How to use StreamYard – StreamYard hacks for better livestreams

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How to use StreamYard – StreamYard hacks for better livestreams – Video Transcript

Hello, and welcome to the live stream, whether you are joining live with me now, or if you’re catching us on the replay. In this video, I’m going to walk you through some of my favourite StreamYard hacks. Now, I’ve got a bunch of tutorials already on the channel about StreamYard, but in this video, I’m covering hacks to help make your live streams even better.

Now, those of you who don’t know me, my name is Sara Nguyen, and I help coaches, consultants, and creative pros build their business using social media and video with ease. And I live stream a lot about live streaming.

Now make sure that you check out the links in the description because I’ll have all the links to all the timestamps, as well as any of the resources mentioned in this video. Now, really excited to showcase this.

In the description, I’ve got links to a full tutorial on StreamYard, as well as my review of StreamYard and other live streaming software platforms as well.

I use StreamYard. I love them. I recommend them very highly. There’s a link in the description to my affiliate link if you want to try them out. And I love them because they’re so easy to use.

And with live streaming, there’s so much going on. One of the things that you don’t want to be stressed about is whether or not the software will work and whether or not you can learn how to use the software, which is why I highly recommend StreamYard as a software option, particularly if you’re new to live streaming.

It’s one of my favourite software options and I use StreamYard as well as other options, but I love StreamYard because of its simplicity. Now I’m going to go into some of my favourite hacks and these will be things that, you know, you may or may not be aware of.

These are features that I think are a little bit underutilised and we’re going to walk through them so that you can know exactly what they are and how you can also use them to get better live streams out of StreamYard. Let’s go over to my computer.

And the first hack or the first feature that I really love that StreamYard have is multistreaming. Now, the ability for you to live stream once, but to then push that same video out to multiple platforms.

At the moment, I’m live streaming to YouTube, to Facebook, as well as Periscope. Yes, Periscope is still a thing, but you can also multistream to other platforms as well. Let’s have a look at how you would actually do this.

This is StreamYard and after you’ve logged into StreamYard, you can create a broadcast and you will be able to connect it to different destinations. If we go to this destinations tab on the left-hand side, you’ll see that I’ve got set up my Facebook page.

I’ve got a demo Facebook page, which I use for demonstration purposes. I’ve got my YouTube channel and Periscope. If I select add destination, you’ll see, I’ll also be able to connect it to LinkedIn.

If I wanted to do LinkedIn live streams, as well as Twitch. And there’s also custom RTMP, which allows me to connect to other live stream platforms using this, which I’m not going to cover because it’s a little bit beyond me, but these are different destinations that you can live stream to at the same time.

And the way that you would make that happen is you would simply go to create a broadcast. Or actually the first thing you would do is you would go to destinations and you would select add a destination and you would click on the actual destination you want it to go through, and then you would allow all of the permissions.

After you’ve done that, you would go to broadcast, create a broadcast, and you’ll be able to select all of the destinations to live stream at once, right? And there is a limitation depending on the plan that you’re on, but I am just going to, for the purposes of this demonstration, show you that it really is as simple as going to create a broadcast and selecting the two, three, four destinations that you want to live stream to.

And that’s incredibly efficient, right? You don’t have to live stream to Facebook and then upload that video to YouTube. You can broadcast once and it’ll push out to both of those platforms. And it’s as simple as that. You would select the destinations that you want broadcast to.

You’d create the title for the live stream. I’m just going to do demo and then you would go create broadcast. And this takes you into StreamYard as it’s setting up. That was it. After you see, after you connect, you were then able to select your camera by selecting cam/mic.

This is using my Mac camera, and you can see all my mess right now, but I’m going to switch over to my capture card, which is my Canon 90d. That’s the camera there. And the audio, that’s the correct microphone that I want to use. And I’m going to close it off.

I can choose how the name displays. And then I go into the actual broadcast. I put my full name if I really wanted to and select enter broadcast. Now that’s the first little hack.

Being able to multistream, I’m not sure whether everyone’s really aware of it or not, but it’s definitely something that is a great feature to have that comes with it.

