Home Blog Page 26

How to Create a Custom IPTV Channel

How to Create a Custom IPTV ChannelUsing TikiLIVE’s high definition video as a way to provide a visual demonstration of your product is a great way to raise your sales and drive consumers to purchase your product. Through this medium you can broadcast live events or pre-recorded content on your own online television channel, which you can link to from your website or through your social media accounts on Twitter or Facebook. However, if you want to take this to the next level, or to monetize the actual content itself, you will want to consider IPTV.
IPTV, or Internet Protocol Television, is the wave of the future because it allows people to stream high definition video onto a television set through their a set top box rather than using cable, satellite or phone wire. With your content streamed on IPTV via high speed broadband internet you will reach a new audience that many internet businesses have ignored. You can even reach people on their computers, tablets and mobile devices!

What Do I Have to Do to Tap Into This New Market?

The basics behind creating an IPTV channel on TikiLIVE are the same as with a regular online TV channel; it is as easy as registering your account, creating a channel, creating and broadcasting your live or pre-recorded event, then maintaining and managing your channel through ongoing broadcasts and the suite of tools available through TikiLIVE to review how your channel is working. IPTV is different only in a few minor details and how your audience will receive your message.

The biggest difference with IPTV is that it is delivered through a set top box. The TikiLIVE platform lets you be part of this broadcasting with all of the main players in the market. With Roku, the major set top box player, you can broadcast your HD content next to YouTube, Hulu, Netflix and others right on the Roku box. With Apple TV and Chromecast, two other popular brands, you can stream content via a mobile device onto your customer’s television set.
TikiLIVE also has an option that we call the White Label Set Top Box. With this hardware you can deliver your content to your customers through a set top box that you brand with your own label. Your content can be synonymous with the label on the set top box that carries your content rather than with the Roku or Chromecast logos.

How Do I Get Started?

The first step is to contact us in order for us to verify that your region can be considered for an international IPTV station. Once we confirm that you can broadcast your channel, you can offer premium content with our International IPTV Solution and monetize a complete IPTV platform through your customer base. Then you are ready to begin getting your content out to the masses.

  • Live Stream to your Video Channel – With your high definition video channel you can live stream any content so that your audience can virtually attend your event by sitting on their couch. You can stream meetings, conferences, live product demonstrations, or other live content such as sporting events or dramatic presentations.
  • Archive Video on Demand Content – By recording your presentation, product demonstrations or live events you can make them available on demand for your audience to re-watch at anytime. The content then becomes available 24 hours a day; 7 days a week, for immediate access from any time zone in the world.
  • Make your Content Pay for Itself – By monetizing your content you can have people pay for your valuable knowledge and information rather than providing it for free. When you are an authority in your field, why not benefit from helping others with what you know? You can do this through live pay per view events or video on demand for a fee.
  • Live Pay per View – Rather than sending employees to a training session, many companies would rather have these available for a fee without the associated travel expenses. Think of all the online university and college courses, and think how much better this training would be if it incorporated high definition video training as part of the course. If you are using your channel for training others, use TikiLIVE’s pay per view services to monetize your content.
  • Video on Demand – Just like a live training session, a pre-recorded video training session can be just as effective with more options for students to watch the video when they find it suitable for them. This allows you to develop your revenue streams without having to continuously teach, and can be much more convenient for your students. A win-win situation for both of you!
  • We Take Care of the Broadcasting – This is where TikiLIVE’s expertise comes into play. We have put the infrastructure in place to make sure that your content is available to your audience when you want it to be, without interruptions, slow buffering, or unwanted advertising. We even use our proprietary Monster Encoder technology to ensure that whatever format you have used is correctly converted to the appropriate format for live or video on demand streaming to the device that your audience member wants to use (including the ever more popular mobile phones and tablets).

How Can I Track My Impact?

With the analytics package available from TikiLIVE you can easily track who is viewing your content, where they are viewing it from, and when they are choosing to view it. Knowing who is viewing your content can help you to tailor your viewing experience to the audience that finds your content most useful. By looking at the habits of your current subscriber base you can also easily explore new demographics or areas of the globe.
Why Not Call Us Now to Launch Your IPTV Channel?
To talk further about how to start up your IPTV channel and begin broadcasting your content to customers all across the world, contact TikiLIVE today!

Why Live Video Streaming is an Effective Marketing Tool

Why Live Video Streaming is an Effective Marketing ToolWhen you’re selling a product or service, the best way to show your customers what it’s like to use it is to have them try it out. However, this isn’t practical or cost-effective when you’re trying to reach the largest number of potential customers as possible. So what’s the next best thing? Show them what it’s like by creating a video introducing your product or service.

Mobile Devices Have Changed The Marketing Landscape

Thanks to mobile devices, it’s never been easier to show the experience of using your product or service to potential customers everywhere. Mobile devices have also driven consumer behavior towards researching products and services online before engaging with a salesperson. While this gives your marketing a broad reach, it’s important to take that opportunity to engage customers as effectively as possible.

Fortunately, mobile devices also make it easy to capture high-quality video of the experience of using your product and service. You can create a whole series of compelling videos showing different aspects of your product, different scenarios with your services being used, video testimonials, and many other possibilities. But what is the best way to host these videos, share them with customers, and promote them on social media?

That’s where TikiLIVE comes in. TikiLIVE is the premier all-in-one content delivery platform that hosts and encodes your videos to be viewed in HD quality on all mobile devices and set-top boxes. With TikiLIVE, you can create channels of your videos where you can direct potential customers to learn more about what your product or service has to offer them. TikiLIVE’s robust hosting platform ensures that your videos stream flawlessly whenever you need to engage your prospective customers, whether they are at home or researching your product or service on their mobile devices.

