Your Remote Marketing Agency

It's easy to say that the past few months have been difficult for many businesses. Coronavirus has meant that many organisations are in a state of flux; their marketing and business plans are paused at best or, at worst, in the bin.

This can be scary and we've not been immune from this either.

However, we're here to help clients in every way possible to not only survive during these times but hopefully to thrive. Not only have we adapted to the "new normal", but we've also taken several new approaches to ensure that whatever is thrown our way, we can deliver for our clients and be your outsourced in-house remote marketing agency. Whether that is to prepare to get back-up-and-running following lockdown, adapting websites to focus more on e-commerce rather than bricks and mortar stores, or adjusting campaigns to maximise return on investment, we're here to help you.

Prior to lockdown, many of our team already worked from home, ensuring we can be proactive in responding to clients' needs while maintaining a healthy work/life balance. As a result, we are well accustomed to operating in a digital space. Since lockdown, we are engaging with clients over video conferencing software too, and this has led to a significant improvement in information flow, enabling us to become a bigger part of our client's day-to-day operation.

Alongside video conferencing, we've been working with clients to understand how coronavirus has affected their business. This involves analysing their current strategy, whether it is fit for purpose during this period and, if not, working with them to develop new strategies to either temporarily run during the lockdown, and what those plans may look like on the other side of this.

We've then reacted diligently and executed new marketing campaign creative, website design in Cornwall, social media campaigns, blogs and PPC in response to those new strategies.

We hope we're through the worst of the epidemic in the UK. As the economy comes out of hibernation, we're ready to help our clients reopen to and maximise every opportunity that presents itself. We're your remote marketing agency.

If you need a new marketing strategy, new media representation or a new website constructed, contact Fortico Media now and let's have a virtual coffee!

Creativity, collaboration and the benefits of technology

On both a professional and personal level, a lot has changed for me. For now at least, as a company, we are doing what we need to, taking care of ourselves and our loved ones, adapting to a different way of living and most certainly a different way of working.

The entire team at Fortico Media is working remotely. We are no longer together in the same office, sharing the same space, thoughts and ideas in one remarkable creative setting.

What has replaced that is an arsenal of tools that allow us to work differently. Much like the rest of the world, we too have embraced apps such as Google Hangouts, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams to make sure we can meet in ways that embrace creativity. We also keep in constant touch via Skype, Slack and WhatsApp. At the same time, our recently launched custom project management tool enables us to keep track of ongoing projects even more efficiently.

You might think that so much change would knock us off our stride or force us to take our eye off the ball. Yet we haven't just embraced change, we are thriving on it.

Working remotely is working... It's working because, for us, creativity is and always will be a collaborative process. Coming together to solve problems, deliver the best possible results and use the very best of each person's strengths and qualities is something we've always done. It's part of our ethos and our DNA.

When it came to the challenge of maintaining that during a time when we weren't all together, well... It was always going to bring out the best in us. It has, and I couldn't be more proud of the team and those who are a part of it.

Of course, we miss our offices in Central London; we miss the faces, the coffee shops, the sights and sounds of the place we (at least in a professional sense) call home. But, we don't miss each other, thanks to the technology at our disposal we can all collaborate, meet, talk and manage projects more efficiently than ever...

For the time being, we are staying put, following the advice and guidelines given to us. There's a whole world out there doing much the same. Organisations like ours are now working differently, making plans, creating ideas and adjusting to a new kind of normal.

Our experience has taught us a lot and has stood us in the best possible stead to help companies look at new ways to communicate.

If you have a project, contact me, perhaps we can meet for a coffee over Zoom!

Take care, stay safe.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, is it true?

You might have the best idea in the world, the best business or the finest service in your field, but if the quality of the imagery you share isn’t up to that same standard, then it can all be for nothing.

You might think professional photography and the very best quality images it can deliver are a luxury, an unnecessary expense. You might think about taking them yourself, or using stock images, if it’s good enough for your competitors, why not you?

The fact is, a professional image created by someone who has taken the time to know and understand you and your brand is priceless. High-quality photography can engage your audience in a way that nothing else can. It can build your brand and contribute to success quickly. If your competitors aren’t doing it, right there and right now there is an advantage to be had, and it’s a big one.

Why waste those thousand words describing to your audience what you can do when one professional photograph can show them?

Your online presence, particularly on social media is representative of your brand on a deep level, isn’t it worth investing the time and care with photos as good as they can be?

