Five Simple Steps To Get You Started On Periscope
(This post is written by Yusra ELSawi, co-founder of Modern Khadijah Academy, and was originally posted on Muslim Gift Guide)
I know what you might be thinking; another social media platform, seriously?
No, Periscope is not just another social media platform, it is the platform. I have been in the social media and e-marketing business for over 6 years now and saw the benefits & struggles of using Youtube videos, Facebook ads, Pinterest for driving traffic and Instagram for landing great deals & branding, but to be honest none of those provided the rapid growth , business-wise, like Periscope. Owned by Twitter, with over one million users in its first seven days and the equivalence of 20 years of TV in one day on Periscope, this platform is taking the social media world by storm. You might be thinking that you heard this “taking the social media world by storm” claim every time a new social platform launches, and you are right but I would love to mention three reasons why I believe this claim is so true when it comes to Periscope:
– Unlike most social media platforms, Periscope takes no time to understand and hardly any pre & post work to do. It is purely raw, just you, your personality, your expertise and pressing on “Start Broadcast” button. No video or audio editing, no fancy equipment required, no time-consuming graphic designs required, it is only you, good natural lighting, a good WiFi connection and your mobile phone.
– Know-Like-Trust factor on fire! As a business owner you probably know that in order for someone to buy from you or hire you, he/she needs to know more about you, connect with your message and like you on a personal level and then trust you/your business to eventually hand you their credit card. With Periscope this process takes a fraction of the time other social media platform does.
– An outstanding tool for market research. While broadcasting live, your viewers and potential customers can comment and interact with you live, so you could take advantage of this live engagement and ask questions to know how you could serve them better.
Convinced? I hope so!
So let us start by downloading the app from your app/Play store and following these five steps to set your Periscope account for success:
1) Sign up for Periscope using your twitter account.
When signing up for Periscope you will be given two options; either to create a Periscope account or join using your Twitter account, I strongly recommend to sign up using your professional twitter account for three reasons:
- Once you sign up you will be able to invite all your twitter followers to follow you on Periscope.
- Every time you scope live you will be able to send a notification to your Periscope followers and your Twitter followers, eventually getting more live viewer to join you online.
- Using hash-tags in your title is a great way to get your Periscope sessions discovered, however hash-tags aren’t searchable or recognizable by Periscope (yet), but once you use the right hash-tags in your title and share your scope on Twitter you increase your Periscope’s chance of getting discovered via Twitter.
Note: If your Twitter account is a bunch of numbers, either request to change it or sign up for a new one. On Periscope, people like to interact with real people with real names/ company names.
2) Have a unique bio and make good use of it.
Once you sign up using you twitter account, your Twitter’s bio will be automatically transferred to your Periscope’s bio. You could leave it as it is but I believe that the audience of every social platform is unique and different. On your profile page, click on the little guy on your upper right hand-side to edit your bio.
Your bio should contain four main elements:
- Mention what do you do in a very brief manner; you do not want to include your whole resume. Keep it short and sweet.
- Include maximum two-three emojis. Emojis makes your account stand out from the crowd but make sure not to include more than three. Remember the golden rule here is less is more.
- Mention what you will be speaking about in order to give passers-by a reason to follow you.
- Include your website. This is a great opportunity to get traffic to your website by including the link to it in your bio section. If you include your website in this form “modernkhadijah.com ” it will be clickable on Periscope but not on the desktop version. To ensure your website link is clickable on all devices use this form instead : “ https://modernkhadijah.com “
3) Location, location, location.
Right before broadcasting live you’ll be asked if you would like to share your geographic location or keep it off.
Why switch your location on:
- Your broadcast will appear on the search map, hence improving the chance of your Periscope getting discovered.
- A great opportunity if you are speaking at an event or selling your products at a tradeshow or Craft market or even at your brick and mortar store, for your broadcast viewers will get the chance to visit the place you are scoping from and meet you in person, which is great to strengthen your relations with your customers’ offline.
Why switch your location off:
- You guess it! Not a wise idea (AT ALL) to have your location on if you are scoping at home or at any other place where you don’t want people to find you.
- When you have your location on, your scope will show up on the search map as we mentioned earlier and although this is a great opportunity to get discovered it also means that weird people, aka Periscope trolls, will tune into your Periscope session.
4) Trolls!
Like it or hate it, you won’t be able to escape Periscope trolls no matter how hard you try. This is especially true for females, however, every Periscoper I watched got his/her fair share of these weirdos.
The happy news here is there is a solution! Use the block button.
5) Delete, replay or Katch?
At the end of each Periscope session, you will have the chance either to delete it if you wish or leave it for replay. I personally like to leave mine for replay because not everyone could watch your Periscope live due to time differences or maybe being at work. Another benefit of leaving your scope for replay is you enhance your chance of getting more non-followers to view your broadcast and if they like your personality, topics you speak about and find your content valuable they will follow you.
Replays will be available only for 24 hours so if you wish to keep them up for more than that use www.Katch.me .
You should sign up at Katch and include the hash-tag #Katch in your title to get your scope automatically saved and available for as long as you wish.
Note : You could change your setting on Periscope so your scopes get saved automatically to your camera roll, but make sure you have enough space on your mobile.
See you on Periscope!
www.periscope.tv/modernkhadijah
http://instagram.com/modernkhadijahacademy
https://twitter.com/ModernKhadijah