The ways you can use videos to market your product or service are virtually limitless. Some examples where video can enhance your marketing profile and draw in customers include:

● Complex Products: Are you selling software or a device that can appear daunting when you first approach it? Create a video or series of videos that break down how it works and the different ways it can be used in simple terms. Show potential customers they have nothing to fear. If you can get reassuring testimonials from people who can talk about how useful and usable the product is, so much the better.

● Adventure-Tourism Services: Do you run a fishing charter, zipline tour, or paintball range? Give potential customers a taste of the excitement you have to offer them by capturing video of some highlights of a day at your business. Record some of your customers enthusing about how much fun they’re having.

● Musicians: Are you a musician for hire looking to drum up business at weddings, events, and studio sessions? Record a demo video showcasing your styles and instrumental skills. Include clips of you performing popular songs as well as samples of your original material to highlight your songwriting abilities.

● Gaming: Have you developed an awesome game that you’re itching to show off to the gaming community? Create a video featuring samples of the world you’ve created and the action to be had in your game. Tell the backstory of the game’s world and characters.

● Handcrafted Items: If you are a woodworker, metalworker, clothing maker, or other artisan, a video can showcase examples of your work and let customers know how they can work with you to create one-of-a-kind items. Show clips of you in your workshop in the process of creating, include testimonials from past customers, let viewers know of any places in their community where they can see your work.

● Event-Planning Services: Feature clips from successful receptions, banquets, conferences, and so on that your business has overseen. Show some of the many aspects of event planning that most people never even think of. Get past customers to talk about how easy you are to work with and the success of events you managed.

● Inventions: Have you invented a product that makes an everyday task easier, but people don’t even know that they need it? Create a video demonstrating your invention and telling viewers about the many ways it can improve their lives.

Videos Made? TikiLIVE Puts Them in Front of Your Customers

Once you have your videos that take customers in-depth with your business, let TikILIVE take it from there. Upload your videos to your Media Library and TikiLIVE’s Monster encoder will render the videos for viewing on all mobile devices and digital set-top boxes like Roku. Use TikiLIVE’s Channel Manager to create playlists that can stream your videos continuously, or have them viewable on demand from your Media Library. Share your streaming videos via social media posts, made easy with TikiLIVE’s social media integration. TikiLIVE also provides a WordPress front end that you can brand for presenting your video content and can include a shopping cart if you want to make sales directly from your site.

TikiLIVE’s Analytics Show You Where You’re Being Seen

Sure, it’s great to put videos out there to drive customers to your business, but how can you tell whether anyone’s watching? TikiLIVE offers a sophisticated analytics suite that can show you how many times your videos have been streamed, where users are watching them from, how long into the videos the users are watching, and other statistics on viewer habits. This valuable information can help you develop strategies on where to focus your marketing efforts, learn which video approaches seem to be working better than others, see where viewers are being referred from, and other key marketing insights.

Collaborate with TikiLIVE to Make Your Marketing Come to Life

Video has a proven ability to draw customers and get them interested in products and services, which is why businesses should consider videos a marketing must-have. Channel your creativity into recording your marketing messages and partner with TikiLIVE for first-rate video hosting, streaming, and social-media promotion. Contact us today with any questions you have or sign up for TikiLIVE today!

How to Create Your Own Radio Station (And Why You Should)

How to Create Your Own Radio Station (And Why You Should)Do you ever wonder about what it would take to create your own radio station? You probably assume it is extremely complicated and expensive to maintain. You might even think that the limitations are so great that you shouldn’t waste your time checking it out. Before you completely discount this idea, why not look into what TikiLIVE can offer?

Why Would I Even Want to Have My Own Radio Station?
If you are a startup with a small retail store, you have a few options for the music in your store. Each one has advantages, but each one also has some drawbacks that might cause more harm than good for your small business. Let’s look at some of the options:

• Don’t have any music playing: This is an option to consider, but why not set a mood for your store? Music can help match your brand to a certain style or image you want to create. When people hear music they can identify with, they also feel like they can identify with a brand, which makes them feel like your business was the right choice for them.

• Pick an Over the Air Radio Station: This is a common solution to the problem of what to play. After choosing a station that plays songs that mainly match the mood you want to set you can just leave the station set and someone else will do the programming for you. This sounds like an ideal solution, but what about the lack of control you have? What if the station decides to change its format? Some stations change music genre without any warning, which can leave you with a sound that doesn’t match the brand of your store. What if you chose a station with instrumental jazz that switched to country one morning, how fast could you find just the right new station to match your needs? And what about advertising? You have no control over the ads played on the chosen station, and they could very well be for your competitors. What would happen if a sale for your competitor were announced while customers were thinking of buying in your store?

• Collect some MP3s to play on a loop: This is something else you could consider; a large number of radios have the ability to play MP3 files from a drive, or you could even have a computer with a random playlist. How do you deal with the royalty obligations for the songs you play? What if you want to change the list of songs on a routine basis? Do you have the computer skills to easily change to a playlist of seasonal songs if you choose? How easy will it be to remove one song from the playlist?

• Create your own radio station: With this option you can combine the benefits of the options above without many of the headaches. By setting up a radio station with playlists that set the mood you are able to match your brand with the music that is played throughout your store. Updating a playlist to remove one song is easy, and by having several playlists you can easily switch between them for a change in season or just a change of pace. You can choose to have no advertising on your station, or you can choose to include your own advertising specifically for products in your store or to announce deals. The customization options are almost endless with TikiLIVE.

