Speaker 1: One of the smartest ways to create content is by live streaming, because it completely removes the process of having to edit afterwards. However, one does not simply live stream. And whether you're a new creator or a pro creator, live stream is just a daunting task from being able to dial in all your camera gear and your audio gear, to having all the information ready to be shared and doing Q and A. And there's just so much to take into consideration when you do live stream. And that's why in this video, I'm gonna be sharing 10 of my best tips and tricks. And so whether you're doing educational content, gaming, music, reaction videos, you can level up your live streams and be sure to stick around until the end of the video, because I'm gonna be sharing a way that you can make money with your live streams. So let's get it. You gotta just press record. Hey, what's up? It's Omar Eltakrori, helping you with the best tips and tools to help build your YouTube channel. And on this video, sometimes we talk about the best gear to do so. Other times we talk about strategies and tactics, kind of like this video. So if you're new here, consider subscribing. Now, no matter the software that you use to live stream or the software that you plan to use to live stream, the principles I'll be sharing in this video will be applicable to you. However, the sponsor of this video is StreamYard. StreamYard is how we at Think Media conduct all our live streams, whether we're live streaming to our Think Media podcast channel, this channel, or even our private Facebook groups. StreamYard makes what you want to be easy, easy. Whether it's just clicking the button to change a transition from your screen to yourself, or even simply bringing on a guest and having them be the center of attention or splitting the screen, all the way to uploading other videos. So if you do reaction videos and things like that, StreamYard just makes it easy. And I can confidently say they're probably the best way to live stream simply and easily. You can check out and try StreamYard for yourself as they do have free options, all the way to paid options. But you can check out all that information down in the description below. But shout out to StreamYard for sponsoring this video. Now, the first tip is very important, and that is to plan your stream. You don't wanna just turn on a camera, hit go live, and then just talk out of your... What are you gonna be talking about? Do you know the topic? Are you gonna be talking about a specific trend? But going into your live stream prepped with the information that you know you're gonna share is so important. And I would encourage to go as far as creating a slide deck. I use Google Slides to conduct my live streams, and I just create slides to help me keep me on track when I'm trying to talk about a product, or if I'm teaching on something in regards to creating a YouTube studio, what have you. I just have slides prepared so I make sure I don't go on any tangents when it comes to my live stream. Now, another reason why you kinda wanna potentially create slides is because of retention. If I'm bringing up slides while I'm doing my teaching and what have you, it's actually gonna keep you a little bit more engaged because beyond just this one shot that I'm showing you, the talking head, I'm actually switching and moving the things around, and that's what I love about StreamYard as well, is just to be able to transition what it is I'm trying to get you to see. All that to say, that's one reason you wanna definitely plan your stream. Another reason I would encourage you to plan out your stream is for what we call chopping the chicken. Yes, you can go live, and maybe go live for an hour, and talk about five or seven different topics in your live stream, and then actually in post, upload five to seven videos later on. You're gonna actually have two different kinds of audience. One audience is the one that's on during the live stream, and then you can upload separate videos from that live stream and reach people that want just that specific question or topic that you talk about in that segment. And so all that to say, prior planning prevents poor performance when it comes to live streaming and life. The next tip is to create your thumbnail before the stream. I think one of the biggest mistakes you can make is to think that you need to create a thumbnail after the stream, or just leave the video up without a thumbnail. Now, when you set up your broadcast, or when you set up your live stream, especially on YouTube, you actually see that you're gonna go live at some point. It'll even show up on people's subscription feeds. And so if you have a clickable thumbnail, and we teach on thumbnails at Think Media, and I'll link down our best trainings on thumbnails down in the description below if you wanna check it out after the video. But just having a great thumbnail that lines up with the topic you are talking about can incline more people to actually wanna be on that live stream. Thinking this way, trust me, is gonna make you a pro creator, all right? So make your thumbnail before your live stream. Tip number three is to check and dial in your audio levels. A lot of people can watch a fairly bad quality video if the audio is decent. But once the audio starts going bad, or whether it's distorted or too low, people will tend to click off, not because of the video, but because of the audio. And so take the time to go into your audio settings and make sure you're selecting the right mic. Make sure you do a mic check at the volume in which you're gonna conduct your live stream at. So if you're gonna get really energetic because you're gonna conduct your live stream, don't do a test like. Mr. Herman, Mr. Herman, you have a telephone call at the front desk. Because you're gonna talk at this level, right? And so make sure you do a good test and check out the audio levels. And if you're too high, you wanna either step away from the mic a little bit or turn down your input gain, or if it's too low, you wanna come a little bit closer to the mic or turn up your gain. What's cool about StreamYard is they make it super simple to cancel out any echo or adjust your mic volume. If you plan on moving around or what have you, it'll auto adjust, which are just two