Publishing a Live Blog is a fast and easy way to boost engagement and connection with your customers and fans. By creating and publishing during a live event, you can keep your audience engaged more deeply and for longer periods of time.
What Is Live Blogging?
The Live Blog medium has been around for nearly 20 years. Since that time, journalists, broadcasters, marketers, and content creators have used Live Blog technology to engage their audiences. Unlike a traditional blog where you create long-form posts with media, a Live Blog is best for sharing quick updates as an event unfolds.
Three Ways To Use A Live Blog
You have probably already seen a Live Blog in action on TV and streaming video over the past few years. To show you what’s possible with a Live Blog, look at these three use cases.
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1 Using A Live Blog For Sports Coverage
Using a Live Blog for sports helps keep fans engaged on your website during a live sporting event. You can use a Live Blog for sports to supplement live TV coverage and set yourself apart from others. Let’s look at how sports brands have used a Live Blog to connect further with fans.
- MLB.com offers live chat experiences for each professional baseball game.
- Sports Illustrated (SI) offers analysis and commentary on sports events like the MLB draft. For the 2021 draft, the company offered round-the-clock coverage: “We’ll provide live updates throughout the night as teams (minus the Houston Astros, in their second and final year of lost first- and second-round picks as punishment for sign stealing) make first-round selections.”
Of course, these examples are just scratching the surface. Each sport has its nuances. Don’t feel limited by past examples! For fresh ideas on what to post on your Live Blog, check out significant sports influencers on Twitter, Instagram, and other media outlets.
2 Sharing Breaking News With A Live Blog
Some news stories lend themselves to intense coverage like elections, trials, and significant speeches like the President’s State of the Union address. As these events unfold, you can use a Live Blog to share your insights with the audience. Note that sometimes media outlets use different terms like “live coverage” or “live updates” instead of the term “Live Blog,” but the underlying concept is the same.
- The Guardian, a British newspaper, was one of the first media outlets to add a Live Blog to its coverage. The newspaper launched a Live Blog in 2003 to provide commentary on Prime Minister’s Question Time.
- CNN runs a Live Blog on specific events such as Democratic debates. According to the Nieman Lab, each CNN “live story” needs at least two people to maintain it: a reporter and an editor.
- Election Coverage. Politico and the New York Times both ran had a Live Blog to cover the 2020 election results in the United States.
3 Keeping Conference Attendees Engaged With A Live Blog
Whether you are running a traditional conference or a virtual event, keeping conference attendees engaged is challenging. Conference attendees have emails, messages, and all kinds of other distractions. A Live Blog for a conference can help to keep attendees engaged. For example, you can share the best “one-liners” from each conference speaker on your Live Blog. In addition, your conference Live Blog is a great place to gather and share helpful links and resources that each attendee mentions.
- CES. Multiple Live Blog contributors have covered the annual consumer electronics event. The Review Journal offered Live Blog coverage of CES 2021.
- Google I/O Conference. The annual technology conference devoted to Google technology draws considered media coverage, including a Live Blog. For instance, The Verge offered a Live Blog of the I/O developer conference in 2021.
The above examples feature media outlets covering conferences, but there is no reason why a conference organizer cannot organize such an event.
Two Ways To Solve Live Blog Stress Before It Strikes
There’s one concern some people have about running a Live Blog. Is it stressful to constantly create new content during a live event? If you are new to contributing to a live event, the pressure to develop new blog post updates every few minutes can be stressful. Fortunately, there are two ways to prevent Live Blog stress.
- Run your Live Blog as a team effort!
Team up with at least one other person to produce your Live Blog. One of us can act as the Live Blog reporter, and the other serves as the editor. That’s one of the best ways to ensure your life blog maintains high content quality standards. If you have a larger team, you can take turns creating posts for the Live Blog so that nobody gets burned out. - Prepare Live Blog Content In Advance
The content you publish on a Live Blog can be prepared in advance. Your preparation could be as simple as rough research notes (e.g., a list of statistics to mention) or elaborate (e.g., fully developed and edited blog posts). By preparing a few Live Blog ideas in advance of your event, you will significantly cut down on your stress.
How To Start Your Live Blog In Less Than An Hour
Are you excited by the potential of running a Live Blog? If so, you can get started quickly with Arena Live Blog. You can install the software in just a few minutes. Installing the software is the easy part of starting a live blogging program. That’s why we suggest setting aside some time to brainstorm content ideas for your live blogging session before launching it. By taking a few minutes to come up with ideas now, your first live blogging effort will be much more impressive.
The first step in launching your Live Blog is simple. Sign up for Arena Live Blog. It can be installed on nearly any website in sixty seconds by uploading a short piece of code. Click here to start your free 14 day trial of Arena Live Blog.
