Restream.IO Review: Will It Be Helpful To Widen Your Podcast Audience? With Cody Hanify

Want your podcast and videocast to be seen, heard, found and rewarded in this noisy digital world, you are not alone. Join the nonprofit community at Podcasters United and podcast industry experts Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard as they debunk all that outdated and bad advice you've been getting from the podcast gurus and find out what actually works. Today, get ready to finish Feed your brand with smart cut tactics proven to cast your original voice to the world.

Hey everyone, welcome back to Feed you'd Brand on behalf of Tracy Hazard and Tom Hazzard. My name is Cody Hanafi and I'll be your guest host for today. Part of what Potitize and Tracy is working on is getting more and more voices on the Feed you'd Brand platform to bring new and exciting topics from inside Potitize. For those who are just meeting me for the first time, hello. What's up? How's it going? It's nice to meet you and it's nice to be here to hopefully provide some value for you and hope to get anything that you're looking for out of this. All right. I work internally with the company. I'm a sales associate and Poditizes business development strategist and now I guess guest host podcaster. But last time I was on the show we talked about Clubhouse's third party companion desktop app called Club Deck Man. The task of taking time to review and make aware of software you didn't know was available is something I'm happy to be at the helm of. I'm very grateful to be here and happy to be on this platform to share some more insight with you all. Without further ado, let's get to today's topic. I'll be going over a multi streaming software called Restream, which as I guess a perfect time to introduce the title of today's episode, Restream IO Review. Will it be helpful to widen your podcast audience? Very intriguing title Right now. Before we get into my pretty straightforward reviewed, I'd like to take time to talk about multi streaming and why this is something that could be suited for you and your podcast. So what is Multi Stream? I'm sure you can kind of guess what that could be based on its name, but all it means is simultaneously live streaming to multiple channels. It's that simple. I mean, even though it's been around for more than a decade, live streaming has recently become mainstream and it's almost every social media platform comes with a live stream option between YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, even LinkedIn has live. There are so many options for live streaming and getting your message across to multiple different platforms, right? An article I read by Streamlabs really helped me conjure up some talking points for you today. Article shows that creators struggle to grow an engaging audience equally across these platforms due to just one limitation. They can't stream to multiple destinations at the same time natively if they can only stream live video to one network at a time. They only have two options here, right? One is to focus on the platform over another to host the live session and publish a recording on every other platform they use. Two is to host a separate live stream for each platform. See, it's a choice between sacrificing a huge amount of time and energy or failing to reach their audience. That's the most engaging way possible. But the solution to this specific problem is multi streaming. And it begs the question though, is multi streaming even worth it? I follow and subscribe to some YouTubers. Well, I'm a big huge nerd, so it's a lot of like movie reviews and theories and some gaming as well. But take for example a YouTuber that I followed. His name is Star Wars Theory. I know, I told you I'm a big huge nerd. And his show is dedicated to providing insight and on theories throughout the universe. Something I'm heavily invested in. But anyways, you will have live streams take place, right? And more than just one place. Not just his YouTube. He's mainly a YouTuber, but he streams on multiple different platforms all at once. See, what he understands is that multi streaming helps create engagement and flexibility for your audience if you want to reach all those who would value your message. Multi streaming is a route you can take if you have listeners who like to operate on like very specific channels. Not just YouTube, but if you have a following on LinkedIn, on Twitch, all these other platforms using multi streaming can bring all of your different listeners to the same message without uploading it after the fact. You know, going on to a recording and then just uploading it to these different factions. Right?