cool features for people who maybe move around a little bit or even want to eliminate some fan noise or what have you, that the software itself will do that for you, which is a super cool feature. Now, it's also important to know that you select the right speakers for which the audio is coming out from. So you don't wanna play a video and it play on your speakers. You want it to go into your headphones or another selected source. So make sure you select the output that's correct as well. Now, when it also comes into dialing your audio, you wanna make sure that your audio is balanced. And what I mean by that is if my mic and audio sound really good, but let's say the music that I'm playing underneath me, or I'm sharing a video that has terrible audio because it's too high or too low, that if it's just too different from my actual voice, then people are probably gonna click off as well. So just make sure you have balanced audio. The next tip is to use a camera and you can use a camera, whether it's USB or HDMI. And typically if you have a camera laying around your house, maybe a Canon or a Sony camera, chances are is that you can use that camera as your webcam and make your live streams look really good. And so Canon and Sony both have softwares that allow you to do so. And we'll post links to those down in the description below. But the way I use my cameras for my live streams is I actually use HDMI and use a capture card and it kind of turns HDMI into a USB. Now, this is a very inexpensive way. And we'll post links down below to our best recommended capture cards, literally around $20. And you can actually plug in your feed from your camera into your computer. However, if you don't have a camera with a clean HDMI, oftentimes you're gonna see all your settings on your video. So you just wanna make sure that you turn off all those display settings by hitting info or display. And then if you have the focus box on your face, you might wanna turn off your auto focus and turn on manual focus, and then just manually focus the lens to your face, making sure that you're drippy crispy. Tip number five is to stream at the right quality. Now it all starts first with the quality that is set in the camera. And you wanna make sure that you set your camera to 1080 if it is a 4K camera. I've learned that you can actually mess up the quality of your live stream because you're pushing out a 4K video feed, but then only streaming in 1080. And what's super cool and encouraging about this is if you don't have a camera to live stream, you can actually buy a 1080p camera that has an HDMI or the ability to use a USB to live stream and actually get great quality out of that camera. Heather on the Think Media team uses a fairly old Sony camera and her live streams look awesome. And she's literally using about a six year old camera for her live streams. And then the second place you wanna make sure that you set the correct setting is on the software that you're using, making sure that you're setting that to 1080 and you don't wanna undercut yourself and actually live stream in 720 when you could have been streaming in 1080. And so on StreamYard, just making sure that that's the video setting that you want to stream in is really important. All right, so we are halfway. Now let me know if you're getting value in this video by hitting that like button for me. Thank you so much. My second question for you is, have you done a live stream yet? Let me know down in the comments below. And if you haven't, or if you did, when is your next live stream? Yes, accountability test right now. Put it down in the comments. When are you planning on going live stream next? The next time I'm going live just to keep me accountable is at the end of every month, I go live here on Think Media and either talk about YouTube studio tips, the best gear or affordable gear, or even sometimes camera announcements and rumors and things like that. But putting it on the calendar is just super helpful to make sure that I plan for that live stream and then go live and level up my skills when it comes to live streaming. And I would just be honest with you, I still get nervous. Yes, Omar El-Takrori still gets nervous when he live streams, but nonetheless, let me know down in the comments below if you've live streamed and when your next live stream is. The next tip is to be ready to share your screen. Now, I would really encourage if possible to have a dual monitor set up if you plan on doing live streams, especially educational or reaction content, because you want to share a full screen. It just makes it a lot more easy and there's a lot more peace knowing that whatever's on this secondary monitor is what people will see. Now, you do have the ability to definitely share maybe a window. If you have one monitor, you can share just a window. However, if you have a messy desktop or maybe you're sharing the wrong window and you think you're sharing another window, it can just get messy. And so making sure that you are ready to share a screen makes it real smart. And like I mentioned before, having a visual element other than your face is just super smart. And so I would encourage you to potentially invest in a secondary monitor. And that monitor doesn't have to be high quality because all you're doing is running a feed into your live stream, right? The secondary monitor I use is a cheap 1080p monitor that I bought on Amazon for around $140 or so, but really it just gives me peace to know that whatever I have on this is what people will see. And so I expand my slides on that monitor, but just to prep whatever window or screen that you plan on sharing is really important. Actually, funny story as I come to think about it, I actually was going live and I accidentally closed out all my tabs because I wasn't using a secondary monitor. Might as well, let's just roll the clip real quick. Check that out. But you can also go one by one once you get some time. But let me go through this real quick and it's gonna be super helpful. So let's just jump right into this. The first thing is a turntable. And nope, I lied. The first thing is this light. But all that to say, get a secondary monitor. It'll save you in the long run. Be ready to share assets. What's so cool about live streaming is that if you do do the