream events. Unlike prerecorded videos and webinars, live stream events require more effort. At a minimum, it is helpful to have at least two people – the presenter and the support person – involved in every live stream. Putting in the effort to create an excellent streaming experience, you will find it easier to maintain audience engagement.

Live Stream Engagement: 11 Ways To Get More Viewers

Now you’ve seen how companies are achieving wins with live streaming, it’s time to build your live streaming session. These tips can be used to enhance an existing live stream program or help you launch your first live stream session successfully.

  1. Set Your Marketing Goal For The Livestream 

Planning and executing a successful live stream video experience will take time and resources. Before you commit to those resources, choose a key metric and goal to evaluate the success of your event. For example, you might track the number of orders for the promoted product or the number of leads generated.

  1. Start With What Works With Your Audience

Coming up with amazing content ideas is tough! To save time, review your analytics software to see which content has resonated with your audience in the past. A customer data platform makes it easier to attribute purchases and lead generation to specific content posts. If you don’t have a CDP in place, use other metrics like pageviews, shares, and engagement time to measure what’s working.

  1. Seek Out Product Demonstration Opportunities

As you plan your live stream experience, plan a few ways to show your product. For software, a demo with real data can work well. Even colleges and universities can use demonstrations – use a smartphone and show people around your campus. These product demonstrations can form the core of the live stream in a live shopping event. Or you can add a product demo to the end of a different event.

  1. Invite A Popular Influencer To Join You

There’s a reason why well-known authors and actors are often asked to give keynote talks at conferences – it helps to draw in the crowds. Apply the same principle to your streaming events by inviting an influencer to join you. When you strike the deal with the influencer, invite them to help you promote the event.

  1. Marketing The Live Stream Event Is Critical

Once you’ve chosen a live stream platform, it’s time to promote your event. You can do this by posting on your social media platforms, running paid ads, and sending email sequences to your list.

Give your audience to register for the event by clicking a link and entering email information. Once someone is registered, send them automatic email reminders to be more likely to attend.

By asking your audience to register, you get a clearer idea of how many viewers to expect. It also helps to include an event hashtag on social media. This can increase follower engagement and generate more excitement for your live stream.

  1. Select Your Live Stream Platform

There are two ways you can run a video streaming session: use an existing social platform or set up a branded platform that you control.

Social platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitch make it easy to start a live broadcast. If your brand already has a significant presence on one of those platforms, it makes sense to stream there. However, there is a downside to relying on a third party. Your audience may become easily distracted by notifications, messages, and other interactions.

To minimize interruptions and distractions, set up your own platform using a tool like Restream lets you broadcast on more than 30 social media platforms simultaneously.

A professional platform also comes with features that help you monetize your live stream, increase audience engagement, and run post-broadcast analytics. If you don’t go with Restream, consider other industry-leading platforms like Vimeo, Dacast or Brightcove.

Vimeo OTT offers a seamless integration with Arena Live Chat. This way you can provide your audience with better engagement experiences during your live events.

  1. Commit To A Livestreaming Schedule 

Your live stream performance may have limited results when you first get started. That’s why a one-off approach to running a live stream is less likely to succeed. Instead, successful streaming strategies tend to commit to an ongoing schedule of streaming. Running a multi-year streaming show like Twitch’s Critical Role is one approach. Alternatively, consider setting up a three or part-event series tied to a specific theme like the holiday shopping season.

  1. Use Incentives, Urgency And Deadlines To Lift Engagement

Urgency is a time-tested principle in sales and marketing. It also applies to growing your live stream engagement. Remember Bloomingdale’s live streaming example from above? The company offered incentives to encourage people to show up at the event and place an order during the event. There are multiple ways to implement this strategy: discounts, limited edition products or offering early access.

  1. Get Inspiration From Other Live Streams

When you focus too much on your live stream engagement metrics, staying creative and fresh gets more difficult. Certainly, measurement matters (we’ll cover it in the next tip). However, engagement also requires ideas and inspiration!

That’s why we’re giving you the performance to spend an afternoon hanging out on live streaming platforms. Ideally, look for streaming shows and episodes that are appealing to a similar audience. If you don’t find any streams like that, look at how entertainment-oriented streamers keep their viewer count high throughout their videos. For example, look at how often live stream content creators interact with their audience via the live chat during their stream. In addition, look at how streamers presented sponsored content and messages to their audience.

Making time to study those who have mastered the art of live stream engagement is one of the best ways to shorten your learning curve.

  1. Level Up Your Audio and Video Equipment

Upgrading the quality of your gear is a smart way to make your live stream come through loud and clear. Tools like the Shure MV88+ Video Kit connect directly to your smartphone for enhanced audio and video quality. It comes with a microphone, tripod, and headphones. You can also stand out with a multi-camera setup by purchasing software like OBS Studio, Wirecast, or VidBlasterX.

  1. Measure And Optimize Your Live Stream

The final way to improve your engagement and conversion numbers over time is to measure each streaming event. Start with the easy to measure metrics like viewer count, activity levels in your live chat and traffic on your website. If your live stream event includes coupons or other trackable calls to action, measure those factors as well. With each live stream you run, taking 15-30 minutes to analyze what worked and what didn’t will gradually lift your engagement numbers over time.

