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Did You Catch The Game Last Night On Twitter
September 20, 2016
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Those were the words overheard in offices across the country last week as Twitter launched its live stream of the NFL's Thursday Night Football game featuring the New York Jets and the Buffalo Bills.
And if you were one of the 2 million + that peeked in on the inaugural Twitter stream, you were likely as impressed as everyone else.
High remarks were tweeted during the game over Twitter's stream quality. As for the 45-second stream lag, it's an issue there's not much anyone can do about due to satellite, encoding and buffering issues.
But if you didn't catch the game - here is what it looks like.
As you see in the shot below - the game plays out at the top of your screen, while tweets scroll under the game:
Or you can hold your phone horizontally to watch the game without reading tweets:
(The game looks slightly different on desktop.)
But streaming the NFL's Thursday Night games is just a small part of Twitter's larger live stream strategy. They recently live streamed the Democratic and Republican conventions and have much more streaming planned.
The experience was additive to Twitter. And I'm not alone in that thinking.
So it had me thinking, what is radio's live stream strategy?
It's such a fun, meaningful time to be in radio right now. We are no longer confined to audio. We can take the social tools at our disposal to complement the mothership (the FM/AM stick) visually.
But a plan is required.
To earn the trust and reputation for people to stop what they're doing and give us their attention takes real discipline of always coming at content from the consumers' point of view.
Live streams are so much more than showing us what you look like talking behind the mic, or a glance of your feet resting on the control room console.
Live streams can be the social vehicle you need to:
- Boost brand perception
- Excite fan expectations
- Create listening occasions
Which in return will:
- Stimulate revenue
- Extend reach
- Build on the brand's long-term health
But it starts with a real reason why.
For Twitter - they're winning live stream bidding rights over rivals like Facebook because entities like the NFL know Twitter is the place people flock during live events, live moments.
The question every station should be answering is, "How can we use social live streams to be additive to the mothership (the FM/AM Stick)?"
We see plenty of stations dipping their toes into the live stream pond - but who is really standing out?
I'd love to know. Email me anytime at lori.lewis@cumulus.com.
Reach out to me anytime on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or Twitter.
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