During this difficult time as we’re all social distancing due to coronavirus, we have been attending lots of wonderful live wine-related events lately – Zoom happy hours, virtual tastings, Instagram winemaker interviews, and live music by musicians sitting alone in empty tasting rooms. It’s a great way to stay connected with our fellow bloggers, our friends, our fans and readers, and the wineries we love to support and write about.
If you are just talking about your wine, being interviewed by someone off camera, or doing a video by yourself, you can just use IGTV and Facebook Live. But if you want multiple people to join you, you’ll need to use another method to get more people on the screen with you.
While many live virtual happy hours and wine tastings are happening on Zoom, we recommend hosting your winery’s live video events on platforms (such as Facebook and Instagram) that your customers are actually present on and using all day long. (We’re also concerned about the security problems going on over at Zoom, as well).
We suggest you start using StreamYard, and please keep reading to find out why..
If your winery’s fans are on Facebook by the hundreds or thousands, and you have hundreds or thousands of fans of your winery following you on Instagram, why would you make your fans leave the platform to go watch your event somewhere else? If you give them a Zoom link or a Google Hangouts link for your event, they’re leaving Facebook to go view your event elsewhere. And that means you’re missing out on the opportunity for other fans who aren’t participating with you live on camera, to watch and interact in the comments.
When you host a live virtual happy hour or wine tasting on Facebook Live, your fans can start Watch Parties and show the video on their personal timeline to all THEIR friends, many of whom might not (yet) be fans of your winery on Facebook.
Hosting live events on Instagram Live is great too, and perfect for winemaker interviews or live wine tastings, but you can only invite one other guest to join you on camera.
So if you plan to hold a round-table chat with multiple people participating from their own remote houses, we recommend using StreamYard on your winery’s Facebook business Page. You can share the live video to your YouTube channel at the same time, or to a second Business Page.
Read the StreamYard FAQ for more information on how it works. There’s also a nice video on their front page at Streamyard.com you can watch on how to use the service.
You don’t have to download an app to use StreamYard – yay! I hate cluttering up my phone with apps. Use the service right there on their website.
For the best possible experience, use StreamYard on a desktop computer or your laptop. You CAN use it with a tablet or a phone, but it’s really better to use it on a bigger computer. Whenever you’re going Live, you’ll want to be indoors where extraneous background noise won’t interfere, and where you have the best possible wifi signal in your house. If possible, connect your desktop or laptop directly to your home router using a long Ethernet cable, as video takes up a lot of your wifi bandwidth within your house.
Basically you log in by giving them your email address and then typing in the code they’ll send you via email. Connect your Facebook Page, Facebook group, Facebook personal profile, YouTube channel, LinkedIn profile or Linkedin page, whatever works best for you.
You’ll have to authorize StreamYard to publish as your Page or your Profile or your YouTube channel in order for this to work. I felt safe doing so after doing research on StreamYard and their business practices and security measures.
StreamYard is free, but I paid something like $20 per month to upgrade it so we could share videos to both our Woodinville Wine Blog Page and YouTube channel at the same time. (We don’t have very many fans subscribed to our YouTube channel though, hint, hint!)
I’ve authorized StreamYard on several of my Pages, my personal profile (for chatting with several friends) and my YouTube channels.
You can create a broadcast immediately, or schedule one for the future. If you schedule a broadcast, StreamYard will ask you to upload a thumbnail graphic, and they’ll immediately post a little notice about your plans to go live on such-and-such a date and time on the Facebook Page you’ve authorized it to publish on.
If you schedule a broadcast, you can immediately get a link to invite your guests to join the screen later on. The link looks something like: https://streamyard.com/urk2qrtsc3
Best practices: Email the link to your guests as well as message it to them on Facebook Messenger.
If your guest clicks the link, they’re added into your live event’s “lobby” or virtual green room, where they wait until you approve them to enter. (You’ll see a little gray pic of them so you know who is trying to join). This makes it so only people you have invited to go on screen with you can pop in. You can also mute people who have background noise distracting the sound in your event, or ask them to mute their own mic.
Your guests can choose the name they want to display on screen under their image. (Best practices – use your first name and winery’s name.. For example, Mari – Damsel Cellars).
You can have six people on screen at the same time, and four more waiting in the “lobby” for their turn being interviewed. Just switch out someone else off camera so you can swap someone new in.
Best practices: Create an Event on Facebook for your fans to subscribe to attend, so they won’t forget when your live event is happening. Be sure to mention something in the event’s description about where to watch your event – give them your Facebook Page web address.
Here you can see that we’ve invited a few people from the local Woodinville wine industry and food blogging scene to join us live on camera. Our page fans who are watching can participate in the comments, which are shown to us on the right hand side of the screen. I can choose to surface some of the more interesting comments as a banner overlay on the video to make it easier for our viewers to see the comment. This has tended to amplify participation.
Remember: The more people who interact with your event by Liking and Commenting, the more Facebook will show your video to more of your fans.
Best practices: Have someone who isn’t Live on camera helping with your event – someone who has moderation access to your Page so they can Comment back to your fans as your winery’s Page. If you have a social media manager, have them help you with this.
We recommend using StreamYard for:
- Virtual wine tastings
- Virtual happy hours
- Interviews with multiple winemakers or winery staff
- Wine trivia games
- Wine bingo
- Wine industry round tables
- WineWednesday
- ThirstyTuesday/ThirstyThursday
- SundayFunday
- Group live online cooking classes
- Wine pairing classes
Tempted to use StreamYard? Any questions about what it’s been like to use it? Drop us a note in the comments below, or via email, FB or Instagram DMs!
-Carrie
Woodinville Wine Blog on Facebook
Woodinville Wine Blog on Instagram
Woodinville Wine Blog on Twitter