The One App That Lifts Live Stream Engagement Every Time

Your live stream events should be a two-way street. You present and your audience raises questions and gives you feedback. That’s why adding Live Chat to your website is so important. Arena Live Chat only takes a few minutes to install and set up.

Set Up Your WordPress Live Blog Plugin In 7 Steps

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Adding a WordPress live blog plugin to your website is one of the best ways to lift audience engagement and conversions. This step-by-step guide will discover precisely how to install the Arena Live Blog WordPress plugin. You’ll also discover why using a live blogging platform benefits your business.

Use the table of contents below to jump straight to the WordPress live blog plugin setup steps if you’re ready for that. Not sure if a live blog makes sense for your organization? Jump ahead to section 2 of this definitive guide. 

How To Install Live Blog Plugin To Your WordPress Website

The Arena Live Blog WordPress plugin is simple and easy to install.

With Arena’s plugin, you can create Live Blog sessions for live events, event coverage for news, and more. That’s not all – it can also be used for sports coverage, covering court proceedings, and engaging conference attendees. 

With our blogging plugin, your Live Blog can be fully automated or moderated by an editor or community manager. Besides, you can mix content generated by your content team with user-generated content from social media. 

Arena’s Live Blog platform and plugin provide critical features such as:

  • Real-time Live Blogging functionality
  • Social Media monitoring 
  • Social Media integration (i.e., Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Instagram)
  • Posting user-generated content curated from social media 
  • Automatic or moderated sports play-by-play
  • Configuration options to make the plugin fully brandable 
  • Sports calendar integration 
  • Real-time audience analytics
  • Cross-posting to social media
  • Optimization for mobile 
  • Unlimited editors to manage your live events
  • Live Chat integration to encourage ongoing discussion about your event

7 Steps to Live Blogging with WordPress

Getting started with live blogging is fundamentally similar to posting a regular post in WordPress.  

It takes just a few steps to get started with a Live Blog on WordPress and offer your audience updated content in real-time. With Arena’s Live Blog, you can quickly start a live blog, including the ability to embed photos, videos, and other media types in your posts. 

Step 1: Install The Arena Plugin On Your WordPress Website

To get started, simply access the “Plugin” section within WordPress and click “Add New.” Then, all you have to do is search for Arena.im in the list of featured plugins and click “Install Now.”

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Step 2: Setting up your account 

The next step is to set up your company’s account with the Arena plugin. To do that, go to the “Settings” section and click “Arena.” That’s where you will find accounts, organizations, and site preferences. You must select the account you will use to live Blog, choose your site, and click. 

The plugin will then grant you access to Arena’s tool so it can automate Live Blog posts. Depending on your WordPress configurations, you may need to activate the Live Blog function in your posts. 

 Tip: Don’t have an Arena account? You can start using Arena for free.

 

 

Step 3: Create Your First Live Blog Post 

Creating your first Live Blog post is simple.

  • Open the Arena plugin in WordPress
  • Click “Create New Event” 
  • Set up your preferences for the new event
    – Title and Description (keep SEO requirements in mind here because an optimized Title and Description can help you to rank better on Google)
    – Choose an Event Category: For example, News, Film and TV, Shows, or Finance.
    – Choose Real-Time Options: To maximize real-time blog updates, ensure you enable real-time updates.

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Step 4: Add A Social Stream To Your Live Blog

Want to add social media content to your Live Blog? Use this step!

From the Arena plugin dashboard in WordPress, you can click “Add Stream” to search for accounts and keywords from social media and add content to your Live Blog curation. For instance, you could choose to display tweets or videos from a news channel or influencer account. All you have to do is insert the link to the channel or account.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxgRBLN5cGU

You can also set up the event status (live, upcoming, or done), add elements like tags, and enable comments or a chat room in the Live Blog post.

Remember that it is best to ask permission before repurposing social media content in your event, especially with influencers.

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Step 5: Customize the Live Blog Appearance And Advanced Options 

Use the Arena Live Blog customization features to provide a seamless experience for your audience. When the look and feel of the Live Blog match your brand, users are more likely to engage because the Live Blog will be consistent with the rest of your website.

Arena Live Blog on WordPress offers the following customization options:

  • Color
  • Position in the blog post (we recommend placing the Live Blog close to the top of your WordPress blog to maximize engagement)
  • Language
  • Enable sound alerts so that users get an audio notification when a new update is made
  • Add polls (polls allow you to pose questions and get feedback quickly. It’s one of the best and easiest ways to engage your audience).

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Step 6: Publish Your Live Blog

Now it’s time to publish your Live Blog in your post. 

To integrate your WordPress editor to the settings you did with the Arena plugin, click “Add Interactive content by Arena” in the editor interface.

You can click to add a new Live Blog or select an existing one. All you have to do next is click “add” to the Live Blogs you want to publish and simply click “Publish” on the WordPress page. 

