Here’s where I give ideas to get over the glitch of your live streams and meetings.
Everyone has a glitch.
It’s going to happen in every single zoom or youtube stream. It’s going to happen, so don’t just try to eliminate the glitches, but plan on them.
- Do not start out a stream by squinting at the camera. Start out with something that’s good quality and has a plan to it. Immediately launch with a smile and the positive attitude you want to share
- You might not know if sound is working at the beginning, so start out with something silent and visual at the beginning, do a magic act for 3 minutes that’s totally silent or with music. After they like the thing you did, then you deserve to be able to adjust knobs for a second.
- You don’t know when people will join, so start it early with a countdown and make the first few minutes unessential (like just something fun and additive, or if it’s a meeting, maybe just some chit chat, or an off-topic discussion topic)
- Put together a mute plan. Most likely, if you’re muting people, you’ll need to do it because you don’t want to be making constant announcements “everyone mute your mic”
- There is a huge delay in every single interaction. Make a plan for what to do every single time you ask people to do something. Are you asking them to type feedback or requests in the comments? Don’t ask them for feedback and wait. Say “gimme a request in the comments and we’ll come back to those right after this little video”
- Do not read the comments on camera unless it’s entirely crucial. It’s better to cut away to something else of value if you must be reading comments. Otherwise, get someone to moderate comments and text you a single comment at a specific time, or get off camera to read the comments.
- Have someone run the tech side of everything if you’re the on-screen performer.
- Send invites to people, then remind them before the thing. Could be 45 minutes before or ten minutes before. one glitch is people forgetting
- Figure out how to add more value to the experience so that when a glitch happens it’s more forgivable
- If your presentation is mostly visual, plan a few audio things you can pop in if the camera goes out and vise versa. I’m not talking about an “under construction” screen, I’m talking about something that moves the presentation forward
- When you’re going into a moment that’s more prone to glitches, lead in with positivity and value and maybe a cliff-hanger. Eg: it’s actually fun to see someone fiddle with their camera while we’re waiting to see the greatest gift that’s ever been given to them. It’s not fun to wait for no reason.
- It might take a minute to switch inputs from camera to slideshow for example, so you need a plan of something to do during that time.
- If you are doing a guest interview and your guest’s camera cuts out, have plans for what to do immediately instead of just staring and pointing out that you’re having trouble. eg: while we get Sally reconnected, she did some amazing connection with the children of Africa… Here’s a video of that…
- Push through when you question whether things are working. It’s way better to watch someone confidently smiling and talking on mute than someone grumbling at OBS because they don’t know whether the sound is on.
Live streaming entertainment has a hefty tax. To do it right, you’ll need to pay that tax by creating contingency content and plans that you might not use. Backups for backups that might just sit there. If you decide to not pay the tax, your other participants will pay it and it will suck.