The point of live streaming is for audience engagement, being able to answer questions in real time, show that you can provide value to all those that tune in. It's our main function for these podcast episodes on feed your brand. Actually, lots of gamers will have streaming set up for their Facebook pages or groups or their twitch channel and YouTube channel across the board. See, people can chat and chime in and it creates an almost unstoppable approach to spreading your message to multiple different platforms. So multi streaming is absolutely worth it, right? And multi streaming is a great way to extend your reach to multiple live streaming platforms and engage your chances of not only engaging with the people that already follow you, but your chances of being discovered. Every single time you go live, people have notifications set up when every time someone goes live they're going to be scrolling right to the top and seeing you there. Right now comes this big question though. How do I do all of this? How do I take my live stream and put it on multiple platforms at once? Now a good thing about our current day and age is that there's plenty of software out there to get this task taken care of with ease. Poditized clients know that we operate out of zoom and we live stream the podcast recording into our brandcasters Facebook Group page. That way we can have it open and available for all clients that have the opportunity to chime in and be a part of the message we are delivering on their preferred platform to operate out of. But today I'm going to bring to light some software I mentioned at the beginning of this episode and what you saw in the title before clicking restream IO. Andrew Shazynski and Alexander Kunda, I hope I'm pronouncing them correctly, found that on Google Voice. But they founded Restream in 2015 with this obsession to help streamers get a wider audience, focusing first on the gaming community and building initially a free product. They soon saw the potential of how restream could help all kinds of circumstances, from everyday in real life streaming to professional keynote broadcasting. That's where podcasters with live shows you come in and can utilize this opportunity for you and your show. Here's some great reviews that I found actually between users. One user said, the ability to unify people across many platforms and give them a chance to experience the stream service you provide and being able to reach a larger demographic is fantastic for brand building. So if you're looking at building your brands, obviously this is helping out this client, right? Another testimonial is restream. Pricing is pretty fair and you get lots of features like they have lots of discounts on different occasions so you have different types of streaming that you can do and another person says the top of the chart Technical support relatively easy to set up through obs and well known streaming platforms like Twitch and Mixer. So it seems like it's got a lot of technical support. There's someone who actually helps you out. There's lots of ways. If you visit the Restream IE interface their website, it's almost uncanny how easy it is to set up. I Got it set up in just a few moments. And that's kind of why I wanted to touch upon this specific software today. Now this software, it kind of gets tied to a price that hasn't ever been planned for or budgeted for. But that's the best thing about Restream, right? There's a completely free version for you to get started with multi streaming. You can connect through Obs, you can connect through Zoom, or you can just use the Restream Studio right in the web browser. I found this the coolest. So you just can use it right in the web browser and utilize it as your home hub for all of your multi streaming capabilities. You can multi stream two channels, you can have a multi channel chat. So that's actually another really cool thing about this multi streaming platform is it enables you to have one place to where all of your chats are coming through and you're able to communicate with everybody all at once. It's actually really neat. You have six on screen participants with the free version. So it means you can have like guests and participants within the video for you as well too. But there is a little bit of a catch with the video, right? The free version, Restream branding in streams, a little watermark on the video. So if you don't mind having like a little Restream tag at the top, you can kind of utilize the services for free. But there's other different options out there for you to get that watermark taken out by purchasing different packages. Right now, which tools and features can I use for free? That might be a question you're asking, but I have the answers. Restream has free and paid options, so you can choose which feature works best for you and your live stream multi streaming livestream simultaneously to more than 1 3rd party platforms including YouTube, Facebook, Facebook, personal page, Twitter, LinkedIn, Twitch, et cetera. Right now, live streaming directly from the web browser, which I was talking about earlier, with Live Stream Studio, its own little studio platform, you don't need any live streaming software. You can just stream directly from your web browser. There's no software that you have to download at all. It's directly through the web browser. You can invite, like I said earlier too, up to five guests on your live stream. Guests can quickly and easily join your live stream or on Restream Studio without the use of any third party apps or tools. You just direct them all through the Restream Studio that you have set up in your web browser. Another cool thing about this thing is that there's no time limits Your live sessions could last as long as you want. You can stream for 24 hours if you feel like it. I think that's a little too long, but it's just something else to kind of keep in mind with the type of show that you're broadcasting and the type of message that you're broadcasting. I know that sometimes live streaming for your message works very well for your audience engagement. So having a platform that doesn't limit your time limit is actually pretty useful.

