 The session is called using live streaming to tell your digital stories and nonprofits often shy away from the live streaming spotlight. And the goal of the session is to help motivate organizations to use free and powerful tools to the advantage minus the fear of going live. Join Samantha Bernard as she discusses the benefit of live streaming and shares the top tips she has learned from her five years of nonprofit live streaming experience. And with that I would like to introduce our today's presenter. Samantha Bernard is the development lead for Fombano Technology Development Center in PC. She's based in South Africa and Samantha develops capacity building systems, which allow nonprofits in Southern Africa the opportunity to adopt software and technology solutions to achieve global social impact. Samantha, the stage is yours. I'm excited to be here tonight to discuss this very important topic, particularly in the year 2021 as we lead into a giving Tuesday season and also 2022 and what might be on the other side of the new year that's fast approaching. My topic for today is using live streaming to tell your digital stories as mentioned through the introduction I have five years experience as a nonprofit live streamer. I have a nonprofit representative myself from Bono tech is a South African based nonprofits. And our goal is to serve our beneficiaries, which are people just like you nonprofit organizations in Southern Africa. We have an area and scope of up to 10 countries on the continent. And every single day I speak to nonprofit organizations about using technology for good and for social impact. I want to use some of the tools from the sponsors that you've heard of today, as well as some other little unknown tools that you might not yet have heard about or even thought to use so that you can then tell your nonprofit story. My goal for today's session is to just plant a couple of seeds of thought with you, whether you are a live streaming pro or you are a beginner. I'm here to tell you that I too was in your position and am still in the position that you are in when it comes to live streaming, even though I've been doing it for five years and telling our nonprofit story for that amount of time. So with it's have a benefit slide because it's always good from an M&E point of view. It's always good as a motivational point of view if you are a fundraiser. If you are a volunteer if you are a social worker, and you need to go back to the decision makers that be in your nonprofit organization to let them know that you've heard of this thing called live streaming or you've heard of these tools and you need to motivate not only the time that needs to go into creating your content or using the platforms. But also anything surrounding collaboration from your team because that is a critical component to live streaming and to digital storytelling, which you'll pick up as a theme of this mini conference over the next couple of days. So for me, from my perspective, one of the first benefits and a real time point of view is that live streaming is pandemic safe. What I mean is, last year, we will all put into this really strange situation where face to face consultations or events or meetings stop suddenly. And the pandemic has taught us that even though we might do things in a certain way, we might need to really look and streamline and also have a backup plan and a strategy on how to communicate, not just with our donors, or our board members, but our team members, our and most importantly, our beneficiaries. So live streaming to me is pandemic safe. It doesn't matter if your beneficiary is under a lockdown from a country level and has to be based at home. If he or she has got access to the internet and can follow you on whichever platform you choose, you can live stream and you can reach them. Another benefit is that there are tools that exist for all levels of your expertise. You don't need to be a video editing or copywriting pro to go live. You don't even need to be a board member or director of your nonprofit in order to tell your story. In fact, what you will hopefully learn by the end of this presentation is that those in your organization that you would at least expect to be on camera probably should be the ones that need to be on camera. Add it to the benefit list is that it is a cost effective way to deliver your social impact, which as a nonprofit is the most important thing to me. Yes, I can use my live streaming to do my online fundraising, which is a component, but I wake up every single day to share my social impact with the communities that I serve. Live streaming is one of those tools that is incredibly cost effective to help you deliver that impact. And then lastly, it helps you increase your brand visibility. And this was quite interesting that I'd already put this on my slide and reading some of the comments early and some of the earlier sessions. Sometimes we as nonprofits look at the tool in front of us and we're so used to KPIs and deliverables and meeting fundraising targets and M&E and and and that we often look at our marketing in the same light, and that's not the case often. They need to put in some time to build your brand visibility to become viral to become popular. You heard in the previous session of tick tock and thank you for that session. I learned a lot from that, but you would have heard if you'd attended that session that sometimes your content can go viral. And often the best marketers will sort of look at it and go, we don't quite know why it went viral. It just went viral. Live streaming offers you a consistent cost effective tool to increase that brand visibility. Gone are the days where you could use radio or TV in the traditional sense to get out to that repetitive, constant messaging about your brand and increasing its visibility. That has now been replaced with something called live streaming. What are some myths that I hear every single day when I speak to nonprofit organizations not only when I am live streaming, but when we are training on digital transformation in Southern Africa. Well, the first big myth is that we have nothing to talk about Sam. You tell us to live stream and we really want to do it. Again, I saw this in the previous