Bespoke, personal photographs enable your customers to get to know the real you, your company, your ethos. Try getting that same effect from a stock photo.

Boost your search engine optimisation (SEO) and draw people to your pages for longer with optimised images that are an important part of SEO.

Images are assets! Your images can be used across brochures, marketing campaigns, social media posts, building familiarity and driving engagement time and again.

Whatever your industry, successful promotion and marketing always start with professional imagery, the most vital ammunition in building a successful online presence.

If it’s visual content you need, we deliver.

4 Great Tips for Celebrating Niche Holidays On Social Media

It seems like every time you go on Facebook or Twitter that someone is celebrating an obscure holiday. At the time of writing, it’s ‘celebrate your unique talent day’. So, I am – with a blog post about how social media marketers can use these niche holidays to their advantage.

No matter what industry you are in, whether it is retail, telecoms or even something as bland as insurance, these niche holidays is a great way to engage and connect with your customers and target audience. These holidays are universal (either humorous, silly or informative) and can easily be incorporated into your branding. This can result in some great engagement for your social profiles, such as increased followers, sales and brand perception – which results in a healthy bank balance.

So how can you utilise these holidays to their full potential?

Research of Your Audience and Industry Goes a Long Way

Like any marketing and branding exercise, knowing your audience is fundamental. Research your industry and find out the holidays that are relevant and universal. Websites such as daysoftheyear.com will be helpful to find many niche holidays. While most of them will not be related to your brand or industry, they can be tweaked in your favour. It is also important not to celebrate holidays that will have a negative impact on your brand.

For instance, a dentist should be active on ‘Flossing Day’ (25th of November) and reflect the importance of flossing. On the other hand, a dentist would be unlikely to celebrate ‘Junk Food Day’ (21st July) – due to the majority of junk food causing cavities.

That said, a dentist shouldn’t go out and denounce ‘Junk Food Day’ as they will likely come off as a ‘party pooper’ and likely hurt the brand.

Use Niche Holidays as An Excuse For…

Personality

Social media is built for personalisation and many brands are great at giving an inside view to their company. Niche holidays only enhance this personalisation. On ‘Ugly Christmas Sweater Day’ (16th December), the dentist can come in their most hideous Christmas jumpers and take a photograph for social media.

Because other people will be celebrating the day in some way, it brings a common interest and value – making your brand feel authentic and more relatable.

Deals & Competitions

Christmas is the busiest time for many industries, especially retail. After the Boxing Day sales, revenue drops and there aren’t many other major commercialised holidays to conduct sales – especially in summer.

By using deals that are only available on specific niche holidays, it gives you the element of surprise. Your audience won’t be expecting a discount code on ‘Flossing Day’ and, by creating urgency for a discount for a single day, your audience will share it with their friends and drive traffic to your website.

On top of single days, there are also niche holidays that last weeks and months. These give much more leeway for bigger promotions. For example, a dentist may post a puzzle a week during ‘Brainteaser Month (April 2016) and run a promotion, such as a discount, for the winner of each teaser.

Gain Exposure on An International and Local Level

The great thing about these niche holidays is that those who are interested in the same holiday as your business will be more likely to find you. For example, those who are interested in ‘Floss Day’ will likely be interested in dental health. For a dentist, these are the exact people they would want to target.

However, while these niche holidays are universal and internationally celebrated on social media, a brand shouldn’t neglect those holidays that are local to their business. For example, a dentist in Newcastle may want to post about the Great North Run during the event to increase exposure to the local population.

Take advantage of these opportunities to connect with your audience and your rewards will be an increase in engagement and revenue. We can’t tell you what holidays you should celebrate and what you should do for them, but what we can tell you is that you shouldn’t ignore them – it’s a missed opportunity.

IFTTT: How Automation Can Save Marketers Time

Working in marketing is sometimes like a juggling act. Our roles have a wide variety of responsibilities, from content writing, brand strategy to graphic design. However, many marketers trundle through these roles without realising that many of the repetitive processes can be automated through IFTTT, meaning you have more time to focus on other tasks.

What is IFTTT?

IFTTT stands for ‘If This Then That’ and is a platform for creating apps that can do things for you when certain triggers are set off. IFTTT is enhanced when it can connect different digital applications, websites, smartphones, gadgets together and, essentially, interact with one another. This makes life easier by not having to manually do every little thing.

