Who would win in a Cage Match?

Dunt dunt duuuuuu….(ominous 1930’s whodunnit music)

Ok…so here is the deal.  Live stream media platforms (Such as FB live) are getting hot…hot…hot!

That’s great news because I love me some live streaming! Heck, I was teaching this stuff last year!

Remember when I did my Creative Live all about Building your audience with Live Video?

The writing was on the wall!

But recently there has been a question circulating around all about ….

“Will Live Streaming take the place of webinars?”

What’s the answer?

Well, in this guys opinion…

It already has…

Let me explain this.  Ok, so a few years ago the word ‘Webinar’ meant a 4:3 power point presentation without the use of putting the presenter in front of the camera. (they were tucked safely behind the veil of their computer and presentation)

That was the norm…and people got use to it.

It was also BORING and never showed a clear window into who or what that person was.  (It was the …’You can have what I have while I’m sitting on my golden thrown if you take my program’). Meanwhile, that presenter was probably on the other end sitting half-naked (or the full Monty) at their kitchen table or in the living room. (And not in their huge ‘media office’ as they were probably claiming.)

[Transparency and Vulnerability weren’t discovered yet…but secretively being craved for!]

But then there was a change.  When YouTube live came out soon after Live Stream and YouStream…people started taking notice of the power of LIVE VIDEO.

Many were scared of it…because you couldn’t hide behind your presentations anymore…and the consumer could finally get a window into the business and the person they were considering working with. Since then, several live stream apps have sprung up such as FB Live, Twitch, Justin.TV, Periscope, Etc.

The new smartphone apps have jet packed
Live Streaming into a new hemisphere.

But here is the thing…the word WEBINAR has evolved to mean so much more today then it did 4 years ago.

Webinars today are you in front of the camera or sharing your screen, or showing a presentation all in one.  They’re way more interactive because they combine live-streaming with teaching and presentation sharing!

This is why I make the claim that live-streaming has taken the place of webinars…but more precisely, live-streaming and webinars are one in the same now if you’re doing them right.

What about this question:

“Is Live Stream taking the place of Webinars?” 

To that question, I say no.  Because FB live and other apps for your phone are perfect tools for building an audience and yes even possibly selling to that audience, but this statement still rings true….“The Money is in the List”. 

If you are only using those platforms and NOT building your email list, then you are NOT truly capturing leads.  Followers, fans, likes, shares do not equal leads if they don’t take that action leap onto your email list.

What I’ve been doing (which has absolutely exploded my email list) is this…

I’ve been using these applications like FB live to get people INTO my webinars and free courses!  (LIST BUILDING!)

(Especially Using EasyWebinar’s FB LIVE features that broadcasts a super interactive EasyWebinar event into it  (and it can also do the same with YouTube Live). Learn more about that feature here.

I am not directly doing webinars from the applications (unless I’m streaming in at the same time using the EasyWebinar FB and YouTube Live Syndication Tool), but even then to build my email list, I am only doing some of the full webinar into those platforms to then encourage people to come into the webinar room to watch the rest! 

FB Live and Youtube live also fall short because they also don’t have the analytics around them.  That’s why we created EasyWebinar. Because EasyWebinar creates data and marketing essentially around live stream.

(However, soon we will be launching an option to know the analytics even from FB live and YouTube live as well to know cross-platform data around where and when someone comes into your webinar…and from what social platform you get the most engagement.