session with tick tock. Well, I don't quite know what to say. What kind of ideas do you have. You as a nonprofit organization have the most powerful stories. You are more powerful than any marketing agency or PR agency out there. You have got people on your team that can tell stories in a real and authentic way about your community, how you serve your community and your stakeholders or your donors that are helping you achieve that social impact. All you need to do is just have a conversation just like what we are right now to tell your story. You don't need fancy editing. You don't need high high high in graphics. You don't even need a large team and that leads on to my second myth, which is the professional level is required. You need to have a huge team with with a lot of live streaming experience. They need to know exactly which button to push or Sam, I'm worried I'm going to break the technology or what happens if I don't push the correct button. That's okay. Try again and when you try again and when you let your audience know what you are trying to achieve, I promise you they will help you on that journey and they will love you even more online for being authentic with them. Another myth is that you need expensive equipment and that's just not the case. Right now I'm streaming to you from the desk that I sit at every day to do my work and my laptop is propped up on a couple of books. My tripod is over here. There's the proof, but my laptop conflict in the tripod. And so you don't need very, very expensive equipment in order to deliver your message through some of the live streaming tools. You can start with very basic very entry level tools. You can then work your way up depending on what your goal is from live streaming and from advertising perspectives, but you don't have to have very expensive equipment to start. The large behind the scenes team is required. It's not in our case as a nonprofit again servicing 10 countries. In South Africa alone we have a market share of nonprofit organizations amounting to over 200,000. That's a potential group of 200,000 clients that we could speak to at any given time. And our team just has three to four people on depending on the session that we're hosting. Basically it would be myself facing the camera, working on the presentations delivering the content and one other person moderating the chat. For you and your nonprofit, you may feel like it's just you. Again, I saw another comment earlier on that you are the jack of all trades were multiple hats. But maybe you have a volunteer in your network. Maybe you have a donor in your network that could volunteer somebody on their team to do your chat moderation and so on. There are creative ways that you can save money and not have that large behind the scenes team that everybody thinks you must have. And then lastly, expensive software and tools are required and that again is simply just not the case. For those of you that might just want to go live on Facebook. Well, all you need is your phone that you already have and you need a Facebook app. That's it. You don't need anything else other than to go live on that platform. I too, like you, am scared every single time I go live. And that is the truth. And that's why it's number one on my truth slide, because I feel it's important to tell everybody in our network that there is a real fear to going live. There is a real fear to going virtual. Some people even have fears of going into closed zoom rooms together. Many, many people fear that they're going to break technology or they feel so overwhelmed by so many different technology inputs and software inputs that they rather just say no, it's not for me. But I do enjoy watching other people go live. I do enjoy participating when somebody else is going live. But I'm here to tell you that I too am scared just like you. I too worry that viewers won't watch me. And the best way to overcome that is to consistently go live. Sometimes you need to train your algorithms. You need to train your audience that you're going to be going live and it's a regular consistent technique of yours. Sometimes you need to take into account the time of day that you're going live. It might work for you, but does it work for your audience? Sometimes you need to also take care of the topic that you might have. Maybe the topic is really important to you and it makes sense to your beneficiaries. But your online audience that you're live streaming to in the hopes to gain new eyes and new visibility, they might not understand your language. For example, the word beneficiary. We as nonprofits understand that word, but to other people out there actually know what beneficiary means and would they be able to connect the dots so much that they would click on your session when they see that you go live. The best way to overcome that is to keep doing it and keep trying. I too started with an entry level smartphone. I did not have a microphone. I did not have a top of the range phone. I did not have a tripod. I didn't have any of that. I even had to use mobile dots. I didn't even have a Wi-Fi connection at that point. So if you are very, very much in the beginning stages, you have no equipment. You've got a laptop with an internet connection. You have some social media platforms or you have a smartphone. You too can start your live streaming journey and you can grow into whatever goal you are wanting to achieve through your live streaming. Despite what anybody says, I'm here to tell you after five years that the videos that work the best are the raw impromptu streams and they will surprise you on how they go viral. Maybe not in the sense of people sharing them, but how your audience would react and ask you questions. Sometimes we will put a lot of thought and a lot of planning into our live streaming and we will schedule them and people will register to attend or they will sort of follow and get notifications every time you go live. The live streams that do the best for brand visibility, for authentication when it comes to who you are and having that human-to-human contact are those raw impromptu streams. And think back to the TikTok session. And if any of you are on Instagram and you're using Reels, do yourself a favor. Tomorrow