For small business owners, IFTTT can become your new best friend. With applets (the instructions for each automation), you can reduce the amount of time you have to spend on marketing quite drastically, with a minimal setup and without affecting the quality.

What Can I Do With IFTTT?

There are several premade applets that are extremely useful to marketers. Here are our favourites:

Instagram allows you to post to Twitter when you upload a new photo. However, this is a link back to the Instagram app. The two platforms don’t get along. With IFTTT, you can instruct the program to take that photo from Instagram and re-upload it to Twitter as a picture – easily saving 3-5 minutes every time.

If you want to write your blog across multiple platforms, IFTTT can do that. This is one of the most popular applets that allows you to automatically post to your Medium account once you post a blog on your WordPress account.

Want to know what people on Reddit are saying about your company. This applet sends you an email every time your company is mentioned, allowing you to respond quickly.

This applet is good if you have shopfront and want to know what your customers are saying when they’re nearby or on your premises.

There are many more available on the IFTTT website under the ‘discover’ menu. 

How Do I Create an Applet?

IFTTT recipe

If you cannot find a premade applet for your desired automation, you can simply create your own. To make an applet, you need to choose the ‘if’ and the desired action. IFTTT does the rest. This is known as a recipe.

One useful recipe to marketers would be to monitor and be alerted when your competitors publish a new blog to find out what they’re offering their customers. Here’s an example of how you would create a recipe to automate this process.

That’s it! Every time your competitor publishes a blog, you will be the first to know.

Have a go yourself and see what you can achieve with IFTTT. However, be wary that too much automation may lead to depersonalisation and a hollower experience for your followers. Think of it as something to supplement your marketing efforts, rather than a replacement.

Lead Generation

Lead generation is a term that many people have heard of but appear to run a mile when asked to implement it. It’s a rather simple concept and you are almost certain to have done it already without even realising it.

Simply put, what is lead generation?

First of all, we have to ask what a lead is. A lead is someone showing interest in you, your product/service or your company. If the lead is followed, it may result in a sale.

Essentially, lead generation is getting potential new customers to come to you. The difference is that they initiate the relationship, not you. Normally, customers will provide you with their contact details, such as an email or phone number. Customers who sign up are expecting to receive information from you – making them much less likely to reject what you have to say. However, you need to lay the groundwork to accumulate the leads.

What are some examples of a lead?

All industries will rely on following leads to ensure revenue for the business. So what can you consider a lead? Here are a few examples:

How do I generate leads on my website?

Once a customer visits your site, their information as a lead or sale is your top priority. There are a few ways that you can achieve this:

Forms

By providing forms for customers to give their details, this will lead to customers giving their details over to you. However, many will be unwilling to give you it without some sort of trade such as a discount code.

Offers/Trades

Providing an offer for your potential customer/lead to part with their information. The offer has to be worthwhile, such as a 10% discount code for a retail website, for them to give up their details.

Call-to-Actions

By providing call-to-actions, such as a sales image or a sign-up button, you can instruct your potential customers what you want them to do. These call-to-actions can be anything you want it to be. Most CTAs are instructing the user to use their service, part with their information or part with their cash. An example is a ‘Sign Up’ or ‘Buy Now’ buttons. However, you can be as creative as you like that represent your brand.

However, all this is all irrelevant if your website is not optimised for your customers’ experience. If your website is poor, then the leads generated will simply go to your website and then bounce. Ensuring your website is well designed, aesthetically pleasing and up-to-date, your bounce rate should be low and should be generating leads.

So how do you get people to your website to become leads or customers?

 

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Once you have a website, ensuring that your website appears near the top of search results on phrases relating to your business/products is a top priority. Google is used by 1.17 billion people per month. By having your website near the top, it is the best way to increase traffic to your site substantially.

EXAMPLE: A florist with a website optimises their website by choosing to focus on Townsville and provide a lot of information about flowers. Their website would list when a potential customer searches ‘Townsville florist’.

Blogs/Info Content

Blogs are important as many customers are now self-educated and will search online for information. You should provide quality content that informs and make your brand stand out from the noise. This will lead to more conversions.

Another reason why blogs are great as they can be shared on social sites. By having a call-to-action (such as subscribe to the blog or share on social media), it will encourage prospective customers and re-engage old ones.