So How Do I Make This Happen?
It’s easy with TikiLIVE because we’re here to help every step of the way. We have many streaming options including audio and video, but for your purposes you can sign up for our ‘Radio Only’ account to suit your needs. For one low monthly fee you will get one radio channel that includes:
• 150GB/month streaming transfer
• 3GB Storage Included
• Ability to Publish Radio Channels
• Better Than Radio quality
• 5,000 Radio Listeners a month
• Ability to manage channel themes
• Free WordPress site to promote your station
You could have your station playing in several small branch stores or affiliated shops so that you can ensure you have a common mood that matches your brand throughout all stores. You could set commercials specifically for products across stores, announce deals between partnering affiliates, and encourage your customers to be patrons for all the stores in your network.

How Do I Get Started?
To get started you just need to set up your account at TikiLIVE where you can then manage your audio playlist easily through our intuitive online interface. You can create and manage playlists using your own audio files or files from the public audio library at TikiLIVE. Your own audio files can incorporate your own advertising announcements and broadcasts about store deals. And best of all, the audio content that is included in the public audio library is available for you to use the way you want because we handle any royalty and usage rights.
Once created, a playlist can be easily modified, assigned to your channel or removed from the channel to be added again later (such as a seasonal playlist). If desired, you can even delete a playlist, never to be heard again. When a playlist is published to the channel it is available for listening by anyone who is accessing the channel, no matter what device they are using to access.

So How Do I Find Out More?
TikiLIVE is the easy, fast, efficient, inexpensive way to provide a standard, consistent atmosphere for your store that will match your brand and allow you to deliver the perfect message to your customers at all times.
So why wait to think about it, contact us today and discover why TikiLIVE is Better Than Radio!

Broadcast PlayStation4 Games on TikiLIVE

Broadcast PlayStation4 Games on TikiLIVEOnline gaming communities have been around as long as there has been online gaming. Gamers are a very active and passionate community that knows how to make full use of online resources to share tips, cheats, and gaming experiences. The Internet is full of sites, blogs, and forums dedicated to discussing the minutiae of how to finesse the numerous gaming worlds. Sony’s PlayStation 4 has social features built right in to make this community experience an integral part of its play, making it easy for this console to develop a large and loyal following.

A big part of spreading Playstation 4’s popularity is player-created tutorial videos that teach players of all levels how to succeed at a game. Tutorials are not only a great way to spread knowledge and generate interest in the game, but they are also a great way for a player to show off their mastery of the game. The thing is that, as you would expect, gamers are a very technically savvy lot. They are not going to have much patience for videos that are so compressed that the game’s sophisticated graphics are blurred and their color distorted, or delivered over an inadequate platform that causes a lot of buffering and other playback issues.

PlayStation 4 gamers who want to want to stream video tutorials in HD quality over a robust hosting and playback infrastructure need look no further than TikiLIVE, the premier online content delivery platform. TikiLIVE can take your Playstation 4 game captures and encode them for playback on any standard HTML5-enabled tablet, smartphone, or set-top boxes such as Roku. Your game tutorials can then be streamed in high definition over a rock-solid connection anytime, anywhere.

Setup for Broadcasting Your PS4 Game Play

TikiLIVE makes it a snap to broadcast your PlayStation 4 game play with its HD Wave Broadcaster. To start streaming your games and tutorials, you need:

Connect your PlayStation 4 console to the HDMI splitter and then connect outputs from the HDMI splitter to both your monitor and to your capture card-equipped PC. Play your game and narrate, with the capture card enabled to record your game play. From there, set the TikiLIVE HD Wave Broadcaster to stream the capture to the designated channel. TikiLIVE’s Monster encoder renders the capture for playback on all desktops, laptops, iOS and Android smartphones and tablets. Your PlayStation 4 content can also be watched on TVs equipped with a set-top box such as Roku.

The HD Wave delivers a top-quality high-definition image that beautifully displays every color and detail of the game screen with high-quality audio. Stream PS4 game tutorials, tournaments, level walkthroughs, anything you want to share on your PS4. While it’s streaming, record it all and post the videos in your Media Library for on-demand viewing on your channel.

Use TikiLIVE’s Social Media Integration to Drive Traffic to Your Channel

Once you’ve established your TikiLIVE channel as a resource for PlayStation 4 gamers, you’re going to want to let the gamer community know about it. TikiLIVE’s social media integration makes it a breeze to promote your channel on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

Use TikiLIVE’s message center to send and receive messages and build relationships with other gamers and broadcasters. Keep channel subscribers updated with your RSS feed. Schedule live game streaming events or tournaments with TikiLIVE’s channel scheduling tool, and send posts and tweets about them with the click of a button. Post updates about your channels to the WordPress site that comes with every TikiLIVE account.

You can also host teaser/promo videos about your PS4 channel in the TikiLIVE Media Library and embed them in YouTube and other video sharing sites to boost your profile. On popular gamer sites and forums, gaining new viewers is as easy as posting a link to your TikiLIVE channel.

Built Up a Library of Gaming Tutorials? Run Them Continuously on a Playlist

If you record all your game streaming sessions and want to share them, you can do two things with TikiLIVE. You can post them for individual video-on-demand viewing and you can set them to play on a continuous loop on your TikiLIVE channel. With TikiLIVE’s Channel Manager, you can create a playlist to run on your channel in which you specify which videos to play, what order to play them in, and if you want them to play in a scheduled block of time or on a continuous loop. This feature gives you the power to create your own IPTV station dedicated to all of your PlayStation 4 content that can be accessed around the clock, anywhere in the world.