You may as well use it. Hack number two that I really love with StreamYard is the ability to have intro and outro videos. At the beginning of this live stream, if you were live, and at the beginning of all of my live streams, I will have an intro video that plays for about five minutes and it has music and a countdown timer.

And I have an intro video so that it will push a notification so that people know I will be live. And they’ve got a bit of time to join me before the live stream actually happens. And it also is a buffer between me going live or me pushing the live button and me talking.

That just helps, that helps me make sure that I’m not live streaming and I’m talking before the actual feed is pushed through. So having intro and outro videos is a really cool feature of StreamYard that you can use as well.

And it is in the brand section. If you hover over to the brand section, you’ll see if I scroll where it says video clips, this isn’t just for playing video clips within your live stream if you were to be wanting to play a video, for whatever reason. You can actually upload intro and outro videos and play them.

And that’s what I’ve done, and that’s what I do. And that’s what I recommend you do as well. It also, you know, it gives you a little bit of a pump. It’s a little bit of excitement before the live stream starts.

You would simply upload the video clip. Now, I have a link in the description to my tutorial that shows you how to create your own intro and outro videos really easily, no high tech required using Canva.

And you can do it mostly for free. Once you’ve created it, you would simply select upload in the videos clip section here, upload overlay, and then you would choose the video file. And once the video file is uploaded, to add it to the live stream all you would do is select it.

And it would start playing during the live stream. And this is a countdown that I’ve got. That is a really underutilised feature that I feel that is part of StreamYard that people don’t use maybe ’cause they just haven’t thought about it, but now you know about it as well.

The ability to do, you know, your countdown timers for your intros and outros of your live stream all from this video clip section as well. That is feature number two that I wanted to talk about. Now, feature number three, screen sharing.

When it comes to live streaming, I feel that people haven’t quite explored or aren’t really aware of all of the different ways that you can live stream. And I think there’s this big perception that when you’re live streaming, that it simply is just, you know, the ability for your community to ask you questions, for you to go spontaneously, but that’s not true.

You’re able to deliver content really efficiently. And you can present information in so many ways. You can present information by tutorials and sharing your screen. You can present information by showing like a keynote or PowerPoint presentation. Once again, sharing your screen.

And this is a feature that you get within StreamYard. Let me show you how easy it is to within a StreamYard. Now, once you’ve logged in to StreamYard, it’s this option at the bottom here, right?

Where it says share screen. You would select that. They give you this friendly reminder that you, it works better with two screens and you would select share screen. And then you’d get the option, if you have two monitors to choose between which monitor that you want to actually share so you can share the entire screen.

You can also choose between an application windows, or if you just want a specific application to show, you can do that as well. I’m going to go ahead and open an application or you can just share a tab as well.

If you’ve got multiple tabs open, you can share a particular tab if it is open. I’m going to go share entire screen and it’s as easy as selecting the screen that I want to share. Clicking share, and there’s a lot going on on my screen right now.

And then you can see the entire screen. And I’ve got all of my Ecamm overlays and things here, but you can imagine that if you were just going through a presentation, you would walk through the presentation, or if you’re on keynote, you could simply just go to I think it’s play in the play in window and then you’ll be able to see just that section.

That’s how you would share your screen, completely underutilised feature of StreamYard. And a great way of actually, you know, creating and sharing content in my view. That’s how you would share a screen.

You know when it comes to screen sharing as well, the other cool thing that I like about it is that, let me add myself to the stream and let me remove myself from here. You’re not seeing double of me.

If I’m on the screen here and I want to share my screen, I would go to share screen at the bottom of here. Right? And then I’m going to, let’s share, going to be a little bit confusing, but that’s okay. Let’s share screen number two.

I’m sharing this screen and then the options that I have, I’m going to just select the background, is that I can change the display. I can have it so that I’m still, as you can see here on the actual screen, the camera’s still showing that source.

And then I’ve got the screen on the right-hand side. Alternatively, I can also switch it so that it’s full screen and I’m completely out of it. If I have a guest on the actual StreamYard live stream with me, we can both be on screen while looking at a screen as well.

