When is the best time to live stream on DLive, Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, Twitter with Periscope, Mixer by Microsoft, or wherever you want to live stream? The simple answer is any time that feels right, go for it!
What I've noticed is that a lot of us trying to get started with things and improve overly complicate what we are doing with schedules. We try to put everything in a mental box and understand exactly when we should do it, then we try to start doing something like live streaming, and then we have to immediately set a schedule and it has to be this time, at this day of the week, and finally we don't stick to it and we just stop doing it all together.
For me, it is ideal if we can have a schedule. That said, when you are just getting started and/or trying to improve, you probably don't know when the best schedule would be.
Now, if you have got a limited availability, you know you can only live stream at say 11:00 a.m. on Wednesday's Eastern, which I'm currently doing something like that, maybe it's 10:00 a.m., most of the live streams I've done so far though have just been whenever I felt like it, whenever everything was inspiring.
I had six hours to play "Call of Duty Zombies" that day and I just started the live stream. Now, it's ideal to be able to schedule it. That said, take a look at this data.
You don't need to schedule a live stream for it to do really well. One of my top three viewed videos is "Can a pro coach get me out of bronze in League of Legends?" which was a random live stream that almost no one watched at the time. There were maybe one or two live viewers whenever I did it and you will notice now it's got seven hundred and seventy-two thousand views two years later.
That's the power of live streaming just by inspiration. I did schedule the time to do it with the coach, but I didn't tell anyone about the live stream in advance. I didn't put an event up and get people to go to it.
When I started live streaming, I made my live streams a big deal. I would try to build an email list and tell everyone when they were going to be and that can be good. The problem with that is it's a lot of work and most of us are pretty lazy. We have both tendencies: we have the tendency to want to work and we get really lazy.
What did I do when I eventually kept scheduling and making all my live streams a big deal? I stopped doing them all together for a year or two, and then when I got back into it, I just started doing random live streams again and a lot of the best videos I have in terms of the numbers of views are totally random live streams.
I just live streamed something and it ended up doing really well. That is something many of us don't give enough credit for, which is just trusting inspiration.
Now, what's uncomfortable with just trusting inspiration is you don't know ahead of time.
For me, I find I get these ideas that are just bursting to come out. Like one day, I just really wanted to do stand-up comedy, so I did a few stand-up comedy videos and some people liked them.
Does that mean it's going to go viral and be the best ever?
No.
It just means that that's what I need to do that day and a lot of the best videos I've had, have been just random live streams where I felt like I really just wanted to play that game that day, or I really just wanted to do a tutorial on something that day, and I did it.
A lot of these videos, you might say, I didn't set them up and try to get everyone to watch them, I just did them, and what's nice with live streaming, especially on YouTube, is that things will stay up there indefinitely.
You can do a live stream in a random time of day, no one can watch it and you can still have the potential for years to get people to come watch it when you take the time to set everything up organically.
I think that this may be really helpful for you if you are excited about live streaming or you are doing anything similar like video production and you have tried to stick to this rigid schedule.
What I've noticed is a rigid schedule kills my creativity, even though I do have a live-streaming schedule. I try to live stream between 10:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. Eastern every week. Often I start 30 minutes late. Last week missed the stream completely because I was moving and the week before I started an hour late. Showing up is 90% which in grade school terms means I get an "A" just for doing it.
Life is dynamic and there are always things happening, so flexibility is one of those characteristics of life and growth.
For example, the flexible trees tend to be the ones that are growing that blow in the wind, that don't break when there's a storm. The trees that get ultra-rigid and won't move in the wind are the ones that are likely to fall.
I just had one in my backyard. It got so stiff when there was a really windy day one day, it fell down. It was so stiff, the branches wouldn't bend in the wind, and then when the wind blew, it pulled the tree up by the roots and knocked it over.
When the tree was younger and more flexible, it could blow in the wind and it didn't put that much stress on the roots because the branches would give a little bit instead of holding their position transferring all that stress into the roots.
That's the same thing with people, when we get too rigid that tends to be associated with getting older and dying.
You might think that you need to have some professional setup like I've got. You can just do amazing live streams just whipping out your phone. You might be able to do a video that goes viral and people watch for years just by getting out your phone and doing a random live stream, even if you think you don't have that much time to live stream, just doing a random five-minute live stream can make a difference in people's lives.
I'm learning to do that too because I went back and forth with this rigidity thing myself over the years, that I have to live stream a certain time, I have to get people to watch it.
What I've noticed is the desire to force a huge crowd to watch often conflicts on my desire to be genuinely helpful. When I'm genuinely helpful, it doesn't matter if anyone even watches it right away. It's potentially viewable for years, like the "League of Legends" live stream, almost no one watched that when it went up and almost a million people have ended up watching it, and will probably watch it over the course of its lifetime.
I'm grateful to have this to share with you today because I've been through a lot of, "I'm going to schedule my stream at this time or I'm not. I am."
Flexibility tends to work the best.
That's said if you can schedule and do it at a certain time that's good unless it gets in the way of live streaming completely.
If your schedule makes it hard and makes it annoying, it makes it seem like this big deal, then your schedule might be holding you back and it might be time to let go of that schedule.
I'm about a month into doing a scheduled live stream and I may end up dropping it. I leave the option open to change my schedule any time because it's my schedule. It's not a time I have to show up for work and even with work schedules, you can usually negotiate some flexibility there.
I hope I've answered this completely because this might be one of those things you don't think is important until you get into it.
You realize you stopped doing something you love to do because of your schedule and if that's the case, I hope this gives motivation to get back into it and just throw up a stream whenever you feel like it.
Love,
Jerry Banfield with edits by @gmichelbkk on the transcript from @deniskj
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