TikiLIVE’s Analytics Show Your Channels’ Reach

Once you’re broadcasting your PlayStation 4 content with TikiLIVE, it can be helpful to see how many people are tuning in, where they are tuning in from, on what types of devices, and other data that gives you a picture of your audience and helps you decide how to promote your content. TikiLIVE’s sophisticated analytics tools provide a comprehensive breakdown of your viewers’ habits and statistics on numbers of viewers, how long they stay tuned in, bandwidth consumed by your channels on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis, and other data than can guide how you focus your efforts in promoting your channels. This data can also give you insights into how to tailor your content to match your audience’s typical viewing patterns, to appeal to specific geographical areas, and so on.

Reach and Teach the Gamers of the World

If you’ve got skills and want to share your expertise with others who want to improve theirs, use TikiLIVE to capture all the excitement and show them what you know! TikiLIVE’s HD Wave presents the graphics at top quality and won’t keep your viewers hanging with buffering or other playback hiccups. It’s easy to get started, but if you do have questions, we offer live support 24/7.

 

How to Monetize Your Video Content

How to Monetize Your Video ContentYou put a lot of care and effort into adding value to your videos to make them the best they can be. Why not get paid for it? Not only does TikiLIVE make it easy to share your content across digital and mobile devices worldwide, but it also gives you a number of ways to generate revenue from your video channels.

Whether you want to create a pay-per-view on-demand video, a live streaming event, or a subscription-based channel, TikiLIVE has built-in tools that make collecting funds for your content as easy as it makes hosting and sharing it. There are a few other ways that TikiLIVE can help you monetize your videos. Let’s explore a few together!

Live Pay-Per-View Events: They’re Not Just for Cable Anymore

Live pay-per-view events have been a lucrative staple of cable broadcasting for decades, enabling events to reach a far larger audience than its physical location could contain. Because a live broadcast of an event is the next best thing to actually being there, this adds value to the broadcast that people are willing to pay for.

Fortunately, TikiLIVE has ticketing features built right into its hosting platform, eliminating the headaches and compatibility issues of using a third-party ticketing application for your content, with the added benefit of being viewable on any device. With TikiLIVE, you simply schedule the broadcast on your event calendar, choose which of your channels you will be broadcasting the event from, and enter your ticket price on the PPV Settings tab for your event.

When you enter a ticket price, the PPV Settings tab clearly shows you the amount of net income you will receive from each ticket, after TikiLIVE’s small transaction and site administration fees. Recurring pay-per-view events are also supported.

Once scheduled, pay-per-view events can be easily modified or deleted. TikiLIVE’s social media integration makes it easy to publicize your event on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and others. After the live event, you will receive payment for all tickets sold by the 17th of the following month.

Video on Demand: Ongoing Revenue for Your Content

The videos you have published to be viewed on demand can be set for pay-per-view as well, creating an ongoing stream of revenue for as long as you make the video available for viewing. Simply choose the video from your Media Library, and in its settings, click on the Pay Per View tab. As with live events, enter a ticket price in the field provided, and the tab will show you the amount you will receive for each ticket, less TikiLIVE’s site administration and transaction fees.

As with live events, TikiLIVE’s Monster Encoder will make sure your video is viewable on any device – even those that require HTML5 – including smartphones, tablets, desktop/laptop computers, and digital set-top boxes such as Roku (more on these later). Payments for your video-on-demand tickets sold are made by the 17th of the subsequent month.

Channel Manager Events: Ticketing for Video Playlists

If you have playlists of video content set to run on a channel at specified times or on a continuous loop, you can set these events as pay-per-view as well for ongoing revenue. Simply assign to a channel the playlist of videos you want to ticket for, schedule the playing of this playlist as an event on the Event Calendar, and enter the ticketing details on the PPV Settings tab for the event as described for live streaming events above. As with the other pay-per-view types, payment is issued for your playlist tickets sold by the 17th of the following month.

Easily Reach Roku Users with High-Definition Delivery

While TikiLIVE’s encoding for viewing across all mobile devices is an exciting benefit that enables your content to reach audiences worldwide without being tied to a physical location or television set, many people still enjoy the ritual of relaxing in front of the large screens of their TVs for watching video. For these people, TikiLIVE makes it easy to make your video channels available on Roku and other digital set-top boxes for high-definition viewing of your pay-per-view content.

With this outlet, viewers don’t need to log into your TikiLIVE site; they simply add your channel from the Channel Store, choose the content they want to watch, and enter payment details to view. Viewers can view your pay-per-view live events, video on demand, and channel playlists easily from the comfort of their living rooms, delivered in TikiLIVE HD Wave’s high-definition quality. And unlike traditional home-broadcasting technologies, what a viewer can watch is not limited by geography or cable company, giving your content and your revenue-earning opportunities a potentially global reach.

Other Ways to Generate Revenue with TikiLIVE

Advertising: TikiLIVE supports the following types of ads to be shown on playback of your video content:

● AdSense: Google AdSense banners can be set to display on your channel page below the video content. Enter your AdSense code on the Channel Options & Privacy tab of a channel’s settings. Contact Google about getting started with their AdSense program.
● Pre-roll Ads: Ads that display when the viewer lands on your video or channel.
● Middle-roll Ads: Ads that display in mid-playback of your video.
● Post-roll Ads: Ads that display at the end of your video.

Contact TikiLIVE about using pre-roll, middle-roll, and post-roll ads. Our team can help you decide which is right for you, whether to use full-screens or banners, at what interval to display the ads, as well as other issues.

Subscriptions: TikiLIVE supports the purchase of renewable subscriptions for your channels. Contact TikiLIVE about how to set this up.

Let TikiLIVE Help You Sell Your Content for What It’s Worth

When you’re passionate about something, it has value to you, and chances are it has value to others as well. People are willing to pay for content that presents their passions to them in a new way, or that just lets them celebrate their passions for a while. TikiLIVE can be your partner in bringing your video content to people worldwide who care about what you have to share and are willing to support it with their ticket purchases. For more information about how this can work for you, contact us today!