It’s really versatile and it really is a great way of being able to deliver content. Absolutely love the feature to share your screen, highly recommend. It’s great, and it’s kind of like a quick hacky way of producing content really quickly.

It’s like here, let me show you a tutorial of how to use StreamYard and share your screen. That’s a great feature that I absolutely love. Now, let’s talk about my next favourite feature. The next favourite feature that I have is overlays, right?

Overlays are a little bit misunderstood and probably extremely underutilised. I absolutely love having overlays and StreamYard makes it really easy. Let me show you how. Back over here, actually, I’m going to remove myself because I’m already on the screen. I’m going to stop sharing the screen and remove that.

Okay. If you have a look in StreamYard in the overlay section here, right? People’s tend to think that overlays are just your lower third. All they are is, you know, your lower third or a basic graphic, but overlays are so much more than that.

Overlays are a really great and easy way of adding visuals to your actual live stream. I’ve created this overlay where I’m now all of a sudden I’m inside a computer in your computer.

There’s a bit of inception. You can also use overlays to have teaching points or to communicate messages during your live stream. It’s such a simple way, but such an effective way of adding visuals and, you know, teaching points and just another way of communicating during your live stream and to break it up from just being a talking head video like you see here.

My next favourite hack, well, current favourite hack is definitely overlays and they’re incredibly easy to add. Once again, link in the description, I’ve got a tutorial that shows you how to create your own overlays using Canva.

And I also just absolutely love being able to add overlays. And I really want you to start thinking of overlays beyond just, you know, being a lower third with your name on it. But, you know, in being something that can have a teaching point on the screen or emphasizing a key idea or emphasizing a point, so overlays are such a great way of levelling up your live streams and completely underutilised.

The other thing that I love with how StreamYard does it is you can create your own ones. They’re simply transparent images. And then to add them, once again, it’s just clicking on this plus button underneath the overlay section, right?

Once you’ve got your overlay, whatever it is, you can just add it to the overlay section. And then when you want to use it, when you’re on StreamYard, you just select it.

And then once you’re done with that overlay, you want to move on to the next one, you click it again, and then it’s gone. The other little hacky tip that I have for you is with overlays. Another way to use it is if you go to banners on the right-hand corner here, you’ll see that I’ve got a couple of questions.

And these were questions that I had for a collaboration that I did with Queenie who’s on the live stream now. And with the banners, you can also use them as your overlays as well. And this was a little trick that I did where I have the questions when I have someone on a live stream in the banner.

One, I don’t have to remember anything because there’s a lot going on in this head. I can’t remember everything. I like to have the questions as banners, and then I can just have the questions on screen. My guests can see them on screen.

The viewers can see them on screen. Everyone knows what’s going on. Another great way of using the overlays is using the banners to either have a key talking point or to have your questions if you’re doing an interview or you’re doing a collaboration and they really are as easy as clicking on this create banner.

I’m typing. I can’t spell because everyone’s watching me typing text. And then adding banner. And once you’re ready to use it, you simply click on it. And when you’re ready for it to disappear, you click on it again, and then it disappears.

That’s the other little hack. I really, really love this one. And then I think a couple of people that I know where I showed them, where like, I really liked that. Take it, take it and use it.

You can change the colours slightly with StreamYard if you go to brand, I’ve got it currently set to this yellow colour ’cause I’m into yellow at the moment. If you wanted to pick another colour, you would just select that brand colour and choose whatever colour suits your brand gives you the feels for the day.

You’ve got the whole colour spectrum. You can match it to how you want it to appear. That’s the other little hack with the overlays. Now let’s talk about my next favourite thing.

They’re all my favourite things. I can’t pick one or the other. My next favourite thing is adding a guest to your live stream.

Now I feel that this is completely underrated when it comes to StreamYard. And let me tell you what. In my experience using lots of different software using Ecamm Live using StreamYard, using BLive using, OBS, you know, he who shall not be named, it’s really complicated to add a guest and to have their audio work and to have everything appear nicely.

With StreamYard, it is incredibly easy. All you have to do to add guests to your live stream is to click on the invite section here at the bottom of StreamYard, and this provides a link, right?

And you would send that link to them, whether you’re sending it by email or sending it by messenger, whatsapp, whatever. They just have to select that link. Open it up in their browser.