just think about me saying this to you when you're scrolling through and have a look at the videos that don't have that massive production behind them. It's literally somebody holding their phone close to them, maybe sitting on their couch, sitting in their bed, reacting to stories from other people, and those seem to be the piece of content that go live. And the reason for that is that the people on the other side of the screen that are watching you identify with you when you look like them. When you look like you're having a bad hair day or you look like you've just sort of you need to stop and pause and drink your coffee because it's one of those mornings and you're busy telling that story. The raw impromptu streams will surprise you and they can surprise you, so please don't be fearful or think that you can only live stream if you have it fully produced and scripted. And then lastly, probably the most important truth for me as a marketer is that a live stream can repurposed, which is huge return on investment. So not only can you take your impromptu live stream and turn it into an Instagram story or a WhatsApp story, you could possibly put it into an email newsletter. You could download it, upload it onto your YouTube channel and then tick over onto your YouTube if you're part of the Google for nonprofits program. There's so many ways that you can repurpose your live stream, which for board members, especially treasurers and finance people. There's that thing there's return on investment when it comes to whoever it is on your team needs to invest the time to do the live streaming on behalf of the organization. So which tools are available. The blurb of this session said I was going to share free tools available to you and many of you have got them on your phone right now. Facebook live Instagram live and WhatsApp that's part of the Facebook ecosystem and all of these allow you to go live at the click of a button and it's free to use. Obviously you need to have an internet connection and you actually need to pay for the device that you'd be streaming from, but the actual software to use the streaming capability is free of charge for nonprofits to use. You also have YouTube, which not only from a live streaming perspective, can you use to stream out but I do encourage you to YouTube tutorials on how to live stream. In fact, any topic that's during the session for the rest of today or even tomorrow, all you need to do to learn more is just do a YouTube search and you will find amazing content out there, which will teach you how to use the different platforms and different tips and techniques. That's how I taught myself all those five years ago. You heard in the previous session that another tool is tick tock, and I won't go too much into that because the previous session was overloaded with amazing tips and resources but again, very similar to the ecosystem of Facebook. You need an internet connection. You do need a device which you don't get charged to start a stream on tick tock. We then have more what I like to call professional streams and I put them in inverted commas because you can use your zoom package or your Microsoft team package to set up a live stream and stream it up to multiple places. If you are wanting to stream to many, many different places, including Twitter, LinkedIn, particularly if you're wanting to create a YouTube live stream where you put it on an unrestricted link. That means that the general public cannot see your stream, only small areas. So think of maybe silent auctions and your general meetings, if that's what your nonprofit has, board meetings, maybe if you've got board members all over the globe. Maybe you want to use a third party tool like StreamYard or Restream. The add-ons to those, however, is that as a nonprofit you can ask them for a discount and you can then have some of the pro functionalities available to you. Things like being able to put on the bottom of your screen, your name, a link, whatever the case, but if you do want to just opt in for the free option, obviously it is available with limitations. So just make sure that you do price comparison with regards to what is free, what is pro and what is available as a nonprofit discount. Now, which software and tools can you use not only before live streaming, maybe during live streaming or afterwards? Well, headline sponsor, I have to put them first and that's Adobe. There are a lot of products in the Adobe suite that you can use. Remember I said earlier on that your live stream could be repurposed and you could turn it into other types of videos. Well, the Adobe suite have got packages for you to use whether it comes to video editing. Maybe you need to do photo editing to add some screenshots in during your session after you've downloaded it. Whatever you need to do, you could look at the Adobe suite for that. Asana I love because I have been live streaming for such a long time and I do put some planning into some of my types of live streaming. I use my Asana board not only as my planning board, but as my M and E board. Often I would have to go back to my board members and let them know what my return on investment has been. The comments I saw earlier on in another session was tell me the impact, you know, what is the impact that you're getting from these platforms? Well, the only way to know your impact is to measure it and I use Asana for that. I create a live streaming board with a topic and I'll pop in all my notes just before the event, just after the event. Set myself reminders and I will use that to track what my M and E and what my stats are directly from my software or whichever tools I'm using. And then pull a report through the reporting function of Asana once a month to be able to present to either a potential donor stakeholder or a board member. Microsoft OneDrive, I'm sure you all know about the incredible storage that Microsoft offers nonprofits and I use this for my backups. So don't download your videos, your live streaming videos onto your hard drives of your devices. Use your cloud software for that. Not only can you then have it sit there and if you don't want to repurpose it just yet or maybe you want to get a volunteer to help you edit it using Adobe. You do