EXAMPLE: A company selling shoes may blog about the latest footwear fashion with a call to action to buy shoes or sign up to an email newsletter.

Email marketing

This method is a really useful tool for those who are already interested in your business. These are usually warm or qualified leads and are usually close to making a purchase – but are waiting for the funds or a sale to do so.

By emailing directly to these leads, you can email sales offers, news items or new products of interest. Ultimately, these will take them back to your site to make a sale.

EXAMPLE: A man read the blog about the latest fashion for shoes and decided to sign up for the newsletter to keep up to date. In the future, he sees a shoe he likes and is taken back to the website for more information.

Social Media

Social media has been a great liberator of the consumer. People who have bought your product may be talking about it on social platforms – making it easy for prospective customers to find out from other customers’ experience.

Social media from a company’s perspective has shifted from direct sales to branding in recent years. This is great for lead nurturing through instilling trust through your market knowledge. It is also great for creating hype for an event, product launch or sale through call-to-actions to visit your website, download coupons etc. This is also particularly useful when combined with paid social advertising.

EXAMPLE: A man who enjoys playing video games follows a game retailer on Facebook. The games retailer posts that they have a sale on a selection of titles. The man reads this and clicks to see what is on offer and then makes a purchase.

Other Methods

There are also many offline methods to generate leads, such as trade events, word-of-mouth and print advertising.

Are your online channels not generating leads? Is your website not up to the job of converting potential customers?

Want to reach Generation Z? Use Snapchat (and others)!

Oh the elusive Generation Z, who are they? What do they like? How do you reach them? The multi-million dollar questions that brands have trouble identifying. This growing, technologically native generation is simultaneously a huge market for advertisers and requires nuanced ways to be reached as they tend to avoid traditional forms of media and spend significant amounts of time online on one device or another.

The so-called Generation Z spends a lot of time online and I mean a lot, 70% of Snapchats users are under 25 and with 13-18-year-olds spending several hours a day online in some form, social media heavily drives this of course with the most popular apps – Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat taking up their share of time. And you guessed it, a large amount of this online use is squarely on mobile phones.

You probably already know about Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and the multitude of ways to advertise with them but did you know Snapchat is full of myriad Gen Z-ers happily snapping away and open to potential savvy, intelligent advertising.

It seems straightforward enough, go to where the people are and the people, in this case, the answer is clear – social media. Big brands have already jumped on the bandwagon and have used the popular app, as do big events from music awards to film awards and so on, with the nature of the app making it great for live events and instant sharing of videos.

The idea may seem novel and completely alien to anyone over the age of say, 25, having an app for videos and photos that disappear after 10 seconds? What’s the point? Well, hundreds of millions of its users (often teenagers) see value in it and regularly use it, with a reported daily active user count of up to 175 million people. All pointing to the lasting popularity of quick consumption of content, being in the know and seeing what your friends are up to while being able to very quickly share what you’re up to as well.

And how can you use it? Snapchats’ filter and photo annotation features can be great for making quirky, creative and engaging content and ironically, the fleeting nature of its content can be used create ongoing stories, documenting an event for example. Snapchat, in fact, was the first app to incorporate the use of the stories feed before both Facebook and Instagram famously co-opted it in 2016, with even YouTube now being interested in it.

Other ways to use the app include promoting products via e-commerce, share content via stories and don’t forget those crucial influencers – social media users with a massive reach that can help boost a brand. Snapchats high level of activity is great for businesses as the app will often be opened and used several times in a day, helping to increase the visibility of adverts for example.

‘Being in the know’ is the basis that social media was built on and it’s what drove the success of the likes of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and while Snapchat may not exactly reach the influence or reach of any the above platforms, it still holds sway over a lot of Generation Z and is an effective way to reach out to them.

Debate Time: Celebrity Endorsements

Josh Joda and Ross Purves discuss whether traditional media and celebrity endorsement is losing its influence to influencer marketing.

Josh Joda – Influencer Marketing is the Future!

Much has been said about traditional forms of advertising and their effectiveness in an increasingly digital and connected world, I don’t think it’s too controversial to say that the influence of celebrity advertising is ebbing away, though that’s not to say it’s a practice that is completely useless. But in terms of the effectiveness of celebrity endorsement campaigns, celebrity influence is waning. This, in part, has led to the rise of influencer marketing, influencers come in a few different forms, ranging from mega to micro. Getting to the crux of it, the hard truth is that younger generations are smart, savvy and less trusting in brands, being much more likely to listen to a YouTuber over a famous actor, model or athlete. The average person is bombarded with advertising every day and will most likely ignore the vast majority of it. But seeing peers or influencers talk positively about a product can be very appealing.