They can also use it on their mobile device. And then that will add them to the actual live stream. It really is that easy. And once they’ve joined, you will be able to see them in the bottom section here.

That’s how easy it is to add a guest. And I cannot emphasize why this is so fantastic with StreamYard after struggling to do it with other software options. Like it really is one of my favourite features.

I know that with StreamYard, you can have like 10, up to 10 guests on your live stream at the same time. And I saw someone testing it out and they stack it up like the Brady bunch.

It’s just literally one like rectangles on top of each other, which is great. If you want to have 10 guests, that gives me a bit of anxiety, but you know, the option’s definitely there.

And it really is as easy as getting your guests to click on the link and then allow them to do what they do and then have them appear on your actual live stream. That is definitely one underrated underused– people don’t understand how complicated it is until they have to do it and it doesn’t work.

That is definitely a feature and a hack that I highly recommend that you use. Now the fourth, well, I don’t even know what number I’m up to right now, but the last one that I’m going to walk you through tonight is the ability for you to live stream from your mobile device using StreamYard.

Now, let’s talk about this a little bit. There are not a lot of live streaming software providers who allow you to live stream it using your mobile device really easily.

But StreamYard recently has enabled this functionality and I’m going to walk you through how to do it. Now, why would you want to live stream with your mobile device? Why not?

You know, if you don’t have a webcam, if you don’t have a DSLR, but you have a mobile device that has a camera, then you can live stream. And with doing it with StreamYard means that you can add overlays, you can add, you know, banners, you can add all of the things that I’ve shown you how to do in the live stream tonight.

You can do that but from your mobile phone. Now, let’s see if this works, but I’m going to try to show you how to actually do it from your phone or from my phone so that you can see what it looks like. All right, let’s see how this goes.

Now, I’m going to have to switch over. Just give me a little moment to switch over to my iPhone. Ha-ha and it’s worked. Thank God. Okay.

Right now you can see my mobile device and you need to use Safari in order for it to work. And what you want to do is after you’ve loaded Safari, you want to go to streamyard.com.

You’ll want to log in using your account. And once you’ve logged in, then you’ll be able to create your broadcast. Right? It looks very similar to, actually looks identical, it looks very similar to how you would do it on desktop, but we’re going to do it via my phone.

And we’re going to follow along tonight and hope that everything goes well. And I’ve made my offering to the demo Gods and that this all works. I would go to create broadcast, select the account that I want to live stream to, you know, add your title and your description. I’m going to go to create broadcast.

Then you need to allow cam and mic access, so allow. Okay. Then, as you can see, I’ve got the microphones working because the green thing is jumping up and down. Camera’s working cause you can see my face.

I can put my name in as how I want it to appear and I can’t type ’cause everyone’s watching me. And then I’m going to go to enter broadcast studio and like that, I should have turned it on the side, but I didn’t think about it.

To go live, all I would then do once I’m ready and once I’ve got all, all of my overlays set up, I would go, go live, right? We’re going to go live on my demo page and then it’s going to go live and that’s it.

That’s how easy it is. Right? A couple of clicks from your browser and then you’re live streaming from your mobile device. I did put it in vertical mode for the purposes of this demonstration, but if you turn it on the side, it turns on the side like this is, I really should have thought about this.

Like that, see? It will go into whichever mode you turn it to have it on. Anyway, that was worked out better than I thought it would. And once you’ve finished, so you, you, you know, you get to see all the same things.

I can add my banners, you know, as I see fit. I can see all the comments in the same place, and I can deal with them at the bottom there. And once I’m done, I would simply click end, but just like the desktop version, you can, you know, have your guests so you can invite a guest, send the link to them.

And yeah, so that’s how it kind of works. Now let me end this. That’s how you would end the broadcast and then you’re done. Let me come back to here. That wasn’t too bad.

I wasn’t sure how that was going to go, but sometimes live demos don’t really work out how you expect, but that wasn’t too bad. That essentially wraps us up with my hacks. And I’m going to go to the questions ’cause I see that there’s a couple of questions. Alright.