right planning, do do, some things you can consider assets are things like your intro bumper, maybe a third that shows your social media handle or what have you, or you can actually show a video. And so this really makes sense if you're doing reaction type videos, if you're trying to react to TikToks or maybe react to other videos that are out on the internet, it's really smart to actually just upload your video into whatever software you're gonna be using so that you have the file ready on hand, you're not relying on internet and things like that. I think what's so cool about StreamYard's ability to do this is simply attaching a video that's on your local computer is really a cool way to just share a video while you're still on screen or you can actually transition yourself off screen, but it actually shares the audio from that video. And then you can scrub, you can pause, you can play, you can move around the cursor and find a specific place in the video. And I use this feature when I did a training reviewing some of our students' videos, and I was just talking through their videos and reviewing them, and it was just a cool way to allow me to do that using StreamYard, but whatever software you're using, I think it's really key to have those assets ready and prepped to go prior to doing your live stream. The next tip is to engage with your audience. Now, when it comes to live streaming, you actually have a few different audiences that you're speaking to. The first audience you wanna speak to and engage with are the people that are actually on at the time of your live stream. The second group of people that you want to engage with are the people who are gonna watch your live stream after you're live. And so this is maybe gonna live on your YouTube channel. Maybe you did do your title and your tags and your thumbnail really well, and people will find it in search. And something I like doing during my live is actually saying, if you're watching live, make sure to put in the comments where you're watching from. Would love to see where you're watching from. So I'll go ahead and put it in the comments, and then I'll actually put it on screen, people who are commenting where they're watching from, and talk about it on the actual live stream. And then I'll say, but if you are watching on the replay, make sure you put replay fam down in the comments below. And then the comments, even after the video is done being live, the comments section lights up with people putting replay fam, replay fam. And so you can literally steal that, use that yourself, but it's really important to engage. Another way you can actually engage with your audience is to actually bring them onto your live stream and kind of interview them or allow them to ask questions. We do this with our show called Coffee with Cannell on our Think Media podcast YouTube channel. But nonetheless, people love it when you shout them out and when you're referencing them, when you show them on screen. It keeps people wanting to come back because they love being valued and seen by the person giving the content. The next tip is to put in the reps. You are not gonna become good at live streaming until you actually go live. There's just a completely different energy about live streaming. Right now, this is a prerecorded video. I can mess up, I can re-edit it and post or what have you. But when you go live, there's just something there and having to experience that time and time again and work through it and get 1% better every time could only happen when you actually go live. And so I would encourage you, if you're early in your content creation journey, just to go live and start. Start prepping your live streams, start making those thumbnails, use StreamYard, it's free, and go live. Maybe it's your Facebook page, if your YouTube channel doesn't allow you to live stream yet, but you can live stream right now with the camera you have, with the mic you have. And we like to say that you should use your season of obscurity to prepare you for popularity. While nobody's got eyes on you right now, you can actually work on your craft, get better at your skills, know how to use your gear, get better at using the gear, and you can crush live streaming. And people are gonna say, man, this guy's pro or this girl's pro. But really, you were out there in the freaking dungeon putting in the work and you got pro because you put in the work and you got the reps in. Now, I promised that I was gonna share a way that you can start making money with your live streams. And tip number 10 is that, that is to live stream to a private group or community. Now, this is just a smart way that you can monetize early on in your content creation journey or maybe your coaching journey or what have you. But having a community, whether it's a private Facebook group, maybe it's a Patreon or just a monthly subscription that you set up with a community of people that wanna go deeper with you. And this is just cool. This is a cool way to build intimacy with people. This is another way to show up consistently for people, especially if they're paying you to do so, if you wanna grow in your coaching or you want to grow in your authority or just people that have access to you. We do this on our YouTube challenge that we do quarterly. It's a private Facebook group that we live stream to using StreamYard. We also have Video Ranking Academy, which is our students who have gone through Video Ranking Academy. We have over 8,000 students there, but then Tony's got his Tony's tip of the week. And then he's also doing some Q&A as well. But this is just a great way to connect with people at a deeper level. And so definitely use the idea and the concept of live streaming to be able to help people at a deeper level. And it can actually be a way that you start creating some income early on in your content creation journey. Man, I hope you got value in this video. Again, if you have not yet smashed the like button, let me know that you got value by hitting that like button. And if you want to check out another training on live streaming, make sure you click or tap the screen. And I can't wait to see you in a future video. Peace. ♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ ♪ Mm, ♪ ♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah ♪