Create a Booking Calendar on Your WordPress Website

Create a Booking Calendar on Your WordPress Website

If you are looking for a way to show your availability on your website, as well as to setup appointments for your products or services, a booking calendar may be a great way to serve your website visitors. Many people think that adding a booking calendar to a website requires complicated programming, but this is actually not true at all, assuming that you are using a CMS platform such as WordPress.

Basics of WordPress

If you are not familiar with WordPress, you may have been living under a rock for the past few years. WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) used online. A CMS allows website owners to quickly and easily build websites that are interactive, attractive and feature-rich, all from an extremely easy to use interface. WordPress has allowed non-technical individuals to create websites that wow customers and offer a variety of interactive features such as booking calendars.

WordPress Plugin Integration

One of the reasons why WordPress has become so popular over the past decade is the fact that developers are able to create a wide variety of plugins that can be easily integrated into any WordPress website. These plugins allow anyone to quickly add interactive elements to their websites such as contact forms, image galleries and even booking calendars.

Strong WordPress Community

According to recent statistics, roughly 23% of all websites are utilizing the WordPress content management system. With this popularity comes a sense of community that is simply not available from any other CMS platform. WordPress offers a community forum that allows users to ask questions that are usually quickly answered by WordPress veterans. This community is what makes WordPress such a great platform for beginners.

How to Create a Booking Calendar on Your WordPress Website

If you have a WordPress website and are ready to create a booking calendar, follow the following steps to easily add a booking calendar to your site.

1. Login to your WordPress admin panel – The first step to installing a booking calendar is to login to your WordPress control panel. This is the same platform that you use to make changes to your WordPress website.

2. Navigate to the plugins section of your WordPress site – The plugins section should be on the left menu bar inside your WordPress dashboard.

3. Install a booking calendar to WordPress – Click “Add New” and then search for a booking calendar for your website. We recommend Appointments+ as it is one of the more feature-rich booking calendars available for WordPress.

4. Configure your booking calendar – Once you have installed your booking calendar you can accept, create and manage all of your bookings on your WordPress site.

Benefits of an Online Booking Calendar

There are a number of reasons why adding a booking calendar to your website may make sense including:

Accept payments online – One of the top benefits of using an online calendar is having the ability to accept payment for online bookings. Maybe you are a band that is looking to sell virtual tickets to your next big show. With an online booking calendar you can easily accept payment for your concerts through an online calendar.

Show availability – With an interactive online calendar, you can let your fans or customers always know your availability. Keeping your calendar in one place will reduce miscommunication and help you to be transparent with your fans or customers about your availability.

Email notifications – Another benefit of a booking calendar is that you can setup to receive email notifications when someone books a certain event which can help to always keep you in the loop as to how many people will be attending your events.

Manage appointments with Google calendar – Do you manage your appointments or events through Google calendar? With WordPress plugins like Appointments+ that is no problem. Appointments+ allows you to manage all of your appointments through Google calendar and have them update on the fly on your website.

Create black out dates – Have you had customers complain that they did not realize you were not offering services during a certain period of time? With a booking calendar you can create blackout periods which will be visible on your website and will not allow customers to book your services during these times.

Client reminders – Another benefit of Appointments+ is that it allows you to send automated emails to remind your clients or fans about an upcoming event that they have signed up for.

Paypal integration – Appointments+ offers full PayPal integration, which allows your clients to easily be able to pay for your events ahead of time.

Advanced booking – Do you have a set schedule for an extended period of time? With Appointments+ you can setup your booking calendar with events up to 1 year in advance.

Location integration – With an online booking calendar you can indicate the location of each of your events, which can then be integrated with Google Maps to give your users a true sense of where all of your events will be taking place.

Appointments+ and TikiLIVE

At TikiLIVE our customers have long been looking for an easy way to manage online bookings from their WordPress websites. Just as is the case with other WordPress requests from our customer base, we now offer complete integration with the Appointments+ WordPress plugin. In fact, this plugin is already installed and can be accessed from your WordPress dashboard. While we’ve included the steps on how to install this versatile plugin in this article, if you are utilizing TikiLIVE’s WordPress module you already have this functionality.

It has always been our goal to create ways in which our customers can more easily provide top-notch content to their fans and users. Adding a robust WordPress plugin like Appointments+ allows our customers to manage their booking calendars with ease.

For more information on how to enable your booking calendar on your WordPress website through TikiLIVE, check out our video tutorial online.

If you want to learn more TikiLIVE’s wide variety of services contact our talented customer service team today at 305-289-4557.

The Best Alternative to Ustream, Vimeo and YouTube

The Best Alternative to Ustream, Vimeo and YouTubeWhen you have video content to share with an audience, it’s tempting to deliver the video with the most widely used, best known platforms, while saving money in the process by availing yourself of the many free services available online. But if you want to present the public with a quality viewing experience, are these the best choices? Even if you want to upgrade to a content delivery platform that supports live streaming and HD broadcasting, how do you know which of your options are the best choice?

Enter TikiLIVE, the premier HD content hosting and delivery platform. While other services may lure you in with free video hosting and playback, these often become situations where you need to take the good with the bad – low video quality, advertising, inability to handle traffic, and other issues. With TikiLIVE, the robust infrastructure reliably delivers top-quality HD video with no ads (unless you choose to add them), makes your video accessible across devices, and bears your branding (not ours) when you use TikiLIVE’s white-label services.

So how do other top content-delivery services such as YouTube, Vimeo, and Ustream compare? They all have their good points, but let’s take a look at how TikiLIVE compensates for their shortcomings, making it the obvious choice for first-class video delivery.

