1. Introduction to Live Streaming for Singaporean Influencers
In the world of liberal market and consumerism, influencers have the power to shape the thoughts and behaviors of their audience. In Singapore, social media is rapidly changing and the younger generation of Singaporeans are quickly becoming channel agnostic. According to Emarsys in 2019, 3.407 million Singaporeans subscribe to mobile services. YouTube and WhatsApp are popular among Singaporeans as 38.60% and 38.00% of Singaporeans have an active user base. Instagram is also the third most popular with 20.50%, followed by Twitter at 0.76% and 0.87%. This chapter considers the case of Instagram influencer CT to look at how live streaming can help grow her audience, and discusses the methods and results of her live streaming sessions.
Live video streaming is a growing trend observed not only in young people, but also in the older population. Platforms like Facebook Live and Instagram Live have democratized live video streaming as it allows users to be able to live stream on their personal accounts via mobile phones. This allows friends, families, and marketing organizations to view what is happening at that moment, in real time. The Platform for American Culture Trends (PACT) states that Millennials are using live streaming as a tool to keep updated with what is happening around the world. For Millennials, connections, experiences, and services are equally important, thus, live streaming platforms fulfill their needs by keeping them updated about what goes on with their selected authentic creators.
2. Understanding the Benefits of Live Streaming Services
Engaging content is also imperative as live streaming viewers may require a certain period of time or the content must be appealing for them to briefly allocate time to view the live streams in real time. In the business sector, live stream service technologies can provide a cost-effective solution. It can alleviate the copyright issues related to marketing campaigns and be an effective way to increase product introduction and promotional effectiveness. Real-time feedback is also the most valuable element of a live streaming Singapore environment where issues can be immediately rectified. Marketers can also use real-time tactics to quickly amend strategies or plans according to the audience’s post-rational responses. The usage of live streaming technology, however, can bring benefits not only to professional video creators but also to individual YouTuber content creators, helping the latter establish a moving foothold and fulfill their desired objectives. Live streaming can also stimulate dormant users or subscribers and assist trending video production. It is a conducive tool for boosting their performance on image or video-based platforms.
Live streaming is a social media trend that can be used independently or in conjunction with other platforms, such as image-based ones or video-sharing services, to deliver content to audiences. The rise of in-built or third-party live streaming options across social media apps including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, as well as dedicated live streaming platforms such as Twitch or BIGO Live, has enabled users to broadcast live to their network at any time. Growing user personas on live streaming platforms have been popularized and helped increase business or social performances, or delivered financial benefits as people increase their follower or subscriber bases. Real-time engagement with audiences via direct interactions enables live streaming content creators to communicate and bond with fans on a personal level. Fans that interact with the influencers and enjoy the personalized two-way communication through live streaming are satisfied and will actually increase the number of people viewing the vlog or content, which can improve interaction and fan loyalty.
3. Key Strategies for Effective Live Streaming in Singapore
As for the theory of the nature of live streaming content, one common belief is that live streaming breaks the wall between fans and creators, creating a more genuine relationship. Creators should spend a significant share of time on live streaming, responding to fans’ comments whenever possible. When fans feel they are more involved in the live streaming process, they are more likely to become regular attendees and also more likely to share such exciting experiences with their friends. In the process, they introduce new audiences to the influencer. When the influencer builds an inclusive community, their social network becomes more sticky. This may be the primary reason for the observed growth in live streaming fans. In fact, the sense of genuine interaction benefits both parties. Hence, it is highly beneficial for many Singaporean content creators to invest in fostering a lively and responsive community in their live streaming practice.
While the commercialization of live streaming has opened up new career opportunities for countless aspiring creators, not everyone is able to use it successfully. In the next section, we introduce some key strategies that would help influencers maximize their live streaming effectiveness and provide insights for content creation tailored for growth.
4. Case Studies of Successful Singaporean Influencers Using Live Streaming
From this curation, we learned two observations. First, even though some influencers are popular on TikTok, their popularity on live streaming apps is limited. For example, one influencer has 47k followers on TikTok, but less than 1.7k followers on Bigo Live! This shows that while some influencers are successful in growing a large local fan base on TikTok, they have not successfully translated this fan base to live streaming platforms. Second, a few TikTok influencers are very popular on live streaming apps, with one successful influencer having 4.2 million followers on TikTok and 1.4 million followers on Bigo Live. These influencers represent potential case studies of good examples of local influencers to interview. Not only do they have the unique experience of being successful live streamers in Singapore, serving a local audience, but they also have the resources, experience, and infrastructure to scale up their live streaming business at a fast pace. In addition to the factors driving growth on TikTok, we are interested in how live streaming accelerates the process of fame and growth for such influencers. To facilitate the rest of this research, we focus on local influencers who successfully use live streaming to grow a large audience in Singapore.
– On TikTok, the influencers should have at least 10k followers. – On live streaming apps (Bigo Live and/or TikTok Live), the influencers should have at least 1k followers.
As discussed, we are interested in understanding how Singaporean influencers use live streaming to grow a local audience. To identify good examples of such influencers to interview for data collection, we started actively monitoring Singaporean influencers from 1 September 2020 to 26 October 2020. We curated a list of 40 Singaporean influencers who are active and successful on both TikTok and live streaming apps. To standardize our evaluation, we considered influencers who met both of the following criteria:
5. The Future of Live Streaming for Audience Growth in Singapore
Viewers must post explicit feedback for the influencer to express appreciation in this interactive broadcast, which is limited to only the few fans who are able to tune in at the same time the famous person is live. It isn’t easy to interact on Facebook live, so heart emojis are offered to drop, and the comments will take place with a “public” symbol. Instagram allows more interaction, as it will show viewers who are live what sort of content is most up-to-date and who is commenting. As for social media influencers, exclusive access represents just a very few followers. Such an opportunity could result in increased respect from the fan’s perspective, thereby motivating others to join the broadcast. Having said that, as we observe live streaming to continue building a live audience, we will certainly notice it.
Given our exploration in this paper of what Singaporean influencers saw as an impact of live streaming, we consider the future of this industry. From our interviews, we are able to identify key considerations that determine who might potentially benefit most by live streaming from other social media influencers, that we will discuss here. The rarity of livestreams and the bold nature of broadcasting live are what makes live streaming so unique in comparison to other video contents available on social media. This authorized “interactive broadcast” approach is more applicable to celebrities and top-tier influencers, more heavyweights, or those devoted to growing their audiences than lesser ones on several platforms. Some restrictions are in place that prohibit the number of social media users who can join a livestream.