want to save that somewhere and the ideal place is to save it in your one terabyte of storage on OneDrive. And then lastly, I use Google Calendar. I don't need to remind myself that I need to live stream today, but also so that I can track what sort of topics have I been live streaming about. I might be coming too repetitive and maybe some of my topic delivery. But at the same time, I then take whatever it is that I'm going to live stream when I do script it. I open up Google Docs. I use the typing, the audio typing function and I then have a blog. I just practice doing the live stream topic or presenting in this case with my Google Docs open. It captures all my audio as it hears me talking and there I have a blog post for my website or I have a transcript. We'll talk about accessibility a little bit later on or I have something to add into my newsletter. So I've kind of done a whole bunch of things from one idea for a live stream. So tips before you start, I like to ask myself the following questions and you can add on to this. You can take away from this. It is completely up to your brand, your message, your authentic voice, your confidence levels and your live stream journey. But these work best for me even to this day. I still ask myself these questions before and that is how long should I wait for people to start watching me before I start talking. And there's some conflicting views on this. Sometimes my audience members wants me to start at nine o'clock promptly. If I've said we're starting at nine o'clock promptly because to them they've got other meetings. They've cleared their schedule, particularly for this. They don't really want to wait five minutes for us to let other people join in. And I agree with them. But sometimes in some of the cases, particularly in some of our countries where, for example, they are internet shutdowns, we know maybe that there are audience members that might struggle to connect purely just because of their digital literacy levels. Then I do allow for that small window of maybe two to three minutes just to get everybody to stream in and then start presenting and then start the session. I always ask myself, Sam, is my camera facing the correct way? I want you to see me. I don't want you to see my cupboards on the other side of the screen. It is definitely something that you need to check before you go live. Can my audience hear me? Yes, I know it is a little bit frustrating when you as a viewer, you hear the presenter say, can you see my screen? Can you hear me? But that really is critical for us to know whether or not you can hear us or you can see us. Because sometimes depending on the software or depending on the device, you might not actually be able to see yourself on the screen. You might be looking at something else. So I also always ask myself, can my audience hear me and how can I creatively make sure that they nudge me if they can't? Who will monitor the chat? This is planned beforehand and it's always important that whoever is monitoring your chat, if you are going to expect to have a robust chat, that those people are prepped on your topic. Another helpful tip with this is that our team, and I hope Diana and Arnold are on the call, if you are, say hi in the chat box. These are my two colleagues that help where we share links with each other before the events. And so they'll know if I say certain things in a certain way during my presentations or during my topics, they will then pop the link into the chat to have immediate access for those that are watching. Because that sometimes is quite helpful. On the other side of that, we have also found that it can be distracting. If you post too many links during a live stream and people click on it, they will obviously then go somewhere else. They might not necessarily be paying 100% attention to you. So you've just got to sort of figure that out with your audience. And it's always helpful to mention that in your housekeeping slide right in the beginning. And lastly, and I wish I could show you turn my camera around but I have got sticky notes all over my one panel here on my desk which says Sam push the record button, because many a time I have thought I've gone live and I haven't. And I've been talking to myself, many a time using zoom and teams. I thought that I am live streaming to Facebook and I'm not. Many a time I thought that I've pressed record and I haven't and I couldn't repurpose it. So make sure you've got a note somewhere or make a joke like I just have to say, please let me know. Am I recording. If not, tell me in the chat and prompt me to to press record. During the event and probably the most critical for all of you that are fearful of live streaming and I do hope that after this, you know, we can all walk a journey together because there is a lot of fear that goes into what about during the live streaming event. Everybody experiences it and only with practice and consistency will you start sort of understanding your audience and understanding the nuances of the same old people that join you, the same old people that comments, and the new people and you get so excited where you see new fresh faces joining you and people sharing your live stream, but during your live stream, it's very important to know that it's okay to pause. I'm sure you can all tell that I talk with my hands. I'm sorry if it's distracting. I do sometimes talk very quickly and even I need to remind myself Sam just take a step back and pause that awkward silence is okay. Often people think it's just their internet connection. And it's not on your side. So if you do need to take a bit of a step back and just breathe. It's okay to do it as well. Also, it shows everybody that you're a real person that you are human just like them and they will appreciate your authenticity with them. Allow audience members time to use the chat. So if you do ask a prompting question or a leading question. Often what happens is, you'll ask a question. You'll say, Hey, can everybody let me know in the chat right now. Which tools do you use for live streaming. And then you'll look at the chat and nobody is is messaging and in those like first, maybe four or five seconds you're like oh my goodness nobody wants to talk to me. But in