YouTube: The Mixed Blessings of Being a Household Name

When it comes to watching video online, chances are the first word you think of is YouTube. There’s a good reason for that: they were one of the first applications to simplify and democratize video sharing on a wide scale. When YouTube was acquired by Google, their profile went from huge to astronomical: according to their own statistics, YouTube is visited by over a billion unique users each month. Most online publishing applications make it a snap to embed YouTube videos into page content. Speaking strictly in terms of internet traffic, YouTube’s viewership is tough to beat.

This high profile does come with some drawbacks if you are trying to present a first-class professional image with your video content, however. YouTube’s compression often sacrifices video quality. Most YouTube videos are prefaced by ads for unrelated products and display banner ads in mid-playback. And while your goal for creating videos is to get viewers to want to learn more about your product or service and click into your website, YouTube’s goal is for viewers to watch more YouTube videos, so they present related videos that can distract viewers away from pursuing your product or service. YouTube also attracts many casual users, who may post spam or other inappropriate content that can appear adjacent to yours in searches and related-videos links. YouTube comments also have a reputation for attracting provocative behavior from the public that you likely wouldn’t want associated with your content in any way.

Vimeo: Good Quality, No Ads, But…

Vimeo is another provider that has free and low-cost video delivery options, and though they aren’t as well known as (and therefore generate less traffic than) YouTube, they offer some benefits that YouTube doesn’t. They don’t run ads with their videos, and their business plans start at a very affordable $17 a month. With fewer casual users, Vimeo users tend to be more focused on quality content and substantive discussions in the comments and forums.

With these pluses come a few minuses for Vimeo, however. All Vimeo plans have limits on the number of videos users can upload, while even YouTube gives its free users unlimited uploads. In addition, it is believed that Vimeo is less favorable to search engines such as Google than YouTube. With Vimeo, you also need to generate and maintain separate mobile versions of your videos. That may not seem like a big deal, but if you have a large video library, this added overhead can be a real headache.

Ustream: A Platform Solution That Doesn’t Quite Do It All

Ustream is a content delivery platform that offers a more comprehensive suite of options than just video hosting and playback. Ustream provides users with various broadcasting tools to stream video, including live video, as well as audio and video playlists to be broadcast over the user’s channels. They also give users the opportunity to try these services in a limited capacity for free.

While the support for live streaming does give Ustream an advantage over YouTube and Vimeo, it does have certain drawbacks that may affect the user experience. For one, all paid plans have a cap on the number of ad-free hours your subscription buys you. The highest-tier plan offers 5,000 hours of ad-free views, while the lowest-tier paid plan only offers 100 ad-free hours.

If your content stands to generate a lot of traffic, ads could start appearing rather quickly and their appearance would be a turn-off for some users, creating an unprofessional appearance at the very least.

You also have to pay for the highest tier of service to have the Ustream branding removed from your content. In addition, Ustream has discontinued support for pay-per-view streaming content, so that avenue for monetizing your content no longer exists. Live phone support is also not available to all users.

TikiLIVE: The Best of All Worlds

When you look at all the ways the other video delivery services don’t deliver, TikiLIVE becomes the obvious choice for your all-in-one content delivery platform. TikiLIVE’s Monster Encoder makes your video instantly viewable on all iOS and Android devices and set-top boxes such as Roku, which means no maintaining separate libraries of mobile-ready videos for you.

TikiLIVE’s robust infrastructure delivers HD quality you can depend on always, without the bandwidth and capacity limits imposed by other services that can hinder your growth in traffic. You can easily brand your content with TikiLIVE’s white-label services, and the only ads that appear with your content are the ones you choose to run. TikiLIVE includes comprehensive social media integration tools and forums that are easy to moderate and maintain to your business’ standards.

Live streaming is as easy as connecting your smartphone and turning on the video camera; no specialized tools or training are needed for broadcasts. TikiLIVE’s ticketing features give you a hassle-free way to collect pay-per-view fees for your content. TikiLIVE gives you a WordPress front end for hosting your content, with the option to add a shopping cart for selling your products. And TikiLIVE provides you with top notch live support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Where the other services fall short, TikiLIVE steps up and emerges as the clear leader, one that can be depended on to deliver your valuable content anytime, anywhere. To talk further about what sets TikiLIVE apart, contact us today!

How to Create and Manage Online TV Channels with TikiLIVE

How to Create and Manage Online TV Channels with TikiLIVEDo you want to use high definition video to create your own TV channel? Do you want to gather followers who want to see your unique video creations? Do you want to even make some money by creating pay-per-view content? If you answered yes to the first two questions then you can do this on many platforms (like YouTube), but if you wanted to also monetize your content this isn’t an option. But the problem with sites like YouTube is that it’s common to see unrelated advertising and pop-up ads during your video. There’s also a lot of potential for slow buffering, which can seriously affect the viewing experience.
This is where TikiLIVE can help. There will be no advertising added to your videos unless you choose to add it yourself. There will be no links to someone else’s videos at the end of your video. We’ve also invested in the hardware and infrastructure necessary to ensure that there are no buffering problems and that your video is available on any device the viewer wants to use. If you are going to ask people to pay for your content these are problems you can’t afford to have.

So How Do I Do This?
This may sound difficult and complicated, but with TikiLIVE it is as easy as signing up and recording video. Here are the basic steps that you’ll need to complete to create your custom online channel with TikiLIVE:

• Register Your Account: We make this easy with options to use your email, Twitter account or Facebook account. By providing some simple profile information you are up and running with your TikiLIVE account.

