6 tips for successful live streaming

These are the most important, basic ways to improve your live streaming efforts and ensure everything runs as smoothly as possible.

Use a sound isolating headset. It's important to have a microphone close to your mouth, as this will ensure the highest quality audio and prevent reverb or "echo." A headset with sound-isolation is ideal.

Know your equipment. You'll want to know exactly how your equipment works. A worst case scenario is having a client be told you're too quiet or too loud and then not knowing how to solve that issue. Make sure you know where to adjust volume, mute yourself, and if any of the equipment has battery backups. In addition, make sure you know how much needs to be adjusted – do you need to turn the dial a lot or just a little to make a big difference to the volume? Feel free to take notes to help you remember and place the notes near your equipment.

Prepare. Make sure your equipment is charged and ready for use. Ensure you have backups of your equipment, batteries, and cables. Think of as many worst-case scenarios as possible and come up with solutions for them. What happens if you simply can't record the live stream? You'll want to have an email template in place to send out and possibly offer a free video or partial credit to another live stream class, for example.

Gather feedback. Incentivize your clients to leave feedback, so you know what you're doing great and where you could improve. If your audio is coming across poorly, many loyal clients could be okay with it and also don't want to upset you with feedback, while new clients won't stick around for a second class they can't hear. Make sure everyone feels safe with offering constructive feedback so issues can be sorted out right away.

Research what's available. You'll want to go to a bunch of different live streamed classes yourself to see what other businesses are doing. This will help you see what works and what doesn't, and also what things resonate with you from a client perspective. This will also help you identify trends and where your business can fit in. This step is incredibly important if you want to be successful with live streaming – to use an analogy, very few people can write a successful book without having ever read a book before. Research is essential.

Keep experimenting. Since this is very likely new territory for you and your business, experimentation is key to finding your groove and improving your offerings. You may be very tempted to find a formula or style that works and stick with it, but this is a very new format for fitness and has a much more forgiving risk to reward ratio. You'll find experimentation can be very profitable.

Be sure to take a look at the live streaming tips on our Mindbody Business Education blog and our live stream checklist for more information.