Trust, authenticity and relatability are the three cornerstones to the success of influencer marketing and they’re also some of the big issues that you have when it comes to celebrity endorsements. Because no matter how famous or likeable a celebrity is, reach and exposure doesn’t automatically translate into consumer trust or even into sales. Celebrities massive reach is ironically a big pitfall for product endorsements as their fan base can often be so wide and varied that generic adverts may only appeal to a fraction of said fan base, resulting in a less effective campaign.

Brands by and large have cautioned against this fact and the power of influencers to target specific, niche audiences and across the board brands have been using influencers from Fashion Nova to Boohoo, to Snickers. It would be ignorant to dismiss influencer marketing as a fad or ineffective when it’s clearly a huge and ever-growing form of marketing.

Ross Purves – Influencer marketing is here to stay. But it won’t replace or hinder traditional celebrity endorsements.

Influencer marketing is certainly big and getting bigger every year. However, I don’t believe that for influencer marketing to succeed that traditional celebrity endorsement has to decline.

I believe that the two do not operate the same function. While influencer (both macro and micro) might be better for the one-off sale through social media and a pitch, a household name provides much more brand value compared to an influencer.

It really depends on what you’re wanting to achieve – if you want a product to sell in a short amount of time then influencers may be the best option to achieve this. If you want to increase brand value to a large demographic then a celebrity endorsement(s) through a campaign of both digital and traditional media will reap a larger reward as it will raise awareness through multiple sale cycles, yielding a larger ROI over time.

Obviously, the best result is a mixture of both. But which method would you spend more money on depends on your goals, target demographics and resources available.

In the end, celebrities are influencers too. But their exposure isn’t limited to social media and an online community. While traditional media exists, the celebrity endorsement isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Tweeting in 280-Characters

With its problems of trolls, fake news and dwindling profits, Twitter has given its users the most aimless update yet.

The latest update for Twitter is causing controversy as the social media platform announced that it will be changing the number of characters to play with from 140 to 280. It’s the platform’s attempt to level the playing field between different languages as Japanese users can convey twice the amount of information per character compared to Spanish, English or French.

In a tweet on Tuesday (26th September 2017), CEO of Twitter Jack Dorsey said:

Tweets Force Concision

Twitter first started in 2007, just before the smartphone revolution. The idea of having only 160 characters was devised from the limitation of SMS messages (160 characters minus 20 for the username), which was used by many early adopters to post to their accounts. A few years later, posting by SMS was rendered obsolete by apps and web clients, but the character limitation remained.

It is this shortness of the tweets that made the social media platform popular with its users. For users who wanted information on an event in short chunks, Twitter is the go-to platform. For journalists, it’s a place where they can gather their sources for breaking stories and gauge reactions. It also forces the user the best way to construct their tweets – similar to how journalists remove the filler from their articles to add impact. It is this conciseness that has created some of the internet’s most viewed content.

It is also quicker and more efficient to consume content on Twitter – it’s what makes it addictive. Having only 140 characters mean that you are able to consume a vast amount of information as it happens and reply just as quickly. It’s a lot simpler and more efficient than going to a news site or watching TV to get the information you need.

But everything I just said here doesn’t need twice the number of characters. An increase of characters only means the less number of tweets a person can consume. Twitter’s own research shows that only 9% of tweets hit the 140-character mark, but would be interesting to see how many of these tweets were abandoned.

What the update should’ve done

What is obvious is why Twitter has opted for this update. Twitter in its current form isn’t making money and its advertising platform is much less effective and more expensive compared to Facebook and Instagram. It has to attract new users and encourage more engagement if it has a chance to turn up a profit. It has added the ‘Explore’ tab and ‘Twitter Moments’ to encourage people to do this (which I think are great tools) but obviously isn’t drawing in as many people as they’d hoped. Twitter’s new methodology is to implement 280 characters so users needn’t put the effort to tweet and then they’ll come in droves – all without the consideration how this would affect the quality of the platform. Hurrah!

But when this update hasn’t worked, what will come next? 580 characters? 1160 characters?