• Log in to your Account: Once you have registered you can log in using your email, Twitter or Facebook account to make ongoing access to your TikiLIVE account easy. From here you can link to your Dashboard where you can access everything you need with easy clicks.

• Media Tab: By clicking on the media tab you can choose to upload video content to your video library. Simply have the video accessible and click on the upload video button and follow the links. You can also upload audio files to your library as well.

• Create Your First Channel: On the channels tab you can simply click to create your first channel and follow the prompts to name your channel and assign it to a genre from the drop down list. You can also create an audio channel here as well.

• Create a Playlist: From the playlists tab you can create a playlist of your uploaded video or audio files, depending on the channel you are programming. Through a simple drag and drop you can arrange your videos in the order you want them seen and easily edit or change the order at any time.

• Create an Event: If you are choosing to add live streaming content to your channel you can easily set up an event in your calendar. If you have used any calendar software, such as Google calendar, the interface is just as easy to use.

• Broadcast Your Live Event: When it is time to stream your live event there are two ways to start. Once logged in to the homepage you will find that starting a live broadcast is as simple as clicking on the ‘Go Live’ button. From your Dashboard you can click on the Go Live link in the Channels drop down. Both will easily stream the live content from your video recorder, mobile phone or tablet to your live video channel.

• Manage Your Community: Once you have established your channel you can manage your community of followers through the community tab. Here you will find the message center, an integrated blog and easily managed listings for your friends, followers and social media feeds.

• Manage Your Statistics: From the Stats tab you can quickly look at the overall metrics and related statistics for your live channels and video channels. How many viewers have you received? Which videos are most popular? How long were videos played? All of these data points are tracked for you to easily view.

• WordPress Integration: With your TikiLIVE channel comes an already integrated WordPress frontend to manage your presence to the world. WordPress allows you to not only blog about your channel activities, but to also include easily created, updated and maintained web pages where you can share information related to the channel or channels you broadcast.

• Find Support for Your Questions: With our online, comprehensive and searchable manual you can find everything you need to know to start your channel and keep it running. If you get stuck there is also a link through the support tab on the Dashboard to chat online, live with a customer service representative who can sort out any problems you may have.

How Do I Maintain My TV Channel?
Maintaining your channel is as easy as offering new and unique video content. You can use the blog and WordPress page to get the news out about your channel, and word of mouth is one of the best ways to bring people to see your content. However, if you don’t continue to update and offer new video content then this interest will wane. By uploading new video clips, or scheduling and broadcasting more live events, you can draw in more viewers and create more buzz about your content.
Why Not Start Broadcasting Now?
When TikiLIVE has made it this easy, why not start creating a channel right now? With the simple and intuitive dashboard you can be up and running in a matter of minutes, and all the support you need is on the site. However, if you have any other questions about setting up your account or broadcasting on your own TV channel feel free to contact us!

How TikiLIVE Makes Social Media Better

How TikiLIVE Makes Social Media Better Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+, Pinterest; social media is all around us and has slowly made itself such a part of our lives that it is hard to imagine a world without it. There are many different platforms with many different benefits and limitations, but they all have one thing in common. There are certain limitations in how many of them handle multimedia content such as streaming audio or video.
Most people work around this by utilizing free services such as YouTube to store a video that can be linked to the social media post, but this also has its limitations. Commercials for unrelated products, slow buffering, popup messages during the video, lower quality video; all of these can change the message you want to present when you choose to embed a video into your social media post.

Getting YOUR Message Out to the Masses

Say you are a new artist who wants to showcase your talent by posting an audio or video file of your song. This is quite easily done with the tools available today, most mobile phones can take HD quality video, but it is important to think about some of the drawbacks listed above when you decide where to store your media for sharing. What message do you want to relay to your audience?

When someone clicks on the link in your post what are they going to see first? Will they be taken to a completely unrelated ad that may turn them off from watching your video? Will the video have trouble loading due to a buffering issue? Will the video be interrupted by a display banner part way through that obscures the video? If they watch your song, will they be offered more of your videos or will they be offered many unrelated videos that have nothing to do with you? Will they even be able to watch the video on the electronic device they have chosen to use? These are all important things to consider.

TikiLIVE Can Help!

With TikiLIVE you control the content and we take care of the rest. Once you have created your video or audio file you just need to upload it to TikiLIVE then include the link in your social media post using our comprehensive social media integration tools. TikiLIVE offers several advantages compared to other streaming providers.
• No advertising unless you decide to include it
• HD quality without bandwidth limits
• Your content will be instantly viewable on all iOS and Android devices with TikiLIVE’s Monster Encoder
So if you were the artist above you could record and upload your video, attach it to your social media posts, and know that your message was being sent to your audience without other messages getting in the way. TikiLIVE has invested in the infrastructure to make sure your video is delivered without buffering issues or poor video quality so that you can focus on creating high quality content.

Improving Your Social Media Marketing

Another common use of social media is as a marketing tool that showcases your product or service to the public. As anyone who has tried to sell a product knows, the best way to entice people to buy is by doing more than telling them about it, but by letting them try it. While the internet gives you a much larger audience than what was available in the past, it does have the limitation of not allowing customers to see the product for themselves.

Or does it?

The next best thing to having the product in your hands is to see someone actually using it. Embedding tutorials or videos that showcase the ways your product can be used on your social media sites is a great way to do this.
For all the reasons that the artist wants to control the video they send, you will want to make sure that your product video is delivered unrelated advertisements – or worse, ads for your competitors’ products. You will want to make sure that the video streams without problems that can turn off your potential customers, and you will want to make sure they are forwarded back to you when they are done rather than somewhere else. TikiLIVE is the answer to all these problems.

