Tutorial: How to Build and Engage Your Online Community

This tutorial is sponsored by Teradek.

Here we'll talk about how to engage and grow your online community. The social media landscape is constantly evolving, and this is especially true for online video platforms. It seems like nearly every network is adding video to their platform if they don't already have it.

Video is hot, but what's even hotter is livestreaming. People have their preferred platforms, and they shouldn't have to choose a particular platform based on who they want to watch. Facebook is more community-friendly, but YouTube is better for video-on-demand content.

How do you set yourself apart and get more eyes on your content when there's so much competition? The answer is multi-platform streaming with a VidiU Go.

The Teradek VidiU Go is a streaming hardware encoder that allows you to go live on multiple online platforms simultaneously. It takes both HDMI and SDI inputs, making it compatible with a wide range of cameras, whether you're using a camcorder, cinema camera, or DSLR.

The Go compresses video in both AVC and HEVC formats. For those of you who haven't heard about HEVC, it's the next generation of compression standards that drastically reduces the data it costs to stream, allowing you to deliver super high-quality video, using less data than it currently costs. It's also super-portable. At only 5x3 inches and less than 14 ounces, the Go lives up to its name and won't make taking your gear on location a chore.

There are two ways to stream with the Go. The first is streaming to a single destination, like YouTube. Connect your video source, enter the credentials for YouTube, then simply go live.

The second and more powerful way to stream with the Go is multichannel live streaming with the CORE platform. CORE is Teradek's cloud-based streaming platform. It offers a pay-as-you-go model and distributes your livestream to all of your platforms at once. No compromises. Just drag and drop. It also offers other advanced features, like network bonding, transcoding HEVC, archiving, and recording to name a few.

Once you've set up your Go, you can add channels to CORE, from Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, Periscope, Livestream, Twitch, Wowza, and any custom CDN that uses RTMP. CORE handles all the heavy lifting of ingesting your video feed, transcoding it, and sending it out to each destination. And since you can use Ethernet, WiFi, and up to two 4G LTE USB hotspots, you can stream from virtually anywhere.

The days of choosing which platform to livestream to first are over. With a VidiU Go from Teradek, you can reach your entire audience simultaneously, no matter which platform they're on.