that precise moment you haven't taken a step back and said, it kind of takes a little bit of time to type out. And some people might proofread and spell check and then publish their comments into the comments box so it's okay. Allow your audience members to use the time. It's okay to use it as a pause and it's okay if there's silence during your live stream. And please only use the link below if you actually have a link to place below. And often what you can do with the live stream is if there's nobody posting that link for you or if you are not posting that link in your chat box. Say to everybody, I'm happy to post a link regarding whatever it is that I'm talking about I will edit the description on this live video as soon as I've ended it. Come and check back in 10 minutes and the link will be there readily available for you. The reason why this is so important is because many of us think that when we live stream and we have 500 people watch us in that moment, the minute that we click end, that's where the video dies in a way, and that's not the case. I have people contacting me that are watching my live streams from four years ago, and they still comment on them because we leave everything up and open for everybody to see. So it's important that if you are saying in a live stream from four years ago, I'll post the link down below for you to read more about my bio that you actually do do that because you never know who in the future might be watching a recorded version of your live stream on this social media platform after very important. I asked myself, Sam, have I switched my phone off at least three times just to be safe and that's because I promise you, I understand if I'm live streaming from my phone, and I click end, I will restart it a couple of times switch my wifi off switch it back on. If I'm doing it from my computer, I will just shut everything down switch it back on again, because I want to make sure that I'm not streaming, because yes live streaming is cost effective and yes, it is very very easy to use but there are some cases where people have actually been on a live stream and they didn't know that they were. It does come down to user error, but for me, I just personally switch my phone off three times and that's part of my checklist immediately after the event. So that's, as I said with my Google Docs, I will go back if I have scripted anything so if I've made notes for myself, and particularly if I'm presenting on behalf of the donor, or if it is a training session with beneficiaries that is very specific. You know, I need to really have all of my documentation in line, I then immediately while it's fresh in my mind with people that have been asking questions, I open up that sheet, and I complete the blog. You'll be amazed at how many questions come up in a live stream comment section that you can turn into blog posts or new programs. We personally have created new programs purely from comments during live streams. Is it saved on my cloud storage? So after I've clicked in live stream, and I recorded it, have I selected the option to record to my computer? Is it going to my cloud? If it is going to my computer, how long more or less will it take depending on my Wi-Fi connection to download? If it's on a Facebook or an Instagram or anything like that, predominantly it would be downloaded onto my phone. So have I actually synced it through to my OneDrive and been able to put it into a correct folder so that I know where to find it? Because often when you download your video, it doesn't always get saved in the file name that you would expect it to be saved. Most importantly for me, from an M&E point of view, because I am the development lead, so a lot of my work revolves talking to donors about our impact and asking them to find us. So have I updated my Asana board with my M&E? And that's another amazing place that you can put comments or frequently ask questions in the comments section. You can sort of put that reminder for yourself and Asana to say, Sam, in three weeks time, you need to reinvestigate this because 100 people asked, what is Facebook? Maybe I should reach out to Facebook. Please Asana send me a reminder that on this date, I should reach out to Facebook and ask them to help with more training in the area, just using an example. Is my thank you social media post ready? After a live stream, depending on the topic, I do like to send out some resources. You'll see later on in a couple of slides the reasons why I do that. But have I created a thank you social media post that is ready? Some of you I see in the chat are using tools like Buffer. I also use Buffer. And so what I'll do is I'll make sure that my calendar is open. I've scheduled the thank you post on all our different platforms and put a link in to watch the replay. Because again, you might have your live stream scheduled to go out at eight o'clock in the morning, but most of your nonprofit audience that you're trying to target is only available at six p.m. in the evening, but you might not be available then. Your thank you social media post for watching can entice more audiences if you post it at a time that they are online. And lastly, have I uploaded onto YouTube? Or is my process in place to do that? When am I going to upload it? Do I need to edit it? Who needs to edit it? Maybe I need to add something else in. And most importantly, am I going to make it public? Am I going to make it restricted? Am I going to unlist it? What am I going to do with my YouTube? Because that does take a little bit more time when it comes to repurposing content. But it is so, so worth it with regards to your ongoing views and social impact. So a quick checklist for everybody. If you have no tripod, it's no problem. You should have books around you. You might have reams of paper. We in South Africa, we buy paper for our printers in big packs called reams. And I have often stacked mine. In fact, if all of you are on Twitter, what I'll do just after this is I'll share a photo that I took a selfie of myself where I've stacked my computer on multiple reams and multiple books to show you that that is actually what you can use. If you've got poor lighting, that's okay. Do you have a window close by? And if you are