Another cool thing is that there's real time channel toggling. Channel toggling allows you to end your stream on one platform but keep it going on another. Let's say you got to the portion of the show like let's say we're doing a Q and A afterwards, right? And that's not something I want to live stream necessarily because we record an episode for feed your brand and then we kind of about what we're going through and talk to our productized clients afterwards too. So it enables you to cut it off certain platforms and you to continue on the ones that you actually really want to keep going through without any interruption or interference. The quality of your stream too. Restream is all about their quality. They also give you insightful data. Restream analytics provides data on how you peak your peak viewing time, your max viewers, which platform had the most viewers. It shows you your stream duration, it shows you a bunch of analytics. It's actually pretty neat. You have access to the Restream chat that I was talking about earlier too, which combines your live chats from all across the streaming platforms into one centralized chat hub. You have stream monitoring, so you have Restream monitors live stream to detect any possible issues and ensure your viewers have the best experience. You can upload background music too. So when you go live with Restream Studio, you have access to a library of copy free background music available in several different genres. Some that's fit for you, fit for your message, and at infinite lengths too. You can choose the perfect music for your stream without worry about changing tracks too, which is super unique. Now you can host powerful live streams with available free tools and features. But the paid features not only up the Restream experience, but the live streaming experience altogether. With the various tools included, you can create a professional organized live stream. Some of their most useful paid features kind of include, like I said earlier, that none of the branding. So that watermark I was talking about, that's included with the basic free plan, you can turn that Restream watermark off of over your screen. You'll be able to add your own logos too in Watermark, so it's perfect for branding topics and showing off your fantastic cover art. You can upload that right into the live stream video, right? So you can have customized background images and overlays. When you pay for the standard plan, you can upload your own background images, stream overlays and other custom visual effects in Restream Studio to personalize your stream to your brand, which I think is super unique. You have RTMP pollings. RTMPool Links lets you pull a Restream broadcast and use it in different streaming software as a source. It's like adding another webcam to your stream. So the poll is useful for real time translations. Commentary. If you do esports casting any type of commentary that you have like that. So you can have different things streaming all at once, right? You can stream recordings too. So with the standard plan and above the paid plans, you'll be able to record your live streams whenever you broadcast. With Restream, recording a live stream lets you upload it to a video platform as on demand content after your live stream is over. Or it gives you a raw version of your stream that you can edit into smaller videos for like social media, all those different types of assets, you have custom destinations. So the free plan lets you choose multi stream. But some platforms require a paid plan and I'm going to kind of go over a couple for the viewers out there to showcase what that kind of looks like. You can easily stream live to a personal Facebook group or public page too. That comes with the cost. So with the free plan, you can kind of stream to your regular Facebook that you have associated with, possibly whatever you do publicly. But if you wanted to stream into like a specific Facebook group, like what we do for our clients, you'll have to have that paid subscription. You can read a guide to free and played platforms that's included with the Restream plan for more info. It's pretty seamless how much info they have out there too. Now what's really cool too is video storage. So with a professional plan, you have access to Restreams cloud storage where you can keep between 10 and 50 videos. It's all depending on your plant though. You can stream pre recorded videos. If you want to upload and stream a video that you've already recorded, you can do so with the professional plan. You can add more guests too. So you're kind of limited to five guests with the regular free plan, but with the other plans you can add up to a total of nine guests. So you can have 10 people in a discussion all at once, just through this. So, yeah, I've tried to paint all the things that you could get out of this software to the listeners as much as possible. But right now I kind of want to take some time to show how you can accomplish some of the specs I've been talking about. And we'll continue to provide as much context as I can for the listeners. Still, though, we're just going to go to this dashboard here so you can kind of see our setup here. I am on the app Restream IO channel. What I have done is I signed up for a Restream account. And when you log in, this is super simple, easy to use. All of your planning and different storages and analytics are going to be here, right to the side. Different services that you have, they actually have really cool donation spots and such. And you can invite simply at a click of a button to people who want to be included with these different Restream capabilities. Right. So you can kind of start in this studio, which is super cool, let's say you don't have a streaming platform that you utilize right now, like Zoom. Skype's kind of outdated too. So this is why I'm kind of taking us on a tour here. So it's pretty simple. You just click to start with studio right here, and it starts streaming professionally from this browser right here. It takes a second to load. But now what I can do here is now I'm kind of in this central hub. I