Periscope is a new social media application that allows you to broadcast real-time video from your phone. Twitter owns this application, which makes it easy for you to connect with your followers and to tweet when you are broadcasting live.
In my book, Pilot to Profit: Navigating Modern Entrepreneurship to Build Your Business Using Online Marketing, Social Media, Content Marketing and Sales, I specifically talk about the fact that you don’t need to be everywhere when it comes to social media and I really do believe that, however, I do believe Periscope is a game-changer.
Broadcasting live from your mobile device allows people to see and connect with the unedited and unfiltered you. I like this because it’s as close to speaking to an in-person audience as you can get.
People can watch your broadcast live or they can watch a replay of your broadcast. The replay only stays up on your Periscope channel for 24 hours, which creates urgency around watching it before it disappears.
You can choose to save the broadcast on your mobile device and use it in other places, however, which provides you with an easy way to repurpose your content.
While you are broadcasting, you can see on your screen who is joining you, you can read comments from those watching and, if they like your broadcast, they can tap the screen repeatedly and give you hearts (yes, you see the hearts!) to show their appreciation for your message.
When I did my first Periscope, I had six followers (one of my followers was Shannon, from my team, who had been harassing me to do a broadcast) and the platform intimidated me a bit. Recently, when I held my mastermind here for my private clients, I started demoing Periscope for them as a tool they could use to gain visibility.
Since showing my clients the value of this tool, I have been doing a live broadcast every morning around 7:30 am eastern time, Monday to Friday. Earlier this week, I had 144 live viewers and to date, I have around 450 followers of my message, many who have never heard of me before.
Is Periscope a Bright Shiny Object or an Opportunity?
Right now, I have around 450 followers and approximately 50% of those followers watch my message AND a good chunk of those viewers had never heard of me before Periscope.
Most of my clients tell me that they want more visibility. Do you? If you want more visibility, this is one social network you should try for at least a month to see how it works for you.
Creating & Repurposing Content with Periscope
Another reason that I enjoy Periscope is because it makes it easy for me to create and repurpose content. You shoot your “scope” and then save the broadcast to your phone. Once complete, you now have a video saved on your phone that you can upload and share on Facebook, YouYube, Vimeo or any other video service.
You can then embed that video onto your blog if you want, and use it as a piece of content for your website. And, if you want to really take it to the next level, you can use a transcription service like rev.com and take the transcription of your broadcast and use it as a blog, on LinkedIn as a published post or depending on the length of time you talk, maybe even an eBook.
If you are an author, speaker, coach, or someone who has as product or service to demonstrate, Periscope could be a great way for you to live stream what you do and increase your visibility.
Ready to Take Action?
There is much to share about Periscope but I would like to leave you with a few action steps that you can take right now:
- Create your own account and secure your username while you still can
- Follow me (@lisalarter)
- Show up and observe a couple of Periscopes live so you can get a feel for how it works
- Watch my Periscope live and let me know that you came to the scope by way of this post
- Post any questions you have below and I will loop back and answer them all.
Any new tool can feel overwhelming and daunting at first but if you can approach it with a fun and light-hearted attitude, you just might find a new favourite space to build and grow your community.