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Step 7: Share The Link To Your Live Blog With Your Team

Get the link to your Live Blog, follow these steps:

  • Go to the Arena dashboard
  • Find the HTML code for the LiveBlog
  • Copy the HTML code to the Live Blog 
  • Paste it into the HTML box in the WordPress editor. 

This link will be seen only by you and other team members with access to your company’s WordPress credentials. The link will open in a new window on the editor page where you can write and publish updates.

You’re practically done! You can click “preview” to visualize how it will look and “update” to apply changes.

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Video: See The Entire Process Of Creating a Live Blog In WordPress

In the video below, you can better understand the entire process of creating a Live Blog.

 

 

Now that you know how to set up a WordPress live blog plugin for your website, you must set up your Arena account. Create your own Arena Live Blog – it’s free to try! And check out this list of more WordPress plugins for live events.

3 Reasons You Need A Live Blogging Platform To Win

Real-time coverage was a luxury offered by the world’s largest media brands. That’s changing today for a few reasons.

1) People Expect Real-Time Coverage

Twitter and other social media platforms have conditioned millions of consumers to expect fast responses. News organizations offering breaking news style coverage of important events like elections, sports, and beyond find it easier to win attention online.

2) Growing Competition For Audience Attention

More and more consumers expect real-time coverage of news and fast responses to questions. Your audiences expect speed because they are used to one-click ordering and finding exciting content in seconds.

Attracting and engaging your audience may become very difficult without a blogging platform that makes it easy to create and share relevant content. 

3) Increased Customer Service Expectations

Brands and publishers are expected to post updates to keep their audiences engaged. Publishers and media brands focused on current events, and coverage of sports events need new ways to connect with audiences. 

What is a Live Blog?

A live blog, also known as “live updates,” is a content platform that makes it easy to create and publish content. Journalists were among the first to use live blogs to cover breaking news stories in politics like elections. Today, the benefits of live blogging go far beyond the news media.

A live blog is unique because it’s designed for rapid updates as events unfold. As you find out more details, your team can update a live-blogged blog entry regularly. As a result, your reader will keep coming back over and over again because your website offers new and exciting information. 

While written blog posts are the most common format in live blogging, they are not the only option.

Live blog posts can also include:

  • Photos
  • Videos
  • Social media posts

With a Live Blog installed on your website, you can create a curated experience for your audience as breaking news, current events, and other developments unfold. 

Who Uses Live Blogs?

Initially, media organizations and journalists used live blogging the most. If you have ever seen “live updates” on a news website like CNN or FOX, you’ve seen live blogging in action. It’s especially common for current affairs situations with intense interest, like conferences, elections, and sports.

How Live Blogging Enhances Your Content Strategy

Adding Live Blogging to your toolkit is a powerful way to reach your publishing and marketing goals. Many organizations use Live Goal to reach new readers, increase audience engagement, or automate content production workflow. Live blogs optimize editorial work while offering the final audience a seamless content consumption experience. 

Grow your audience  

A study conducted by the University of London found that readers increasingly prefer live blogs to static content, discovering that live blogs can get up to 300% more views and 233% more visitors than conventional online articles on the same subject.

Just imagine if your website doubled its views and visitors. You’d grow revenue, conversions, and leads immediately.

Increase audience engagement time on your channels

Building a relationship with your audience takes time. If visitors leave after a few seconds, connecting with them is tough. A live blog can be transformational because this technology encourages readers to interact more with your content. 

Also, a live blog empowers your team to keep users on your web page, rather than leaving your website to share their views on social media. Your organic traffic will likely grow when search engines see users spending more time actively engaged on your website.

Diversify your content beyond traditional formats

When Content Walls and Content Hubs have become trendy, Live Blogs help brands stay competitive by diversifying the myriad of content they display on their official channels. Liveblogging is a great way to enrich static content and incorporate short-form content pieces – increasingly valued by audiences – into traditional formats.

Bringing new revenue opportunities

Live Blogs can foster new revenue streams for your company once they boost engagement and content syndication from a monetization standpoint. 

How? A live blog gives your audience a reason to stay on your website longer and keep hitting refresh. More time on your website means more pageviews and opportunities to generate revenue through advertising or selling your products and services.

Becoming an authority in your market

From a branding perspective, Live Blogs allow companies to position themselves as authorities in content curation, which is valuable for brands that deal with massive audiences and those that target niche audiences.

Liveblogging in your content strategy makes your brand more credible and relevant to your audience.

Learning about your audience

Integrating live blog tools into your analytics enables you to get better data for social listening. Live Blog represents a new way to observe your customers’ navigation behavior and how they respond to your content. Ultimately, you can get valuable insights that will lead to a better understanding of your target audience and needs.

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Try Arena Live Blog Today

Want to give Arena’s Live Blog tool a try? You can access our trial version in this link or install our plugin directly on WordPress. Publishers use our tool across 120 countries, including Fox Sports, Microsoft, and Turner.

20 Reasons to Use an eCommerce Live Blog

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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.

What is Live Blog?

The answer to this question can be summed up like this:

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.

With Arena, all the hard work is done for you. This means even if you’re not an SEO expert, you’ll be able to; work on the optimization for your pages.

16. Boost conversion rates

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!