Meerkat and Periscope: How Businesses Are Using Live Mobile Broadcasting

Are you interested in live mobile broadcasting?

Have you tried Meerkat or Periscope?

To learn about mobile broadcasting apps, I interview Brian Fanzo.
More About This Show
The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.

In this episode I interview Brian Fanzo, partner and chief digital strategist at Broadsuite, a company that helps businesses succeed with social and mobile marketing. Brian is one of the leading authorities on Meerkat and Periscope.

In this episode Brian Fanzo will explore the live mobile broadcasting apps Meerkat and Periscope and what they mean for your business.

You'll discover the pros and cons of each platform, as well as how to get started.

Share your feedback, read the show notes and get the links mentioned in this episode below.
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Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show:
Meerkat and Periscope
How Brian got started with mobile broadcasting

Brian, who calls himself a change evangelist, has a technology background and a love of social media. He is always looking for ways people can leverage technology to be more productive and tell their story in unique ways. Brian likes to jump on every new app: it’ll either fail fast, and he’ll uninstall it or he'll run with it! Mobile broadcasting definitely falls into the later category.

Brian shares how he was introduced to Meerkat. He was speaking at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, when he got a message from someone who worked at Twitter, telling him that Ashton Kutcher and Gary Vaynerchuck were on a new video app. About 35 seconds later, Brian had downloaded it and clicked the start button.

Meerkat came out February 26, 2015, and Brian was on it March 2.

Brian took to Meerkat immediately. He put his mobile device on his tripod, hit the stream button, put in the event hashtag and was live. He treated it like he does his regular YouTube videos: walking around, describing the event and sharing it with his audience.

About three minutes in, someone commented, “I see the Samsung booth, can you turn to your right.” That’s when Brian realized he didn’t just bring the experience to his audience, he was letting his viewers be a part of it. People in the United States could dictate what they saw in Spain. "It felt interactive, like having a true conversation," he recalls.

Since Brian was about to go to South by Southwest,  he put some strategy behind his Meerkating. Brian contacted a couple of brands that were holding different events, and asked for backstory, so he could be prepared to cover them. During SXSW, Brian did a Meerkat of all the sessions he went to, as well as a preview each morning and recap every evening. About 300-800 people watched each stream, no matter what he was talking about.

Periscope was released into the Apple store during Social Media Marketing World (the last week of March 2015), and Brian recalls using Periscope for first time during the opening keynote.

Listen to the show to hear where Brian was when he heard about Periscope at Social Media Marketing World.

How live streaming apps work

"Live streaming isn’t anything new," Brian explains. "It’s really just turning on a video and opening the portal to anyone who wants to use it."

What's new is the fact that we’re able to download an app, sign in with a Twitter account or phone number, click stream and post the link. Then anybody in your Twitter community can click on that link and watch whatever you’re showing on your phone. The big piece is the mobile aspect. It’s as simple as a basic tweet and hitting the “stream” button.

Listen to the show to learn how and where to watch a Meerkat or Periscope live stream.

Businesses uses for live broadcasting