How to Use Periscope for Publicity, PR and Promotion

Yesterday’s guest post by Roshanda Platt on how to show your personality with Periscope’s live streaming got me thinking about ways you can use 2015’s most popular app in a publicity or promotion campaign.

Periscope is the easiest way to broadcast live video from your phone, enabling you to share what’s happening around you — with the whole world or just a few friends — as it happens.

Here’s a smattering of ideas for Publicity Hounds. 

Periscope Ideas for Authors

1. Create videos to lead up to your book launch. 
2. Build excitement for your book by talking about how your wrote it. Fiction authors, discuss how you developed the characters, or explain the research you had to do for your historical novel. Sci-fi novelist Chris Kennedy names his fictional characters after his fans.
3. What an easy way to connect with book clubs thousands of miles away!     
4. Give all the details on an upcoming book signing or author event. What will visitors find when they arrive?
5. Non-fiction authors, create a series of how-to “scopes,” Periscope’s word for broadcasts, on topics like how to stay organized, how to quiet a crying baby or tricks for fixing your phone when it breaks. (Because you’re using your phone to broadcast, you’ll need a second phone as the prop. Here’s my tip. If the button at the bottom of your iPhone sticks, run a dry Q-tip around the perimeter several times to loosen the grease and dirt that has accumulated. This worked for me!)      
6. Pre-launch, show your readers what the cover of your book looks like. Share illustrations and photos inside the book, too.
7. A children’s author can read her storybook to children.

Ideas for Speakers

1. Give viewers a taste of an upcoming speaking engagement.
2. Give a quiz that ties into an upcoming program. Because Periscope is interactive, you give the answers at the end and let viewers grade themselves. 
3. Discuss how you use humor in your presentations.
4. Do you have a customer service pledge? Explain it, a real value-added for meeting planners who are considering hiring you.
5. Discuss the types of programs and topics you speak on. Are they keynotes or workshops? Who is the ideal audience? This can be the video version of a speaker one-sheet.
6. Don’t hesitate to ask for ideas from your audience on things like resources you can use if you need to brush up on a certain topic. This will keep people alert and engaged.
7. Use Periscope to offer follow-up training. Incorporate this idea into your proposals.

How Experts Can Use Periscope

1. Offer your videos as little extras that a blogger can insert into your guest blog post.
2. Share your best videos on your LinkedIn profile.
3. Let your LinkedIn groups know about your show.
4. If you do coaching, this is a great way to teach your students and make it interactive.
5. Write a press release letting the world know about your show.
6. You might be one of the first business people in your area to use Periscope. Pitch a story to your local business media. See When to use a press release and when to deliver a pitch.
7. Take people on a tour of your office. Explain what equipment you use and why. Show people your bookcase and what’s in it. And it would be fun to peek inside your desk drawer!
8. Include information about your channel in your Media Kit. 
9. Interview one of your clients or another guest expert.

Those are my ideas. Let’s hear yours. If you’re using Periscope, share links to your videos. The Comment section awaits….