close by to the window, can you close it? You might not want to hear the neighbors dog barking if you are working remotely, or maybe you actually need to include that because you are a nonprofit that works with animals. And you want those sounds to come in during your live streams to give that that personal connection. Can you use this live stream as evergreen content? So is it a topic that you can turn into a post that you can use over and over and over? The good ideas of this is if you are doing a online fundraising gala, they'd say maybe you're going to have a silent auction as one of your main areas of funding during your gala. Maybe just beforehand, you might want to do a quick live stream about your team that behind the scenes will be facilitating the silent auction. And what you can do with that is obviously spotlight your team members, let everybody get to know who's going to be assisting them, put a face behind the email or the name, and you can use that live stream to not only share information about your nonprofit and reach new audiences, but also market out your upcoming fundraising event. Then lastly, internet connection. What is my backup plan? So for many of you that are in the United States, I imagine you would have really good internet connections and you wouldn't have to worry about things like internet shutdowns, which many of us in Africa do need to worry about. Many of us in Africa, we have to worry about our electricity being shut off by the government sometimes for up to 12 hours. One of our countries actually has just had that where they've been offered 12 hours. And so what is our backup plan? If this is a part of your strategy, and you are heavily reliant on things like the internet and electricity, for example, what is your backup plan on how to communicate with your audience members that maybe you're moving it, or possibly could you turn this from a live streaming into a pre-recorded video to still maybe capture on the time and day that you would have had the session. If you're out in your community, maybe you then just take a pre-recorded video and somehow incorporate it back into your strategy and then tell your story at a later stage during a live streaming session about how your nonprofit navigated the internet shutdown and electricity load shedding in one day and this is what you did. Added to that checklist, have I scripted the session? So again, this is not for those raw impromptu, my here is a mess, I'm not wearing any makeup or really polished live streams that you might want to do. This is for those very polished live streams. This is for when you need to have a script, when you need to have a very direct service offering and you need to tell people something very specifically and for most of us as nonprofits, we are funded to do just that through our programs. I'm sure there are many donors that are wanting you to communicate certain things or are helping you to communicate certain things. And so you need to have that session scripted so that you are well prepared in advance. Are you encouraging viewers to stay to the end? So remember that I said a couple slides back that I do like to share resources after the session, and that is one of my creative ways to ensure that people stay right to the very end, especially this year in the year 2021, especially with remote and hybrid working and let's all face it everybody, we've been living through a pandemic, especially for nonprofits where our workload went from this to this. We need to make sure that people don't get irritated. They don't feel impatient. We need to make sure that we sort of cover that and we are preempting that because that's kind of what our audiences are like. Many people want to get to the point immediately and then move on. Not many people want to just take the time and listen and use their patience to take in what you're saying. And so creative ways to get them to stay to the end of the session is to say things like five minutes before I end, I'm going to be sharing a free resource with you do stay on. And after the fact I will then email the link to those of you that are is repeat by our email or whatever the case added to that checklist is is your live stream inclusive of all languages and accessibility areas. I mean this is something in the nonprofit landscape particularly comes up over and over and over. If you are suspecting that your audience has multiple languages, what are you doing to talk to them in those different languages. Add to that remember I gave the example of the word beneficiary. If you are wanting to target an audience that doesn't use our nonprofit language which we all love. What are we doing to to use different words and and how are we all understanding what we want to say and to who we want to say it. And of course, accessibility. There are third party apps. There are add ons there are multiple ways that you can make your content more inclusive from an accessibility point of view. And have you gone through that check those have you thought about it, and have you investigated which software and tools are available. And then lastly for those of you that are in countries that do have things like the donate now function. So for example, those that are in the US you have got the donate now portfolio from the Facebook ecosystem, whereas we in Africa we don't get have that. So sometimes on different platforms, you might have functionality you might not. It's always advisable to know that beforehand and to investigate beforehand what functionality is there and how can I use it to its maximum. Having said that the best way for you to know that is to just go live and to just play with the software as you're talking to your audience members. Some of the most impactful live streaming sessions that I've had has been when I've been testing software. And the reason why is because it's so impromptu. It is so just sort of the notification pops up on my audience's newsfeeds. It says, you know, Sam is live and I see people join. I'm like, hey, Arnold, hey, die. You know what, got nothing much to say today. I'm just testing out some software. Let me know what you think, by the way, how are you and a conversation starts in a very impromptu informal, authentic way. And