How to Use YouTube Live with Zoom

Live streaming via social media is a popular tool for marketing and brand awareness for companies today. It’s also become popular for news media and those with pressing information to share, and thanks to platforms like YouTube and Zoom, there are plenty of ways that you can go about putting live videos to work.

Of course, you have to make sure that you’ve got everything set up on both Zoom and your YouTube account. That starts by enabling livestreaming on the Zoom platform, and for that, you have a couple of different options.

To enable or disable livestreaming on YouTube for meetings and webinars, you’ll have three ways to go about it: by account, by group, or by user. If you want all users in the account to be able to livestream meetings, you’ll use the “account” feature. If you are trying to enable livestreaming with a specific group, you’ll use the “group” settings. And if you’re just trying to enable livestreaming for your own use, you can do this in the “user” settings.

How to allow streaming on Zoom

When you sign into Zoom, you will need to use the web portal as an administrator so that you can edit the main settings of the account, groups, users, etc. Then, you will need to navigate to one of three sections:

1. Account Management > Account Settings
2. User Management > Group Management
3. Settings > Meeting

In the first two, you’ll also locate the “meeting” option as your next step. Then, in the “In Meeting (Advanced)” tab, you’ll see two checkboxes:

- Allow livestreaming of meetings

- Allow livestreaming of webinars

You’ll need to check them both if you want to stream both, or you can select just meetings or webinars for approved streaming. Then, you’ll need to select the YouTube option from the list and click “save” to store your changes.

How to start your YouTube live stream on Zoom

Once you’ve got Zoom enabled and your YouTube account is set up and ready for livestreaming, you’ll want to start the webinar or meeting as a host from your desktop (Windows/macOS). At the bottom of your screen where you see the controls, click “More” and then click the “Live on YouTube” option.

Then, Zoom will ask you to log in to YouTube. You’ll also have to select the appropriate channel if you have more than one. Then, you’ll see this screen:

You can change the title that displays on YouTube and choose the privacy setting you prefer: public, unlisted, or private. Then, just click “Go Live!” and wait for the notification that Zoom is streaming. Then, you can begin the meeting or webinar.

Streaming will end when you end the meeting. You can also go to the settings and click “more” and find a button to stop the live stream without ending the meeting. You can also add thumbnail images and additional content to your livestream sessions within the available settings. Scheduling is available so that you can livestream future events, too.

Zoom has a great page about livestreaming that also explains other ways to use live streaming with Zoom and YouTube by embedding videos, sharing URLs, and more.

What about pre-recorded Zoom videos?

Zoom also allows the uploading of your pre-recorded videos, seminars, meetings, and other content to various platforms, including YouTube. The first thing that you’ll need to do is set your Zoom videos to save to your hard drive or cloud storage. Then, you can create as many meetings or webinars as you want with Zoom and upload them to YouTube right from your computer.

Pre-recorded uploading is pretty standard. YouTube will even walk you through it if you haven’t done it before. Livestreaming takes a little more work, but you can generate a whole different audience and get much more engagement with live videos than recordings, so they’re worth the effort.

You can also use the settings in Zoom to live stream to Facebook and LinkedIn, making it easy for you to manage your social and B2B engagement with a creative alternative.

The benefits of livestreaming

When you choose to livestream, you gain several benefits for your business. For starters, you can tap into a whole new audience who might not watch a lot of pre-recorded videos, but can’t get enough live content on any platform. You will also be able to create all kinds of content for all kinds of uses, and it’s easy to be mobile-friendly when you’re streaming videos on a site like YouTube and using Zoom to do it—these apps are designed with the mobile-first mentality and it shows.

Livestreaming will get your audience to appear on your time, instead of when it’s convenient for them. Plus, this practice isn’t totally overdone yet, so you won’t have to worry about getting lost among the masses when you choose to use this marketing tool. If you do it right, you’ll find plenty of new leads coming your way in no time at all.

Speaking of leads, are you ready?

Everyone wants growth, but rarely are they prepared for it. Fortunately, you’re not alone here. When you partner with Smith.ai, we’ll be ready with a 24/7 answering service that can assist with anything that your audience needs. We can handle scheduling and lead intake, live website chat, and even your outbound sales and outreach campaigns in to help bring the leads in the first place.

At Smith.ai, we do it all and we do it with a strategy that’s customized to your needs, ensuring that your business never misses a beat. That way, you can focus your efforts on things like marketing and livestreaming so that the business can grow. While you’re mastering the art of visual content, let us manage the rest.

To learn more, schedule a consultation to discuss what the 24/7 virtual receptionists at Smith.ai can do to help your business. You can also reach us at hello@smith.ai or (650) 727-6484.