Live Q&A sessions are a fantastic way for businesses, broadcasters and influencers to create high-quality content, fast. If you are creating content to grow your personal brand or your company, live Q&As should definitely be on your list. In this guide, we talk about what live Q&A sessions are and the advantages of doing Q&As, as well as, when and where you should go live.
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What are live Q&A sessions?
Q&A stands for Questions and Answers. To create a live Q&A session all you need to do is go live on a live streaming platform and reply to your audience’s questions. It’s that simple. Live Q&A sessions are widely popular among influencers, online business and anyone trying to grow their online audiences.
Why are Q&A sessions so relevant?
There are many advantages to running live Q&A sessions. Whether you want to grow your brand or business, taking questions from your audience can be extremely helpful.
In short, these sessions allow you to:
- Boost interaction with your audience
- Provide value to potential customers
- Grow your online presence and reach
- Increase content creation productivity
How so?
Interaction
The online world is all about interaction. The reason why social networks grew so rapidly is that they appeal to the human need of interacting with others. Suddenly, everyone is accessible. This exchange with your audience is vital to build trust and gain loyal followers.
A live Q&A session allows you to boost your interaction with your audience, in real-time. Most importantly, you can learn a lot from them by the questions they ask.
Value
A live Q&A session brings a lot of value to the viewers because it’s tailored to their interests. Not only that, the Q&A can be posted as a regular video on your YouTube channel later on, and provide value to many more people. To make the most out of your Q&A session, make sure you repurpose your live video. Repurposing helps you expand your audience by delivering value.
Online presence
The highly engaging nature of Q&As allows you to expand your online presence and reach. You can ask viewers to share your stream while live, as well as promote your content on social media groups, paid ads, private messages, email campaigns and much more.
If some viewers get inspired and share your video, you’ll start growing your audience in no time.
Productivity
A massive advantage of doing live Q&A sessions is the lack of prep time involved. If you already have a live streaming setup, a Q&A session will be about the most straightforward piece of rich content you can produce. Since you’ll be answering questions, the bulk of the content will be created by your audience. You should still do the basic preparation for a live video – set your goal, plan an intro, outro, and call to action.
Plus, a Q&A video can be combined with your promotional strategies, from free ebooks and giveaways to paid products and services. So, you can maximize your profits while increasing your productivity.
When should you do a live Q&A?
First of all, taking questions from your audience is a crucial part of live streaming. Every time you go live, you should maximize interaction with your audience and answering their questions is a great way to do that.
Planned live streaming sessions
Regardless if you go live to deliver a webinar, present an event or promote your product, you always have an opportunity to do a Q&A session. When planning your live video content, make sure you leave time for questions. Also, throughout the live video, it’s important to let your audience know there will be time for Q&A at the end of your presentation or whenever you feel works best.
Spontaneous live videos
Another opportunity for taking your viewers’ questions is during spontaneous live videos. When you want to share an experience with your audience, encourage them to participate in the conversation. Even if you don’t have much time to answers questions on a spontaneous live, taking one or two questions will create a deeper connection and increase engagement with viewers.
Periodical live Q&A sessions
Though Q&As can be applied to any live streaming content, they can also be a standalone piece of video content. Many influencers and businesses have created their own weekly or monthly live Q&A sessions. The key to growing your online audience is to deliver value, consistently. Periodical live Q&As can save you the prep time while bringing tons of value on a schedule.
Time of day
When creating a weekly Q&A session or any live video, you might ask yourself what’s the best time of day to do so. Unfortunately, the best time to go live depends on your audience and will vary significantly from one broadcaster to the next.
A simple way to get started is to check the insights and analytics of your social media channels. Apart from other interesting information, they usually show you when your audience is online. That’s a great starting point. Then, you can test different times of day and see what works best.
Live Streaming Platforms for your Live Q&A Session
When it comes to live Q&A sessions and live video in general, there’s always the question – where to go live? Just like deciding what’s the best time to go live, determining where also relies on your audience’s persona.
Many live streaming platforms have their own niche audiences, such as Twitch, YouNow and so on. Then, there are the most popular social media channels, like Facebook and YouTube, where you get an all-inclusive, worldwide audience. The matter of the fact is – you need to go live where your audience is.
Most common places to consider sharing your live Q&A session:
- YouTube
- Twitch
- Custom RTMP channels
- Your own webpage
- Instagram (spontaneous live streams)
More tips for doing the best live Q&A sessions
Live streaming encompasses many relevant elements. When considering live videos, most people go straight to live streaming equipment, which is essential but not exclusively so. Other aspects, such as entertainment, interaction, and promotion also play important roles in your live Q&A’s success.
Here are some actions to ensure your Q&A goes well:
Promotion
A Q&A session without an audience will not work. So, promoting your live video as much as you can is crucial to make sure your audience joins your broadcast.
Team
Dealing with all the live streaming gear and technical aspects, while hosting the Q&A and coming up with the answers to help your audience, can be a lot. Instead, consider getting a small team to help you while live. Ask your friends or coworkers to moderate the live chat, monitor the stream and control any software application you might be using. It will help you focus on delivering the content to your audience.
Engagement
Don’t lose track of what matters most throughout your live stream – engagement and interaction with your audience. During a live Q&A session, you should focus on getting your viewers engaged. You can use the opportunity to ask them questions too and get to know them better.
Call-to-action
Don’t forget the reason why you are doing the live Q&A. If you are promoting a product, an ebook or you want the viewers to subscribe to your channel, remember to state a clear call-to-action to push them towards your goal.
Before you do your live Q&A
Now that you have a clear idea of what a Q&A is and the huge advantages of doing it, it’s time to actually do it. But before you go live, if you want to create an entertaining and engaging experience for your audience, a live streaming software application might be necessary. ManyCam can help you deliver the best live videos with:
- Multiple video sources
- Easy switch between sources
- Picture-in-picture layers
- Chroma key feature
Best of all, ManyCam is has an intuitive user interface, which means it’s easy to use. So, you can live stream like a pro without worrying about all the technicalities of live streaming.
Do you want to take full advantage of live videos?
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