Oh, okay. I’m sorry. I’m going to address the questions. Oh, Queenie’s here. Hi, Queenie. Thanks for joining us. I’m doing a collab on Queenie’s channel in a week and a bit, so I’m excited to go in there.

We’ve got a really good topic. Watch out for that one. I’ll be posting about it soon. Queenie said, this video is coming out at the perfect time. I’m glad that the timing worked out well. Okay. Let me see the next question.

Do all these software come in free options or do they have pricing? My friend software particularly live stream software, if you are a developer or if you know developers, they will be able to tell you that there is a lot of programming that goes into making a software, let alone live streaming software.

Yes, they do require payment. StreamYard has a free version, but with their free version, you have their watermark on it, right?

You’ve got to give them something you want to use the software that they pay people to create and maintain, you’ve got to let them have the logo on your live stream. But then they have paid options that you can use as well.

Majority of the live stream software options will have a free version and a paid version, or they will have a trial period where you can use it for free for a period of time so you can test it out.

But you have to remember, like if you want to live stream, you know, and you want to use software to make it easier and have all this extra functionality someone’s going to build it. That’s why live stream software costs money.

And all software costs money because someone has to build it. Someone has to maintain it. Okay. Oh, Pete Johns says, hi, Pete! Another collab friend, YouTube friend of mine says, “Ooh, I need this!” good to see you on the live stream.

David Pearl says, “yes, StreamYard has a free option, but they also have the paid option as well”. Pete Johns says, “really need to snazz up my streams. I use banners and that’s about it”.

Well, Pete, now you know, we’ve got links to all of the tutorials create your overlays, your intro and outro, you know, videos as well. We’re going to get you a snazzy up your live stream, snazzed up before you know it.

Dee, oh hi, Dee! Dee says, “I never realised there were all of these features”. I hear you Dee. A lot of people I know when they start using live stream, just go live, which is, you know, good on you, but then they don’t use all the features available to them.

They don’t know that they can have these overlays. They don’t know they can add videos. They don’t know that they can add, you know, gets to the feature and you’re paying for it for the most part.

May as well use all the features that are available to you to create amazing live streams. Pete says, “StreamYard is gold for guests”. Yes, it is for the most part.

Pete and I had a collaboration, a couple of collaborations in the last few weeks and it was so easy. It was just like, here’s the link. I don’t have to do anything now. And that’s it.

They’ll join when they join. No configuring the sound, no doing the thing and adding people in via Skype just to have the audio not work. So much easier.

Dee Eats says, “If your guest is another YouTuber, does that go into their watch time too?” The answer is it depends. It depends if you connect their account to multistream to via the live stream and most of the time you probably wouldn’t do that.

But yeah, it depends if you do that or not. But when, for example, Pete was on my channel, that watch time counted to me and not to his channel. And when I was on his channel, it counted to his channel and not me. ‘Cause it was going directly to our respective channels.

Hopefully, that makes sense. Yes. Ooh. Yes. Pete Johns says, “I need to check out StreamYard mobile now that you can host”. Yes, definitely. Particularly, you know, given that the camera on your mobile device is pretty good these days.

It’s a great option to enable you to start live streaming if you don’t have a camera and you do have a mobile device. Definitely definitely love that. That essentially wraps up the live stream.

Thanks, everyone for being here and everyone for joining. I think I’ve covered all of the questions. And yeah, so that essentially wraps us up and hopefully, you’ve found this video really useful.

And if you, where are all my overlays? If you found this video useful, give me a thumbs up and don’t forget to subscribe to my channel, if you haven’t already. I live stream a lot about live streaming to help you live stream better.

And I also create a lot of tutorials on social media and I have a lot of fun. Now, if you are looking to level up your live streams, make sure you grab a copy if you haven’t got it already, of my Facebook Live Cheat Sheets.

It’s a super simple guide to get you up and streaming on Facebook live, even if you’ve never hit record before. I’ll put it on the screen there should be a link in the description, but, grab it if you haven’t got it already and you know, happy days.

Thank you everyone for joining me tonight, a bit of a crowd tonight. So it was a pleasure to be here and I will see you on the next live stream. Bye for now.