Officials livestreaming may not help farmers

Due to the impact of the novel coronavirus, an increasing number of local officials have turned to livestreaming as a way to find a market for local agricultural products, and promote the recovery and development of their local economies. Livestreaming has proved an effective way of promoting local products.

It is good that local officials are trying to help the farmers in their governed regions, but many of these officials do not perform very professionally as livestreamers. Some of them do not know how to introduce the goods, and some show little ability to interact with an audience.

Some local officials even tend to introduce the advantages of the products in an exaggerated way, which is quite risky because the consumers might feel they are being misled, even cheated. They might buy the products once, but not after they receive the goods and discover they are not as claimed. That might harm the image of the local government.

Livestreaming involves much more than installing a camera and saying "hi" to audiences. Besides having an engaging host for the half an hour of livestreaming, the whole promotion team must check the quality of the products they promote, arrange proper logistics and after-sale services. If local officials adopt only one of the several jobs that must be done, it might result in many goods being returned or large numbers of complaints about late deliveries.

If that happens, the image of the local government might suffer, too, because the livestreaming officials will be considered to be representing the local government.

No doubt the local officials have good intentions in wanting to help local farmers through livestreaming, but livestreaming promotion is highly challenging and not everyone is good at it. Professionalism is required as much as enthusiasm.

Worse, some officials seem to take the livestreaming as a personal show, and some local governments reportedly require their local staff to buy a certain amount of the agricultural products from the livestreaming activities. That should be curbed.

A practical solution is to let professional livestreaming teams do their jobs, and let the officials help farmers in ways they are better at, so that farmers can get the best, and most professional help they need.