August 2009

Life streaming has been in beta for at least a few years. In recent months, this form of online social media is gaining increased attention — thanks in no small part to Steve Rubel of Edelman who recently ditched his "Micro Persuasion" blog in favor of a stream. His reason: "Blogging began to feel too slow and methodical," among others. (Read his post here). But what exactly is "life streaming" and should PR pros be quick to incorporate it into their social media strategy?

Life Streaming Defined

According to Wordspy, "Life streaming is an online record of a person's daily activities [both online and offline], either via direct video feed or via aggregating the person's online content such as blog posts, social network updates, and online photos."

In short, life streaming allows you to combine the best of traditional blogs, micro-blogs, social networks, and video sharing sites into a one-stop shop of all your online content. Posts can be short — 140 characters — in essay style, a visual snapshot, or any combination. You are not limited to updating via the web only.

Posterous — an application that allows you to post any form of content you want via email — estimates that its web traffic is up 20-50 percent each month (Watch a video interview with the creators here). This lends possible credence to the prediction that life streaming may, in fact, be the future of blogging and social media. Why? It allows you to get closer to reality, even for real-time communications. (Think Facebook and Twitter on steroids).

Where to Stream

Just as there are hundreds of blogging and social media applications, there are just as many platforms to help get you started. Here are just a few of the ones you might come across:

           Friendfeed allows you to interactively publish and share content across multiple channels.

           Lifestrea.ms is a web-based email client that lets you send, update, receive, comment, and reply to messages
           posts, and updates on a number of social media platforms.

           Posterous is an application that lets you post anything you want via email.

           Profilactic, a social media aggregator and life streaming tool, pulls together content from over 190 predefined
           sites, as well as those you customize and choose.

           Tumblr posts mixed media messages across various sites from your browser, email, mobile phone,
           desktop, among other places.

A New Business Tool for PR and Marketing

Back in 2008, former-Forester researcher Jeremiah Owyang began talking about how brands would use Friendfeed as a form of social media press release (SMPR). At the time, brands, such as Ford, were already beginning to create SMPR rooms based on life streaming applications. (Read his post here). To this, there are a number of other reason public relations professionals may decide to incorporate life streaming into their social media strategy:

• Create a uniform and consistent online identity
• Centralize content; create better work flow
• Streamline and disseminate messages across multiple sites
• Update remotely from mobile devices, email, the web, or directly from a desktop
• Bring real-time communication closer to reality
• Engage audiences and encourage them to interact with content

If you can relate to most of the above statements you may be ready to incorporate streaming into your strategy.

Best Practices

Like with other forms of social media, you'll need to remain transparent and genuine in your communications. To this you'll also want to:

1. Decide where to host your stream. You may choose to use third party plug-ins on your blog or website, or employ one of the many online tools available. Select based on your goals and objectives and what works best with your overall social media strategy.
2. Select which content to include in your stream. Only connect to online media or networks that are significant to you or your constituents or where you already have a web presence. Otherwise you will wind up with clutter. You can always add or subtract connecting streams as your social media strategy evolves.
3. Use judgment when posting sensitive content. Since life streaming has taken real-time communication to the extreme with its flexibility and portability, you'll want to be careful about what types of things you post. If it's of a sensitive nature, you won't want it living forever on the web.
4. Promote your life stream via other digital channels. Include a link or button in your e-newsletter, incorporate it into your multimedia press release, or reference it on your website.

5. Engage and listen to your audience. Since a life stream is essentially a more portable and interactive, real-time version of your blog, you'll want to continue to craft compelling content to keep your constituents coming back for more. And like other social media platforms, you'll need to make sure you listen and respond to what people are saying about your organization or brand.