How to Live Stream a Podcast in 5 Steps
Have you considered live streaming your podcast? This podcast distribution method offers a more engaging alternative to the traditional on-demand streaming format you’re probably used to.
Live streaming is a powerful way to gain more visibility than other prominent podcasters in your space. It also allows you to build a community, discover what your audience wants, and of course, open up versatile new podcast monetization options.
If you’re new to the whole idea of live streaming, don’t fret. In this post, we’ll break down how to live stream a podcast in five simple steps, covering everything from setting up your platform to following up with your audience after a successful live broadcast.
Let’s get to it!
Table of Contents
- Streaming a Podcast: The Basics
- How to Start a Live Podcast
- How to Stream a Podcast
- Stream a Podcast on Maestro
Streaming a Podcast: The Basics
Live streaming a podcast is simple: instead of pre-recording it, you’re making it available for your audience to tune into live, like a radio show.
There are many benefits of live streaming your podcast, including:
- Growing engagement with your audience
- Boosting your reputation as an authority in your space
- Monetizing your audience in new ways (such as premium subscriptions or ticketed live events)
- Selling merch in-stream with live commerce
In order to actually stream a podcast, you need a few things: a live streaming platform, the right equipment, an internet connection, a studio or controlled environment, and of course, something interesting to say.
Check out our guide to live podcasting to learn more about the types of live podcasts and the additional benefits of this method of podcast distribution.
How to Start a Live Podcast
First things first: do you already have an existing podcast with an audience and distribution to major podcast platforms?
If you already have a podcast, feel free to jump to the next section to get into the step by step of streaming a live podcast. Otherwise, let’s talk a little about what it takes to start your own podcast.
1. Define Your Audience
Everything starts with knowing who you want to listen to your podcast. This could include all kinds of demographic data like age, gender, location, and income levels, as well as psychographic factors like hobbies and interests.
With this information in mind, you’ll be able to create a podcast that directly caters to your target audience.
2. Make a Plan
What kind of format will your show follow? Are you primarily doing a solo show, or is it an interview-based podcast? Will you carefully script every episode or allow for free-form conversation?
Beyond that, you need to think about your brand, your publishing schedule, your equipment, and additional team members or freelancers to help you handle everything from design to video editing. You’ll also want to pick a podcast platform that you can stick with for the long haul (more on that in a bit).
3. Create Content
Based on your chosen audience and your plan, you can start brainstorming topic ideas and creating episode outlines or scripts. From there, you’re ready to start recording episodes.
In the end, it’s totally up to you whether to dive right into a live podcast format from day one, or ease into it after building up some experience with the traditional pre-recorded format first.
Either way, you should have all your bases covered to ensure your podcast live stream is as effective as possible.
How to Stream a Podcast
Now comes the fun part! Once you have an established podcast with a defined audience in mind, you’re ready to think about how to do a live podcast episode.
The following steps will get a little technical but bear with us. It’s important to understand what’s involved in broadcasting your podcast to the world in real-time.
1. Set Up Your Streaming Platform
In order to live stream your podcast, you’ll need to decide on the right streaming platform and get set up. Obviously, there are the usual popular choices like Facebook Live or YouTube Live, but there are a lot of benefits to investing in a professional-grade, white-label podcast streaming platform.
A paid streaming platform, like Maestro, offers robust monetization options, greater control of your branding and content, and opportunities for better engagement and audience interaction.
Fortunately, getting set up on the platform of your choice doesn’t have to be difficult. Most decent podcast platforms will walk you through the initial steps. For example, Maestro offers an onboarding Wizard, which helps you get started by pinpointing what you’re looking to do on the platform, including unique monetization options.
Ultimately, whatever platform you choose, you’ll usually have the same basic things to consider during setup for a stream:
- Video and audio input sources
- Title and description for your stream
- Chat moderation settings
These may take some experimenting to get right, which is why we always recommend doing at least one trial run of your live podcast before the real thing.
If you’re interested in learning more about how to get started with Maestro, sign up today to start live streaming your podcast for free!
2. Schedule the Podcast
Once you feel comfortable with your chosen live stream platform and you’re ready to host a live podcast, it’s time to pick a date and time for your virtual event. This will ensure that you’re as prepared as possible. Preparedness is key since there isn’t much room for mistakes when you’re live streaming.
Since this is a live podcast, you’ll need to make doubly sure that hosts and guests are available, logistics are handled, equipment is working, and the timing works well for your audience.
Depending on your platform, you should be able to schedule your stream in advance to make it easy for your audience to log on once you’re live.
3. Promote Your Podcast
Okay, you’ve got your platform ready, and you’ve got a date and time set for your first live podcast. Now what?
The next step is to promote the podcast to your audience. If no one knows about your live podcast, you’re depending on people to happen across it once you’re on the air. You can improve your chances of gathering a large audience by sharing the link to your stream on social media, your website, and your email list.
Another way to promote your podcast is with strategic partners. Can you think of any brands, podcasters, or companies in your orbit with an audience that might be interested in your live event? Try securing a guest blog post, cross-promotional email, mention on social, or even an appearance on other podcasts to help get exposure to totally new potential listeners and viewers.
Depending on the value of this event for your business, you may even consider paid promotions. You can run ads with Google, Facebook, and other social platforms.
4. Go Live
Finally, the day has arrived! You’ve done a trial run to make sure you know how to live stream with all of the requisite people and equipment involved – and everything is good to go.
If you have any background as a podcaster, then you already know the drill. The biggest difference between a typical pre-recorded podcast and a live podcast is that you don’t have the opportunity to edit or cut any flubs while the podcast is being streamed, which is why you need to make sure you’re fully prepared with the people, the equipment, and the outline.
The other major difference with a live broadcast is the heavy emphasis on real-time engagement. Whether that’s answering questions in the live chat, responding to audience comments, or shouting out individuals in attendance, this live interaction is what will really elevate your live event and make the audience feel special.
Although there’s a little more pressure when your podcast is live streamed, remember to have fun with it. It doesn’t have to be stuffy and scripted. It should be an expression of you and your brand.
5. Follow Up
You might think once the live event is over, your work is done, but that’s not quite true. Your live streaming platform should allow you to save a recording of the live stream, so you should plan to distribute it as a new episode of your podcast and even cut up clips of it for social.
Beyond repurposing content from your live podcast, you should reach out to all attendees and thank them for showing up. This can be done over email, social, and anywhere else your audience engages with you online.
Last but not least, you should evaluate how the live stream went. Did you get the audience you were hoping for? How did engagement look? Did you hit your monetization goals? Do a recap assessment to capture all the ways you can do a better job the next time.
Now, it’s time to start planning your next live podcast! The more podcasts you stream, the more effective they’ll be for your brand, whether your goal is greater audience reach, engagement, total revenue, or all of the above.
Stream a Podcast on Maestro
Live streaming a podcast can be a game-changer for your brand. Thankfully, it’s not difficult to pull off with the right tools.
Looking for a platform to live stream your podcasts? Maestro is the solution for you. Our streaming platform supports both live and on-demand video streaming, so you can distribute your podcast however you like.
What makes Maestro unique is that we offer a variety of tools to make your live podcast episodes engaging and interactive. Additionally, we offer a slew of video monetization tools so you generate revenue from your show.
Are you ready to launch your podcast on Maestro? Sign up today to start podcasting for free.
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