Originally published on MediaPost Engage:Moms

By Aliza Freud.

It’s Jan, 8, 2016, and Joey Fortman, an influential blogger, is walking the vast convention exhibition floor at CES (Consumer Electronic Show) in Las Vegas while she is live-broadcasting on Periscope. Joey is currently showing her tuned-in audience a new life-size robot that helps kids with homework and other projects. She’s getting lots of “hearts” (Periscope’s equivalent of a real-time “like”) as she talks about the robot.

After a few moments, one of her viewers types a comment, “Hey, can you show us what’s in the booth to your left?” Joey swings around to another exhibitor booth with a cool new educational tool for kids and ventures in that direction, bringing her hundreds of Periscope viewers in tow.

This is Joey’s fifth broadcast at CES and, with each new broadcast, her audience grows and becomes more engaged. So, why do influencers like Joey use Periscope?

“Periscope is such a cool new platform. As a former radio personality, I love Periscope because it’s live. But, it takes us beyond live radio and television because my viewers can interact with me on the spot as I’m broadcasting. So, here I am showing them something going on in my day and they can weigh in and ask me about it as I’m talking. Since that feedback is instantaneous, I’m also very quickly learning what resonates with my audience,” says Joey.

Periscope, a Twitter-owned live broadcasting app launched in late March 2015. Since then, influencers have been flocking to the platform to learn the ins and outs and they are bringing their audiences with them. Also, Twitter is giving Periscope broadcasts a boost. Starting last week, livestreaming videos automatically play in newsfeeds in Twitter’s iPhone app.

In one of our recent surveys we learned that:

• 31% of women say they use Periscope. More than half of these women log in daily

• The top reasons women use Periscope are to:

– Find out what others are doing/sharing

– Connect with brands/companies/causes

– Find entertaining content

• Of the women who use Periscope, about 85% say their usage has increased over the last several months

And brands are taking notice. Last month, Kmart ran an influencer activation on Periscope. The campaign, which used the hashtag #ShoppingIsFunAgain, leveraged mom influencers to head in to their local Kmart stores to show the array of products available during the holiday season. While in store, live broadcasting on Periscope, influencers hosted giveaways, dance-off competitions with fellow shoppers and even had fans meet them at the store during broadcasts. Influencers received thousands of hearts for these broadcasts and tons of engagement.

So, should brands venture in to live broadcasting on Periscope? Well, Periscope is not without its risks. After all, scopes are live and so are comments. Brands interested in engaging on the platform must keep the live nature of broadcasts in mind.

The audience on Periscope is building and, as mentioned above, Twitter is making it easier for their platform audience to see Periscope content natively on Twitter. This will certainly give the Periscope broadcasts a boost.

The analytics and tracking of Periscope broadcasts are also getting better. In addition to being able to see hearts and engagements on Periscope, users can now also sign up for Fullscope.tv to get deeper analytics on their scopes.

Finally, with services like Katch.me, Periscope users can save their scopes, edit them and publish this content on other platforms. This could make brand-sponsored content even more valuable as it proliferates in multiple places.

If you’ve seen cool ways that brands are using Periscope, leave a comment or tweet me @shespeaking to continue the conversation..