For Twitter to become profitable, first it needs to address the two huge elephants in the room – the trolls and the bots. 280 character tweets aren’t going to solve this, it’s only going to exasperate it. Compulsory two-factor verification will prevent a large chunk of this.

Secondly, it has to stop trying to take on Facebook for social media dominance – it will never win. Instead, it should embrace its niche and listen to its core users who are crying out to Jack Dorsey to keep the 140-character limit. In addition, Twitter should continue expanding the ability to connect with users outside of an account’s preferential bubble. This itself would create interesting engagements and debates.

And lastly, people have already found ways around the 140-character limit. Screenshotting from their notes app, creating threads, creating their own Twitter Moments or linking to blogging platforms, such as Medium, is extremely common. If Twitter is so keen on having 280-character tweets, a compromise to only allowed verified users to access to this “privilege” may be acceptable.

Twitter is great as it is. Sure, it has its flaws but this new update to 280-characters only hinders the quick and fluid consumption of its content. Don’t believe me? Read Jack Dorsey’s tweet again and note how bored you are halfway through.

And scarily, imagine what apocalyptic hell Donald Trump could unleash if given 280-characters.

Should my brand be live streaming?

Live streaming is all the rage right now. Every social platform, from Facebook Live to Twitter’s Periscope to YouTube, is promoting live streaming like they’ve invented sliced bread. Sure, it gets more engagement, more views and expands your reach beyond your initial followers. But with live streaming comes risk and each company should weigh whether the rewards are with these risks.

Why are brands live streaming?

Video content garners a much higher rate of engagement and conversion compared to static media and text. That’s why every company wants some form of video content for their site and social profiles. This is backed up by the continued increase of social media consumption on mobile devices (now two-thirds of all internet users access social media via a mobile device – 2.56 billion users). Of this, 200 million people view videos and on social platform – with 50% on their smartphones.

A recent survey by New York Magazine also found that live video is more appealing – 80% of people would rather watch a live video than read a blog and 82% would prefer live video compared to social posts.

Why aren’t brands simply creating videos rather than live-streaming?

The trouble with video is that, except for purchasing a stock video or having someone else to create it, creating video content is rather laborious, especially if you want high production values. Facebook Live and Periscope does away with the ‘high’ production values in exchange for ‘in-the-moment’ experience – also known as FOMO (fear of missing out). As everyone can’t attend every event, live streaming provides them with the ability to be a part of it.

But depending on your company, its brand position and overall goals, this can become a very popular method of communicating with your audience. Live streaming enables content creators to react immediately to the comments on the video and respond in real-time. Live streams on Facebook Live, Twitter’s Periscope and YouTube are also available as a regular video in the future – in case you or your audience needs them or they missed out during the original broadcast.

Live streaming isn’t an instant cash-earner either but is fantastic for brand awareness. Bottom line sales will unlikely to immediately directly affected by live streaming. It’s an investment in your brand identity and reputation that will increase revenues down the line once you’ve figured out what works best for your business.

Exceptions when brands shouldn’t live stream

Live stream videos usually look amateurish (what Mark Zuckerberg calls “raw”) compared to other carefully edited and curated video content. But the research shows that ‘polished’ content is skipped more often compared to a live stream, due to the FOMO element. If your brand requires all content to be high-quality and considering 90% of users think video quality is important, then live streaming isn’t for your business – unless you give lots of time, preparation, investment and confidence to it.

Also, companies shouldn’t live stream for the sake of live streaming. There must be a purpose to each stream (an event, product launch, announcement, research etc.). Otherwise, you will simply annoy your followers and damage your brand reputation.

However, live streaming could also bring other woes. Live stream means that the comments are live also. That means that moderating posts in real-time is impossible and risks overshadowing your message. Shia LaBeouf’s live stream of his art installation of various people chanting “He will not divide us” – referencing Donald Trump’s inauguration – was high-jacked by neo-Nazis and trolls. Unless you’re live streaming something politically edgy or possibly controversial, it’s unlikely you’ll receive large-scale abuse. But it’s something to be wary of when publically broadcasting to your followers. Sure, you can disable comments but this rather negates the point of live streaming.

And finally, live streaming also brings the risk of videoing embarrassing moments. One of the great pull factors about live streaming is showing your audience your authenticity. But this authenticity is vulnerable to momentary slip-ups (think falling over or accidentally swearing). There’s really no way to avoid this except being prepared, restrained and to watch out for any trip hazards.