Growing a brand requires getting in front of the right people. While live streaming helps you reach your target audience, multistreaming takes you further.

But what is multistreaming? Why should you multistream? How to do it? This guide will answer it all.

So, keep reading to learn everything about streaming to multiple channels!

What is Multistreaming?

With so many live streaming platforms available, it’s tough to believe you can be live on multiple channels at once. Well, this is what multistreaming is. It is going live on different channels simultaneously.

When you multistream, you can go live on various platforms like YouTube, Facebook, etc. No need to cater to different channels’ audiences at different timings.

What’s more interesting is that a live streaming studio, such as Wave.video, also lets you brand your live streams as you multistream.

You may think that live streaming is all about live interaction, engagement, and content. While that’s not entirely wrong, there also lies a massive opportunity for brands to foster their brand identity with unique-looking broadcasts featuring customized scene layouts, stream overlays, themes, and templates.

Why Multistream?

Now that we’ve covered what is multistreaming, let’s look at the different ways it can help brands and creators maximize live streaming’s true potential:

1. Extend your audience reach

Much like you’d promote your brand on different channels to reach more audiences, live streaming experts vouch for multistreaming to bring in more leads for your business. The premise is simple, the wider your presence, the extended will be your audience reach. So, the exposure your live streams can get on Facebook and YouTube together is always going to be more than what Facebook can give you alone.

2. Fully utilize your precious time

We all know how difficult it is to build a brand online. From deciding about the content to producing live broadcasts, inviting guests, understanding your videos’ key metrics, and conceptualizing a strategy that takes you closer to your brand’s long-term goals – a lot goes into brand creation and expansion. Consequently, it makes sense to use tools that help you fully utilize the limited time you may have.

With multistreaming, you not just save the time to build audiences on different platforms, it also lets you interact with multiple audiences in real-time and build a community everywhere you want – without investing time on separate platforms.

3. Multiply your sources of income

Although some may label live streaming an “engagement” channel, it’s more than that. Given your live streams’ monetization capabilities, you can multiply your income sources by live streaming on multiple channels at once. For example, you can create membership tiers on Twitch and YouTube and earn income from them. You can also increase your sponsorship opportunities or bring in more donations through simulcasting.

4. Dive deeper into audience insights

Your target audience is scattered across platforms. Through multistreaming, you can use the analytics available for each platform and find out more about your audience’s demographics and the type of content they seek. Doing this also helps you learn which platforms your target audience is most active on and focus your efforts on improving your presence on those platforms.

5. Leverage enhanced flexibility

One of the key benefits of multistreaming is that it delivers enhanced flexibility. For example, if you promote your live streams on Facebook and YouTube and due to a technical glitch if your live broadcast doesn’t stream on Facebook, your audience can still watch you live on YouTube.

This way, you won’t lose out on your credibility and avoid disappointing your viewers which may happen if you stream on a single platform and cancel it for any reason.

Ways to Multistream

When it comes to multistream, you can do it in more than one way: software, hardware, and cloud-based solutions. All you have to do is identify the streaming platform that best suits your requirements.

Multistreaming hardware

While many consider this option for tech-savvy users, owing to its complexity, it can still opt if you’re okay with a steep learning curve. And even though a hardware encoder is pretty reliable as it handles the processing load to stream to multiple channels, it still requires a good internet upload speed for smoother simulcasting. Plus, a hardware encoder is usually an expensive multistreaming option than software and web-based solutions.

Multistreaming software

Another widely used option to multistream is software. Now, this could be easy on the pockets, but it does demand a solid computer with good CPU capacity, as going live on different destinations using the software can be tricky if the machine isn’t high-end. Then, again, you’d need a high internet upload speed to prevent choppy video or those audio lags.

Cloud multistreaming solutions

Last but not least, there are cloud-based streaming platforms like Wave.video.

As the cloud does all the heavy lifting, you don’t need to invest in high-end CPUs or upgrade your internet bandwidth. In fact, using a cloud-based solution, you can also multistream using your smartphone and a 4G connection and enjoy high-quality live videos on all your preferred streaming destinations.

This solution calls for no downloads, no hardware requirements, and you can even use some of these tools for free.

How to Multistream?

Step 1: Go to Wave.video and set up your live stream

Log into your Wave.video account and set up your live stream by creating your scene layouts. You can drag, drop and rotate on-screen elements. You can also save presets to reuse later.

Step 2: Fill in stream details form

With Wave.video, you can stream to multiple channels at once. Add different streaming destinations or choose from the ones already added and expand your reach. Add an event title, description, and setup destinations. If you want, you can schedule streaming for later, and announce it on social media.

Step 3: Enter studio

Here you can check if your microphone is working, change the display name, add a title if needed, check out shortcuts.

Next, in the studio, you can also add custom overlays, themes, backdrop images, and more to brand your live streams.

Step 4: Go live

Hit the “Go live” button on the top right whenever ready and multistream like never before!

Tips to Make the Most of Multistreaming

Here’s a cheat sheet to better multistreaming that can help you make it big through your live content:

Promote before you go live

As multistreaming focuses on expanding your audience reach, make sure you tell your audience when and where you are going live. Use social media to promote your upcoming live broadcasts. You can even use your social media channels to gather information to create better content. For example, you can share an Instagram story poll to ask for ideas about the topic your audience would like to know more about.

Make multistreaming fun

Who says going live has to be boring – especially when you are broadcasting? Well, you can always jazz things up with stunning intros, outros, overlays, themes, templates, etc., and offer compelling content as you multistream.

Brand your live broadcasts

Don’t forget to put a little more oomph into your broadcasts by integrating your branding into your broadcasts. From using your brand fonts and colors to customized backgrounds, there’s a lot you can do to create visual consistency as you simulcast.

Here’s how we brand our live streams at Wave.video:

Focus on post-production too

This is where most live streamers fall short. While focusing on creating those perfect live streams is good, one should remember that post-production edits can work magic in creating stellar video-on-demand content.

You can use Wave.video to add some of the most remarkable effects to your live broadcasts and increase their reach even when they have ended. Learn more about repurposing live content in this fantastic guide.

Monetize your content

Thanks to options like YouTube Super Chat, Buy Me a Coffee, etc., you can easily monetize your live streams. Then there are also opportunities to make money through affiliate marketing (think Amazon Live), brand collaborations, sponsorships, selling physical merchandise, and the rest.

But these options to earn income from your live streams don’t end with the broadcasts. You can always edit your live streams, create VOD-friendly videos, and share them with paid subscribers through YouTube Channel Memberships or third-party platforms like Patreon.

Here’s more on YouTube Channel Memberships and how you can earn money using this YouTube feature as you multistream:

Loosen it up with pre-recorded videos

If live streaming isn’t your cup of tea, you can still multistream and extend your viewership with high-quality pre-recorded videos. Just record incredible footage, edit it using Wave.video, and upload it on our hosting platform. Then, whenever you want, use our multistreaming feature to stream your pre-recorded videos to multiple channels at once. And that’s how you go live without going live. Superb, isn’t it?

Over to you

Go ahead, go live on different platforms and build your live brand up the right way.

There’s a lot your brand can achieve through multistreaming, and now with Wave.video, multistreaming has become easier and better than ever.

To learn more about how Wave.video is changing the live streaming landscape, be sure to check out our YouTube channel!