Long before Facebook introduced live streaming, there was Stickam. Launched way back in 2005 during the MySpace era (early Web 2.0), Stickam was a social networking site based on video streaming and live chat. Small brands, like independent clothing lines and up-and-coming unsigned musical artists, took full advantage of this innovative new way to connect with audiences.

Stickam shut down in 2013 after a long struggle to become profitable. But despite its ultimate failure, the platform was ahead of its time. Today, Facebook and other major players are starting to see the potential that real-time live streaming holds for brands. Live video streams are a powerful way to reach new audiences, communicate with clients and customers, and raise brand awareness.

Qumu is a relative newcomer to the world of livestreaming, offering a versatile, adaptive, and fully interactive multimedia experience. Designed for enterprise communication, this robust platform provides a valuable new way to connect with clients and employees alike. As a world-leading enterprise software platform, Qumu provides integrated video streaming solutions for companies across a wide range of industries, especially finance, technology, and the pharmaceutical industry. Qumu’s robust software offers a great way for companies to communicate, collaborate, and broadcast ideas.

Why Live Streaming?

Stickam acted as a global stage for emo bands and scene queens, but today’s key applications of video streaming are quite a bit more utilitarian. One of the most common (and most useful) ways to use live streaming is for meetings. Every business needs occasional in-person meetings for briefings and strategy discussions, but in many cases everyone can’t gather in the same physical location. Many modern companies have remote workers located all over the world. Live streaming makes it easy for people to participate in meetings in real time, no matter where they are. This instantaneous communication can give you an advantage over your competitors, letting you leverage the latest trends and take action sooner.

But the benefits of live streaming aren’t limited to internal communications. It’s also an excellent option for disseminating information to much larger groups of people. You can hold a live stream broadcast with an interactive component that addresses concerns or answers questions from customers or clients. You can even use it to do a giveaway or a contest, drawing in entrants so that you can educate them about what your product or service does.

There’s also the matter of urgency. When an emergency change or revision is requested, it might not be feasible to hold a physical meeting, even if all of your employees work together in an office. Live webcasts and video streaming are a good platform for last-minute, urgent announcements and discussions.

Qumu Helps You Connect

The Qumu platform allows you to create an interactive live stream experience for your employees or clients by incorporating polls. You can gain valuable insights into what drives your clients’ business decisions or what your employees are capable of handling.

Originally founded way back in 1999, ownership of Qumu’s software platform has changed hands numerous times. Built by eScene Networks, it was acquired by Inktomi and then Yahoo. In 2008, the company, previously known as Media Publisher, rebranded as Qumu. Since then, it has grown into the world’s leading enterprise video software platform, incorporating new features and complimentary product lines to provide corporations with everything they need to take full advantage of today’s impressive media technologies.

Qumu provides a rich multimedia experience, capturing video from any source, whether it’s high-quality video camera equipment at an event venue or simply a laptop’s built-in webcam. Their video capture tools make it easy to record and capture video, which can be transmitted to any device. The platform also makes it easy to incorporate other rich media elements, like slideshows, web pages, polls, and interactive feedback prompts. Qumu is more than just a video broadcasting tool; it is a full-service business video platform that transforms live video streams into a fully interactive and collaborative experience that gives everyone a voice.

Some companies have used Qumu with great success as a platform for “town hall meetings,” which are opportunities to involve employees in a productive two-way discourse. The face-to-face nature of the interaction can help employees feel more comfortable talking to their managers and receiving feedback from higher-ups. When employees don’t know the person who’s providing commentary on their work, they can sometimes get nervous. Qumu live streaming enables them to put faces to names, which can help workers feel at ease and prevent them from taking negative feedback too personally. Live webcasts can shatter communication barriers, allowing personable communication between two people in a company who otherwise might never actually meet in person.

Running a business is all about the bottom line, and compared to meeting in person, Qumu live streaming is incredibly cost effective. A live webcast is much less expensive than renting out a conference hall, dealing with catering, and flying key individuals out to a particular location. No one has to deal with airfare or hotels—Qumu and people’s computers come together to provide a free virtual venue.

Live Streaming with Qumu Can Streamline Work Efficiency

Qumu is a stable, user-friendly platform that makes employee communication and collaboration almost effortless. You can connect with your clients live, almost instantly, to get down to business and make sure your voice is heard. Qumu’s great design and impressive stability as a platform ensures you don’t have to worry about poor connections or about inferior sound and video quality. It’s fast and easy, which helps improve your employees’ efficiency and keeps their workflows streamlined.

If your employees bring their own devices to work, you’ll be excited to know that Qumu works on multiple platforms. Not only can Qumu integrate with almost any platform (iOS, Android, Windows 10, etc.), it also allows you to monitor how well your live video cast is performing on various devices. This can help you smooth out future webcasts using your employees’ preferred devices and tailor the experience to each, ensuring that they never miss a webcast.

Qumu also offers an archiving feature. This means that if someone wasn’t available while the live stream was occurring they can still view it later and get up to speed. Everyone involved will have viewed the same video and received the same information.

Qumu is designed to be adaptable and versatile. Your live webcasts can be as long or as short as you need them to be, empowering you to deliver the right information in its entirety. A webcast could be an entire three-hour conference with multiple speakers or a quick two-minute memo for your sales team. The possibilities are nearly endless! Qumu is designed to perfectly accommodate a range of applications and use cases for video.

Live Video Streaming: An Eco-Friendly Alternative to Meetings & Conventions

Not only is live video streaming through Qumu more convenient than meeting in person, it’s also better for the environment. That’s a benefit you can emphasize to your customers and clients, who may be environmentally aware and respond well to “green” brand initiatives. When you’re meeting through a live webcast, no one has to commute, meaning their cars aren’t giving off fossil fuels. No air travel, no train travel, no Uber cabs or driving—all of this does its part to reduce carbon emissions (and save money). Because Qumu can help facilitate remote teams that don’t even need to work in the same office together, you don’t have to worry about the carbon footprint of constructing a new office space to fit your growing team.

Qumu as a Video Marketing Powerhouse

Qumu isn’t just for team collaboration and company-wide communication. Today, video for business is one of the fastest-growing marketing channels—for good reason. A simple video on a landing page can increase conversion rates by 86%. Marketing videos can lead to impressive conversions, and video has a growing role in engaging with consumers and motivating them to take action.

Qumu makes it easy for brands to manage all their videos—both internal and external—using one convenient platform, reducing overall costs and boosting ROI. Qumu’s video content management system can integrate seamlessly with other leading enterprise software solutions like Salesforce, Eloqua, and Marketo, helping companies cultivate an integrated, holistic enterprise marketing system that’s perfectly tuned to gather and leverage insights into their customer base.