As live streamers, how do we fully engage the audience for greater revenue? A recent study by Dr Song Xiaofei of the Faculty of Business and Management of UIC and her team, unveiled this puzzle.
Published in the prestigious Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science (JAMS), the paper, "Turning the Wheels of Engagement: Evidence from Entertainment Live Streaming, focuses on entertainment live streaming", revealing how streamers can optimise their schedules—timing, duration, and frequency—to engage audiences more effectively and drive higher income.
Effective strategies for live streamers
With increasing competition in the live-streaming industry, many streamers believe increasing the time length and frequency of the live streamings can guarantee success. However, Dr Song's research challenges this notion. "Prioritising one factor among the rest in live streamings, such as the time length, doesn't always result in greater passion," she pointed out.
Dr Song Xiaofei, Faculty of Business and Management of UIC
Instead, the study suggests a balanced approach is critical. Streamers must focus on three main factors— the time gap with the last session, time length, and timing —to create an effective engagement strategy.
The time gap with the last session: The time gaps between live streamings matter, and a six-hour interval can possibly elevate peak audience engagement.
Time length: Streaming duration matters, and streaming sessions lasting five hours are more likely to generate the most paid audience interactions, like tipping, but engagement may drop when they last six hours or more.
Timing: Streamers should maintain a regular schedule but adjust based on how viewers prefer to engage.
Beyond the one-way audience engagement
Compared with the traditional studies, Dr Song and her team found out that the former studies mainly regard audience engagement as a static status or a unidirectional transition, where viewers will move from passive engagement to active participation, such as from commenting to tipping or gifting. Based on the findings, the research suggests a more dynamic flow: The changing of the engagement states is a bidirectional transition involving escalation (i.e., from a low to a high state of engagement) and de-escalation (i.e., from a high to a low state of engagement).
"Viewers may move back and forth from different engagement states depending on their timings, experience, streamers' reactions, etc.," Song explained, and she said this fluid transition may influence streamers' income.
Therefore, for streamers, encouraging viewers to shift among different interaction modes is advisable, such as tipping after sending free gifts and sending paid gifts after sending the free gifts, creating a beneficial cycle that sustains income and keeps the audience active.
Moreover, surprisingly, it may not be bad news for streamers when their audience engagement is de-escalating. It may increase viewers' overall time spent in the streaming, preventing fatigue and boosting longer-term engagement.
Broader Implications
While the study focuses on entertainment live streaming, these insights are relevant to e-commerce and other live-streaming industries. Their findings offer a roadmap for optimising viewer engagement strategies that could apply across multiple contexts, from retail to virtual events.
From MPRO
Reporter: Uki Zhou
Photos provided by the interviewees
Editor: Cecilia Yu, Deen He
