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How to Use Instagram Live
Unlike Reels and other video features, Instagram Live allows you to stream a live session for 4 hours. Launched in 2020, this content format has become one of the most popular on the platform and is a great tool to improve engagement, connect with your audience, and build your brand. It is an important content format to leverage if you want to create impact.
Instagram Live is the ultimate tool you can use to engage with your audience in real-time using live videos. It’s perfect for sharing personal experiences and creating “exclusivity” with your followers.
Regarding the popularity of Instagram live videos, considering them as an Instagram marketing strategy can thrive your business remarkably. Therefore, learning how to go live on Instagram and make professional videos becomes an important task for you as a business owner.
The Instagram live stream is a great feature that allows you to go live on Instagram and stay in touch with your followers and customers directly. They can ask you questions or talk about the issues of your product and get an answer from you immediately. Therefore, such a feature builds a strong relationship between you and your customers or customers-to-be.
In addition, Instagrammers respond well to Instagram live streams. There are 500 million daily users on Instagram, approximately 80% of whom follow a business on Instagram. Live streams have contributed a lot to the growth in the conversion rate of many businesses because of the direct interactions. So, not using Instagram live videos can be a huge loss for your revenue.
Connect Better with Your Audience
Unlike pre-recorded Instagram stories and Reels, Instagram Live’s unedited stream allows the audience to witness the authentic and humane side of your business. It also helps you interact with your audience in real-time, which helps you build a strong connection and gain valuable insight and feedback from them.
Get More Visibility
Every time you go live on Instagram, followers who have subscribed to your content will receive an in-app notification. The Instagram algorithm will push your live in front of stories, so it has a greater chance of being discovered and watched by your audience.
Improve Your Engagement
Instagram Lives creates room for a two-way conversation as viewers can pose questions through stickers and comments, and you can respond to each of them, which leads to increased engagement on your post.
The best part is that you can boost engagement by converting snippets of your Live into regular Instagram posts, Reels, videos, and even Instagram Ads. If you’d like more insights on how you can use other features of Instagram to grow your business, then check out this guide.
How To Go Live on Instagram — A Step-By-Step Guide
Here’s our step-by-step breakdown of how to do Instagram Live:
step 1:-
Open the Instagram app, tap the ‘+’ icon at the top right of the screen, and choose the Live option.
step 2:- Adding a Title
You’ll see a screen with three icons on the left side. To add a title to your IG Live, select the first icon with the three horizontal lines.
step 3:- Choose your Audience
You can practice before your live using a practice room option or go live in front of an audience with the public audience option. (More on practice rooms in the later section.) Go to the “eye” icon, choose Public and tap Set Audience to choose your audience.
step 4:- Go Live
Once you click the IG Live icon at the bottom of the screen, Instagram will check your connection, and your live stream will begin! You’ll know you’re streaming when a small red box with ‘Live’ on it appears at the top right side of the screen, and a message flashes on your screen that says, ‘You are now live!’
Give it about a minute or two for more and more people to start trickling in. Until then, be sure to keep welcoming the attendees as they join. And just like that, you’ve started your first Instagram Live!
Engage With Your Viewers During the Live
The whole point of going Live is to have real-time interaction with your audience. So, encourage them to engage with you during your Instagram Live with gestures like greeting those who join in early and asking about or after them, reading out interesting comments, and interacting with them by addressing them with their first name.
As you’re going on with your Livestream, make sure to keep a close eye on what’s going on in the comments and acknowledge any questions or concerns from your viewers.
Also, remember — this is all happening in real-time, so be mentally prepared to improvise.
If a viewer has left a great comment or has asked an engaging question that may start a conversation and increase interaction with others on the live video — don’t forget to pin it.
Since a pinned comment becomes the first one people see and read, you can also pin your own comment giving your audience information about the live, redirecting them to links, or giving them cues to interact with you.
Instagram Live Video Ideas to improve your engagement
You are all set to host your Instagram live video. Now all you need are some ideas. Let’s now look at some ideas for a more attractive Instagram live video for your business:
Invite a famous person to your Instagram live video
Partnerships and collaboration are very common on Instagram and have a huge impact on business. The audience has already started trusting the other party so it is not difficult to convince them to give a try your product or services offered.
You can choose an influencer that aligns with your brand, so you can introduce your product to their audience base. Instagram Live is perfect for this type of collaboration. If you invite a famous person such as a micro or macro influencer to your live stream, you can enjoy the overflow of their followers on your Instagram live. Therefore, you get a lot of viewers for your live stream on the one hand and can hope for a great conversion from them on the other.
Reveal Behind-the-scenes
If you want to put a more real live stream on display, you can think about ways such as behind-the-scenes, relating your background, introducing the initial idea behind your business, etc. Such personalization makes stronger ties between you and your followers and can lead to worthwhile reports.
Tutorials on How-to-use a Product
One attractive subject for a live video on Instagram is to instruct your viewers on how to use a product or service. During the live video, you can talk about the unique privileges of your product or its advantages in comparison to other similar products in the market. If your business is a service provider you can still talk about your strong points & benefits.
When represented completely, ask your viewers about the questions they have in their minds and answer them promptly. In the end, show them some ways how they can buy your product or service and wait for the conversation.
Day-to-Day Operations for Audience Engagement
Without doing daily activities and regular postings you cannot expect to have hundreds or thousands of viewers on your Instagram live video. It is not only about your Instagram and also can be generalized to all your business operations on other platforms. Hence, try to boost your branding with video marketing and Instagram live videos.
Interview one of your customers
Another idea is to ask one of your loyal customers to take part in your live stream as an interviewee. Many things can be shared during the live videos such as best experiences, best practices, best products, thoughts, suggestions, reviews, etc. As such live stream can give a feeling of self-importance, and many of your followers may get encouraged to become a customer once they are interviewed on your Instagram live video.
Hold Q&As
Question and answer live streams are also another popular idea. Regarding the niche of your business, you can devote some live streams to question and answer or Ask Me Anything sessions.
If you are a makeup brand, you can answer questions related to your foundations and the type of skin they are suitable for. If you are an English teacher, you can introduce books for different levels of proficiency, and answer questions about which courses to take part in, etc.
Promote New Products & Services
A live stream can be the next line of your products or services. You can talk about the features, options, characteristics, capabilities, etc. The more exciting you promote your product or service, the more eager the audience will become. So, just before or a little after the launch of your new line, you can prepare the ground for its sales just through your live video.
Wrapping Up
Instagram Live will ignite your visibility and help your business get discovered by potential prospects. It also gets you on the algorithm’s good side, and you get pushed to the front of everyone’s stories in your followers’ feed. But creating an IG live that imparts value and builds trust isn’t easy. This is why this guide includes everything you need from planning your Live to repurposing it to the IG live ideas that’ll help you get started.
If you want to learn more about other Instagram formats like posts, stories, and Reels, simply click the link to learn more.
