5 Reasons Why Your Business Should Consider Meerkat

I downloaded the Meerkat iPhone app several weeks ago and had barely opened it. I've seen tweets for months about how great it was and how everyone raved on about it. I brushed it off as merely a passing fad and nothing more. I started to take notice on various marketing blogs and chats that Meerkat came up quite often, so last week I decided to give it "the college try". What happened that night was very interesting. Let's start with the blaring, basic question: What exactly is Meerkat?

Meerkat is an easy-to-use mobile app that enables users to create live video streaming over Twitter. It sends video to all of their Twitter followers. As many as 5,000 people can watch a person's stream at once in real time. This takes streaming into a whole new realm.

Getting back to that interesting experience, I found a live stream around 6 pm of an artist broadcasting live from Canada. The young lady was describing her techniques and styles about studio art and describing life as an artist. I've been an artist my entire life and went to college on an art scholarship so I could relate with her point of view. I wound up watching this stream for almost 5 hours. People were asking questions and she would address them almost immediately. I asked several that were all answered with true sincerity. Her viewers grew from 34 people to over 700 the entire time I was engaged. All the advantages started piling up in my head after one evening of Meerkat.

Here's my 5 reasons why you should bring Meerkat into your marketing scheme:

1.  Humanizing Your Brand - Live streaming gives you a different approach to reaching your audience. It shapes a personality for you and your organization that viewers can relate to. If you mess up on camera, it's not a bad thing. It shows that you're human like the rest of your audience. With Meerkat's new feature Cameo (I'll explain soon) it takes video to another level that will definitely bring more engagement with your message.
2. Product Demos - If you provide a service or a product, this is an easy way to showcase it. Are you telling me that you can't capitalize from real time video demonstrations? Meerkat was made for this.
3. Deals - What's cooler than creating buzz with exclusive limited deals for only live viewers? Think of how QVC operates. There's a lot of weight behind the following statement: "This special deal is ONLY for our Meerkat viewers watching right now! You have only 30 mins to take advantage of our exclusive offer!" Talk about a call to action and an easy way to measure the effectiveness of that offer.
4. Interviews and Testimonials - Word of mouth is a valuable asset to any business. Public opinion can make and/or break you. Reading positive reviews from customers is pretty cool. Watching live reviews and testimonials is awesome!
5. It's Free - Why not give it a try? You have nothing to lose. There's no budget necessary and that's what makes the app worth experimenting. After seeing some interesting results in your favor, all you'll have invested was time.

Last week, Meerkat added a two new features which are nice upgrades. The first is being able to connect with Facebook. You can now sign up for the app through Facebook if you don't have a Twitter account. You can also find your Facebook friend's live streams.

Jimmy Fallon is about that Meerkat life.

The second and biggest feature is Cameo, which gives the ability to invite your friends or anyone watching to take control of your live stream. It works by you launching a stream and then tapping on the profile of a viewer and invite them to take over. If they accept, then all your viewers will see that person make a cameo appearance on your stream for a limit of 60 seconds. That's what I call audience participation.

For several months, the appeal of this app has been rapidly growing. My advice is simply this: download the app, take the "risk" and jump ahead of everyone else. How many of your peers are using Meerkat? Start live video streaming as part of your marketing plans and measure the results. The benefits of this app has no bounds with a good strategy to compliment it.