that's where the most magic happens during live streaming often from an impromptu point of view. And so with that, with 15 minutes to spare for Q&A, I thank you for joining. Please know that as a non-profit speaking to another non-profit, you have an amazing story to share with the world, not just with your community, but with the world. And live streaming is there to help you. You can start your live streaming journey. Or for those of you that are pros, you can further advance it, further amplify, test out new platforms with just one story. That's all that you need. And I promise you that our virtual community, so all of us from behind the scenes that are here today and your virtual community wants to hear what you have to say. Those raw impromptu videos where you are talking to people about your story, much like I have told you a little bit of my story and a little bit of how I do use the different tools and you can resonate with that. And hopefully I've been able to plant some seeds of thought with all of you. And with that, I'm going to stop sharing and see if there are any questions. Amazing. This was a great session. I really loved all the tips that you gave and we're seeing lots of emoji love and lots of love in the chat. And I think if I had to pick my favorite tip that you mentioned was to take a brief, take a breath during the live stream and just take a pause. I think we tend to forget that. And I think that was. We do have lots of Q&As, so lots of questions in the Q&A section, so I'm going to head over there. The one that got the most upload is, let's see, I can do that. From Sammy, do you have any insights to the best amount of time to live stream too short? Is it not worth too long? Do people lose interest and wander off? Do you have any insights on that? Sure. So Sammy, thank you for your question and it depends on your topic. So if you're in a high level sort of discussion, let's say you're working on gender-based violence, policy creation, white paper creation. The group that's joining those long sessions shouldn't lose interest and wonder off if that is sort of the community that you're trying to build. If it's an impromptu video that I find works for our audience is three to five minutes. Anything over that, if it's very impromptu, if I just sort of pop up on your news feed and I'm just there to chat with you and share some updates. If I go over that five minute mark, then definitely we do see people lose interest. Great, thank you. All right, the next question we have is actually came up two times. From Julie, what is the best practice for time of day to live stream? What is it at the beginning, at the end, what is the best time? Sure. So thanks, Julie, for that question. And again, it comes down to your audience. So if I am wanting to, let's say, live stream on LinkedIn, which for those of you that haven't done that, I'm going to sort of divert all the topic quickly. If you need to put an application through to live stream, through to LinkedIn, depending on which country you're based in. But there is an option available for you to live stream on LinkedIn, which is incredibly powerful if you are wanting to reach donors, for example, or a more professional market. If that is the tool that you're using, well, then you need to apply a little bit of common sense in the sense of people that might find me and that are more professional. What time of the day might they be in meetings? Do I really want to live stream to them when they're on their lunchtime? Maybe I want to get them first thing in the morning. And it's very similar to your social media practices when it comes to your posting times. If you are wanting to use Instagram or TikTok and you're wanting to reach a more youthful market, I'm not too sure which generation name we're on at the moment. But if you are wanting to reach a more youthful markets that might be in class and they, you know, university classes, let's say two o'clock in the afternoon, all from three o'clock to five o'clock, they might not have anything else to do other than to watch TikTok videos. So that might be when you need to get on there. So it's all dependent on which platform you use and which topic you have and audience you have. For us, what we found with our clientele that are working full day jobs, we often can reach them nine o'clock in the morning. We also find that for our email newsletters as well is a good time nine to ten and then we're done. Great. Thank you. All right. The next question is from Gina and she asked, how do you handle negative comments during the live transmission? That is such a good question. And again, you know, it does it does factor into the type of nonprofit that you have. I'm sure we can all imagine, you know, some nonprofits that are working in some programmatic areas that are going to get those troublesome trolls, especially with some of the topics that they're talking about. And, you know, the best thing to do there is to have a group of moderators. And honestly, my approach is if you're going to troll on our content, we block you. And if it could be a potential customer or a potential beneficiary at the end of the day, that one person that is being very negative, that might not understand exactly what's going on, or is just trolling. Because for some reason people like to do that these days, we disassociate from that and it's a block and it's a remove. What I suggest doing is if it is somebody that is asking you tough questions and critical questions to answer them openly. Often we find that, you know, if somebody's leaving a bad review, not just during a live transmission, but if they're, you know, leaving reviews on your social media, the same theory applies during a live stream where if you do handle that criticism openly and you answer it, it does add to you being more authentic to other people watching. So I really like that. All right, let's see. This one is from James. Have you ever done any post live stream research among viewers or constituent engagement, contact info capture, etc. for future contact? Absolutely. James, thank you for your question. We have, I'll be honest with you on the Facebook ecosystem. There is something called the lead generation, let's say campaign that you