haven't gone live yet. You can hit this Go Live button here. So I have the free plan. They have a little Restream watermark that is embedded in the video here, and when I go to take it off, it prompts me to upgrade my account. Now you can type your theme names right here too, and you can kind of change that theme. So it'll change to like a square, to something that looks a little bit more newscasty, to rounded. Right. Different colors. You can choose based on your cover art or your branding materials. And there's a couple free little overlays that you can kind of throw too. That's kind of neat and fun. If you have more professional looking overlays, I definitely recommend you utilizing those and uploading. But like I said, it takes different packages to unlock those capabilities. So there's different, like backgrounds here and there. I don't know if you guys can hear the music that's playing around with it, but there's different little Cool, unique little things that you can do with this. Let me show you how you can utilize it. If you don't want to use Restream as your central hub, you can utilize another piece of software with this as well, too. Let's say, like what we use is Zoom for Potitize, right? So we're going to click this button right here. It's called Setup for Obs, Zoom, et cetera. And right here, it's really neat. So it shows me everything that I need right here, too. And now I can add my channels that I want to stream to right here by just clicking Add Channel. It pulls up all the platforms that I'm able to pull up here. And you can see that there's a bunch of different platforms that you're able to Restream. So you have like Steam for gamers, Telegram, Facebook Live, Twitch, YouTube, Twitter, all of that stuff, which is really neat. Now what's really cool over here too is you could see all of the platforms that I have triggered. So I have set up to where you see can. If I started streaming, it would go straight to my YouTube and straight to my Facebook as well, too. If I wanted to add another one. Let's say we wanted to add LinkedIn for, say, just a profile, right? It'll give me a notification that I need to upgrade my account to a more paid account, and I'll go over those plans and kind of show you what it looks like on their platform. That way you get a better understanding.

Now, another really cool thing too, is when you're live and you're going live, or I recommend doing this right before you actually hit the Live button is clicking on update titles. What this does is it takes all the titles of every video that you have streaming and it uploads them all to every platform. Let's just take the title of the episode that I have going on right now and throw that in here, right? So now the title of the video is our Restream IO review title, right? So that's super neat. So if you're going to be utilizing it for Zoom, there's a couple things that you need to understand as well. Now, when you want to set this up for Zoom, you'll need to do a couple things. Let's say that I'm in Zoom right now. Let's go to my account. It's going to log me in here, too. So we go to our settings right here and then we go into our meetings. So we have this whole meeting section. What you'll want to do is you'll want to scroll all the way down here so that we can enable you to go live through Zoom. If you like to utilize that, first thing you have to do is go into Zoom and change these settings right here. I have someone who is an administer for my account, so they've been able to add the different things for me. But since you're in charge of your own account, you'll be able to add this. So you'll want to add a custom live streaming service to your thing and turn that on. Now that we're in Zoom. If you know how to utilize Zoom's capabilities and go live, there's a way for you to set your settings and go live into different platforms. It's right at the bottom. You just go live to Facebook, go live to anything. And then what you'll want to click on is that custom field setting. And what that'll do is prompt you to type in the RTMP URL into that and the stream key code as well too. So let me show you what that looks like real fast. You'll just need to take this code that you saw, copy it here, copy it there, and paste it into the correct fields when it prompts you to on Zoom. Let me show you the plans like I planned on showing you. Excuse my pun, but here we go. These are the different plans with the monthly pricing. You have basic, which is free forever, 19amonth or the other. Different benefits, $49 a month for professionals. Now they actually have recommendations for people who utilize different services for different things. They recommend the basic plan for chats and hobbies, Sports and entertainment or gaming is good for the streaming standard plan. And then small businesses or houses of worship and such should be utilizing the professional capabilities. Be sure to visit their website so that you can kind of gauge all of this on your own as well too. And so that's basically all that I had today for Restream and showing you how to utilize its capabilities and get started at least with it, because I really do only have that basic plan. And so we want to figure out which plan is right for you. Just go ahead and visit the website, take a look at their specs and see what's all there for you. That's my insight that I have for you today. So the goal was to just bring awareness to the product, how you can use it and how you can get started with it today. If you'd like a more in depth look at the product and what they provide, I highly encourage you to check out the Restream blog post titled how to Use Restream. I'll make sure that we include it in the chat fields below and you get access to it on the blog post as well too. I'll get that posted there right now. Now I wanted to take time right now to just say thank you to Tom and Tracy Hazard for having me on once again. I hope that you all have a wonderful day once again. I'm Cody Hanafi and this has been another episode of Feed your Brand. Take care and happy podcasting.

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