The Best Way to Raise School Spirit

Many high schools are already using social media to keep in contact with students, but why not take it to the next level? Adding an audio or video message link to your social media posts can increase interest and improve student engagement. Send a short clip of the latest football game, rehearsal video of the upcoming school play, or even a video advertisement for the school dance. What better way to build interest in school activities and raise school spirit?
In fact, why not use your channel for a live broadcast of the game or assembly for those students that are not able to be there in person. The tools are available from TikiLIVE to do this effortlessly through a cell phone or video camera at the game. It is as simple as turning your camera to the action and letting our integrated tools do everything else that needs to be done.
Best of all, with TikiLIVE you can be assured that the message you send is the one you intend to give. No advertisements or links to other content on an uncontrolled video platform. TikiLIVE allows you to create your own video and audio channels and store your media before sending to your students, and it can always be available if they need to see it again at a later date.

Support for Your Content Delivery Needs

Whatever your needs for social media integration, TikiLIVE is committed to providing you with the best solution to deliver high quality video and audio content to your followers. Our courteous and knowledgeable staff can talk with you to answer all your questions and be able to best determine the solutions that will meet your unique needs. Contact us today to learn more about how TikiLIVE can improve your social media marketing!

How to Stream Live Sports on Roku

How to Stream Live Sports on Roku.Are you a sports junkie looking for a way to stream live sporting events to your TV? Maybe you are trying to stream your kid’s baseball game to relatives across the country or maybe you are building a digital catalog of your best performances in high school or college. Whatever the case may be, in the past finding a way to stream live sports to a set top box was difficult if you were not technologically savvy.

Thankfully with advances in technology, streaming content to the world is no longer something achieved only by those with years of experience dealing with expensive cameras and complicated editing software. Today almost anyone can record live content and stream it to whomever they choose with relative ease.

The key to streaming live content online is to partner with a content delivery network jam packed with features, one of which allows you to stream your content to set top boxes from manufacturers like Roku. In this article we will briefly explain the importance of a content delivery network and also talk about how to stream live sports on Roku set top boxes.

What is a Content Delivery Network

A content delivery network is a group of servers that are distributed across a large number of data centers across the Internet. These servers are typically located in different geographical locations. The goal of a content delivery network or CDN is to serve content to end-users in the most efficient and quickest way possible.

Companies or individuals who have a large amount of multimedia content like videos and high-resolution images are often well served by using a CDN as opposed to hosting these files on a standard web server. Without a CDN, end-users can experience extremely slow load times, especially when certain content becomes popular. The typical Internet user is extremely impatient and will often leave a website that is slow to load. A study from Mozilla (the creators of the popular browser, Firefox) found that over 30% of Internet users begin to abandon slow sites between 1 and 5 seconds. This statistic shows the importance of a CDN to ensure that users will be able to access streaming content as quickly as possible.

Limitations of Certain Content Delivery Networks

While there are a large number of content delivery networks that will be more than happy to serve your content, the truth is that not all CDNs are equal in terms of their features. Some CDNs have certain limitations that can cause serious issues, especially as your video content becomes more popular.

• Bandwidth Throttling – When you are streaming live content over the Internet, throttling can become a major issue. Some content providers use throttling to slow down the speed in which users can download video content. This in turn will cause more buffering and lagging which will cause some of your users to look elsewhere for content.

• Advertisements in Videos – Another way that some of the free video content providers continue to exist is through paid advertising. These ads can appear alongside your video or even be embedded within your video. This can distract the user from your content and even lead them away to another video or site.

• Poor Analytics – Another limitation of some CDNs is the inability to provide detailed analytics of viewer behavior. These metrics are extremely important for content providers to determine which video content is working well and which content should be tweaked. Without these statistics, you are essentially guessing as to which content you should promote.

• Lack of Mobile Viewing Options – Another important feature to look for in a content provider is how well they handle mobile viewers. With more and more users accessing both static and video content from their phones, it is important that your content be available across a large number of devices including smartphones, tablets and set top boxes.

Let TikiLIVE Help You Stream Live Sports

TikiLIVE is a content provider that offers a wide variety of features that can make it easy to stream your content to users across all devices. Whether your users are accessing your content from a mobile phone, tablet, television or computer, TikiLIVE allows almost unlimited customization to ensure that your content is always seen regardless of device.

In the past, streaming sports required expensive equipment to accurately capture the fast paced action, but with the advances in video camera technology, affordable options are now available that can record live sporting events in high quality. When live streaming sporting events you have two main options when it comes to how you are going to record your video:

• Video Camera – Recording your live sporting events using a video camera will produce the most favorable results. You can record in HD if you would like, which can produce extremely high-resolution video that will be a joy to watch through TikiLIVE’s robust content delivery network.

• Smartphone – While TikiLIVE does offer an app for both Android and iOS phones that allow you to easily stream content from your mobile phone, this is not recommended for sporting events. Sports have too much action to be effectively captured through the small video camera on most smartphones. This method may be sufficient for a home video, but not if you are looking to stream your sporting events to others.

Combining the Power of TikiLIVE and Roku

One of TikiLIVE’s strengths is its ability to mesh extremely well with Roku devices. This allows you to easily stream live sports to users who want to view your content from the comfort of their living room. TikiLIVE allows you to create Roku channels that can show up on a users Roku menu screen alongside big players in the video content game such as Netflix and Hulu Plus. Stop selling yourself short when it comes to getting your content out to the masses. Utilize TikiLIVE and Roku to offer your users with a wide variety of options when it comes to viewing your sports content online.

For more information about the wide variety of features offered by TikiLIVE, give us a call today at 305-289-4557. We look forward to helping you stream your live sporting events to viewers around the world.