I’m sitting, watching, and evaluating my current YouTube live presentation. A process I do after every video. I use this time to take mental notes on how to improve my next live show. On this day, it occurred to me that I was missing something. I’ve done it before, but why wasn’t I doing it now.
For several years I have been broadcasting live using OBS to my Facebook group, Restaraunt Entertainment. I created a special video opening and created graphics, PowerPoint presentations and introduced a video into the live stream.
Before my eyes, the replay of my live video ends. It just ends! There is no call to action, not a slick ending graphic, just me steering at the webcam and stopping the video feed.
Don’t Miss this Marketing Opportunity.
There it was, no finished end. No call to action. No contact info, just me staring at a webcam. I realized that I was missing a marketing opportunity.
Using OBS as my live streaming platform, I created two calls to action for my live stream.
1. Subscribe Graphic – I’ve seen this many times in YouTube videos where a graphic pops up on the screen reminding the viewers to subscribe. Easy enough to make in photoshop. Twenty minutes later, I had a CTA image.
In OBS, I make a new Source called Subscribe Image. I then assigned a hotkey for this Image, which allows me to toggle the subscribe Image on and off during a live stream event. I could set up a transition, the time between models, and transition speed to make this an automatic feature. I have mine set to manual as the automatic required more work to get it perfect.
2. Ending Screen – This took some time to create a Scene in OBS with several Sources. I want to make the end screen have a call-to-action video embedded into the screen, a corporate logo, a small description of my YouTube channel covers, and social media links so fans can follow on other social media platforms.
In the end screen design, I left areas blank. This way, when I save the video to YouTube, I can add another video overlay on top of the video end screen. YouTube offers this option to all public videos and gives you several options templates to choose from. I made sure the end screen layout would work with the YouTube overlay.
My results
The Final Product
No longer will I do a live video without a call to action attached to the video. It did take time to do, but I’m happy with the results.