can run where you can link it to your live streaming. For us in our particular region, content wasn't that great in the sense that we would get a lot of leads, but they weren't leads that we could convert quite easily. Whereas if we've done it on LinkedIn, it's a much different market there that we can actually capture that information. If I'm doing a raw impromptu stream, and I do see Jim Connor has posted in the chat as well about that three to five minutes. So Jim, if I'm doing a three to five minutes stream, which is impromptu, it's just a, hey, how's everybody doing? This is what's new in our world. What's new in yours? I keep to that timeframe. But if I'm doing an impromptu live stream, then I don't do any contact info capturing or anything like that. When I do the scripted, the more scripted ones, what I'm finding particularly this year and because I think so many people have got zoom fatigue. So to say, so many people are really tired of sitting in webinars, even though they really want to. I do find a way to be creative because sometimes it's good to not record the session and share it out with people afterwards because you want them to be engaged with you. You want to then be able to have their information captured so that you can contact them in the future. Again, if you are authentic at all times during your live streaming and during your content delivery, people will gladly give you their information and want you to contact them. It's often those that are not that authentic that people feel you spamming me. I don't really want you to contact me. And then just to end off to answer that post live stream, there are a couple of third party apps that you can use to do polls after the fact. I have not had a lot of luck with them. I have found during live stream research in poll format or Q&A format or even breakout rooms. If we're looking at zoom per se as a webinar, that is way more powerful than post live stream research. Perfect. Thank you so much. All right. We have a question from Janet. What suggestions do you have for the first two to three minutes while you wait for everyone to sign on before you get into priority messages? Cool. Thanks Janet for that. And I have seen so many creative ways to do this. My favorite because I am a gardener. I do love my garden is I have seen people take their desk plants, put some notes on them, you know, put it in front of the camera for the first two minutes. It says, hey, we're just waiting for everybody to join. I've seen people, you know, have music playing in the background from maybe their phone and maybe they do a little bit of a dance or they sing to it. People, what we do is we have a slide up on the screen that says, you know, welcome will be starting exactly four minutes. Please mute. Please switch off your camera. Please note that we're recording. We sort of do all the housekeeping in that slide that everybody reads and the CTA the call to action that we put on for those first two to three minutes is please introduce yourself in the chat box and let us know where you're from. So you can choose to do it with your camera on with your camera off. There are many, many creative ways that if you on tiktok or Instagram or Facebook and you're scrolling and you're actually watching other people go live, you'll pick up many creative ways that you can use it and add it to that. For those of you that are representing the libraries. I have so many amazing ideas of what you could do in a library with books, especially those, you know, two to three minutes. So please reach out to us on Twitter using the event hashtag and I'll share that after the decision. Thank you so much, Samantha. I really like the plant idea. That's, that's great. All right, so looking at the time I think we have maybe time for one more question. This one is from Jacob and he asks, do you have any thoughts or past practices to get other staff members to use live video for success stories. My coworkers are not enthusiastic about live video. Absolutely, Jacob, and you are not alone. There are so many people. There are so many nonprofits out there that are experiencing the same problem. Honestly, if there are staff members that are just not wanting to go live, we still have to respect that. At the end of the day, it is their face. It is, you know, their personal information being out there. But there is a way that you can be creative on not having them on the video, but at least getting information from them that you can then turn into a series. Even if it's just you telling your story or their story through your lens and a creative way to do that. If it is a policy that needs to be implemented, if you've got a board that decides that live streaming is the way that you're going to go and everybody will be on camera. Well, then that comes down to, you know, board level and policy management, and it can be very difficult. But ultimately, if there is a coworker that is just not confident at all, doesn't want to be online, we shouldn't be putting them on there. And the best thing to do is to go to that person and say, what do you suggest we do to tell what you are seeing out in the field? Or what do you most want people to hear about the work that you're doing and how can we creatively collaborate on creating their content? And then in terms of best practices, you know, to get other staff members to use your live video for success stories is just a start. If you are sitting with your team and you let them know that you too might be fearful or you too are also navigating this and how can you together as a team create the solution and you slowly work at it. Often you will find that those staff members, they will see you as as an equal as a live streamer and they'll see that you're there to hold their hand and to talk them through it and they will be more trusting to the process. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you so much, Samantha. I think looking at the time, I think we have to get closer to closing the session, but thank you again for all the great tips that you shared. Thank you everyone for attending the session. It was great Q&A section was still filled with questions. So really, really useful tips and content that you shared, Samantha. Thank you.