Creating a YouTube Live Event, with a Landing Page on Your WordPress Website

YouTube Live allows anyone to play TV talk show host or broadcast live marketing, tutorial, or entertainment content to the world. I use it to share information about RSVPMaker and related software and to conduct interview programs.

Using RSVPMaker and your WordPress-powered website, you can use YouTube Live as a free webinar platform, registering attendees and directing them to a landing page on your website. After the event, you can gain further mileage out of the event by making a replay available on that same page (YouTube will automatically archive your event for replay).

This tutorial follows the exact process I followed to schedule and begin promoting a December 7 webinar on RSVPMaker.

YouTube Live is the latest version of what used to be called Google Hangouts on Air, now divorced from the Google+ social network. That change made some of the older tutorial content I’d published obsolete, and this is an update.

Here is how you can create one of these events:

First, log into your Google account. Go to https://www.youtube.com/my_live_events or navigate to that page from the YouTube video manager.

Click New Live Event and fill out the form. It should look something like this:

You will also create a corresponding RSVPMaker event for the same date and time. Because you may get attendees from other timezones, I recommend you tweak your RSVPMaker date/time display settings to specify that timezones should be displayed on your website.

Creating the Landing Page

Even before you create the RSVPMaker event, you may want to create the landing page for your site, so the RSVP confirmation can include directions on how to tune in at showtime. Some marketers may prefer to use some specific landing page software, but for my purposes this is a regular WordPress page not included on any menu but not managed with any fancy security either. Rather than making it a top secret, I am encouraging people to register for the sake of getting a calendar invite, plus an email reminder on the day of the event.

Here is what the setup for my event landing page looks like in the WordPress editor:

I’m showing this in Text mode, so you can see the code, whereas the visual editor would include a representation of the YouTube player. For the player, I need only include a YouTube URL on a blank line, and WordPress handles the video player setup automatically.

Right below that, you will see an iframe code. That is what allows the YouTube comments feature associated with the video to be displayed on my website. Viewers could also interact with the YouTube Live broadcast on youtube.com, but all things being equal I would rather keep them on my own branded website.

Update: you can skim lightly over this next section for background and pick up where I explain the new shortcode for adding the comments field.

See the YouTube documentation for a complete explanation, but the short version is that I need to capture the ID for the video and plug it into this iframe format. Here is where you will find the ID, in either the long or short versions of a YouTube url:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDHERE
• https://youtu.be/IDHERE

The other piece of information I need is the domain (including www or other subdomain) where the landing page will be hosted. If my ID was IDHERE and my domain was demo.example.com, then the URL for my iframe would be:

https://www.youtube.com/live_chat?v=IDHERE&domain=demo.example.com

So my iframe is something like:

<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/live_chat?v=IDHERE&domain=demo.example.com" width="100%" height="150">

Here is what it looks like on the website before the show has begun. If you click Play on a YouTube Live video before showtime, what’s displayed is a countdown clock showing the time until the show is scheduled to begin.

Shortcode for YouTube Live Chat

A new shortcode, [ylchat] simplifies the process of adding the YouTube Live comment stream. The shortcode function extracts the video ID from the YouTube link included in the page, detects the server domain, and constructs the iframe for the chat window, according to Google’s specifications.

You can add attributes for width and height to override the default values (100% wide x 200 pixels tall). To make the comments box stop displaying after the end time for the webinar, use the attribute until, as in:
[ylchat until=”January 30, 2017 8 pm”]
or
[ylchat until=”2017-01-30 20:00:00″]

The issue is this particular chat stream is only active during the live event, and an error will be displayed in this spot if someone views the page after the event is over. When you set the until attribute, the shortcode function effectively deactivates itself after the time you specify is past.

Confirmation Message and Reminders

Now when you create your RSVPMaker event, you can incorporate a link to the landing page as part of the confirmation displayed on screen and sent to the attendee via email …

Confirmation Message: Live Video Chat: RSVPMaker for WordPress Demo/Q&A Wednesday December 7th 7:00 PM EST

Thank you for registering!

On December 7, 2016 at 7 pm EST, please tune in at
https://rsvpmaker.com/rsvpmaker-demoqa-december-2016/

You will be able to post questions during the event using your Google account, or you can tweet them to @davidfcarr before or during the event.

… as well as one or more reminders:

Set for 2 hours before the start of the event

Subject: REMINDER: Live Video Chat: RSVPMaker for WordPress Demo/Q&A Wednesday December 7th 7:00 PM EST

I hope you haven’t forgotten you signed up for my webinar tonight!

On December 7, 2016 at 7 pm EST, please tune in at
https://rsvpmaker.com/rsvpmaker-demoqa-december-2016/

You will be able to post questions during the event using your Google account, or you can tweet them to @davidfcarr before or during the event.

Conducting Your Event

At showtime, you will then launch your YouTube Live program from the Live Events page on youtube.com. You can invite in guests to join you in the live program and screenshare to demo software or show slides. It’s a good idea to get everything organized, including getting your guests signed in, at least 15 minutes prior to the start of the live program.

To make it easier to keep track of questions coming in on the YouTube comment feed, I recommend opening a popup window version of that feed, which you can do from either the public page for the event or the YouTube Live “video control room.”

When you start the live broadcast you can then switch to that chat window periodically to check for questions coming in.

For more about how to conduct a YouTube Live session, see the official help documents.

I still like Pat Flynn’s How to Run a Q&A Session Using Google Hangouts on Air as an explanation of how and why to run one of these programs, although some of the content is dated because it refers to the old Google+ incarnation of this service.

I also recommend you get familiar with using the YouTube video editor to trim away extraneous content. For example, I often broadcast a “we will get started in just a few minutes” greeting before the program actually starts, but I don’t want that to be something people see when they watch the replay. See Adding, Then Editing Out, a Hangouts on Air Pre-Show Greeting.

The separation from Google+ is mostly positive, BTW, since trying to convince people to get an account on that service in order to participate was a losing proposition. However, it meant some features went away such as the Q&A app that was linked to Google+. I found the popup chat window worked just as well for my purposes. I’ve also experimented with embedding the YouTube Live player on a page with Facebook comments enabled, where I thought my audience was more Facebook friendly.

If you come up with other approaches, please share your ideas.