On Instagram, live videos have become very popular like individuals, and now, businesses. You heard right! Businesses are now adapting to Instagram by means of live streaming.
The reasons why businesses are flocking to Instagram to do live streams are because they want to attract customers and gain followers for their brands. In hindsight, Instagram Live allows businesses do the following:
- Connect with users
- Build engagement
- Spread news and updates from brand, AND
- Establish branding
Want to get started with Instagram Live? Then check out these four practical tips on how to use Instagram Live for your business:
1. Have A Practice Account
“When you’re starting to consider live streaming on Instagram, you’ll need to practice using it first,” says Erin Henschke, a marketing writer at Boom Essays and Essay Roo. “When practicing, it’s best to have a dummy account to do it on. You can use the dummy account to rehearse and make the necessary adjustments until you feel ready to go live for real. You can always save your practice broadcasts by tapping ‘Download’ at the top-left corner once your video ends.”
2. Set Your Mobile Device For Live Streams
When live streaming on Instagram, the last thing you want is for an unwanted notification or phone call to interfere with your stream. Therefore, be sure to put your phone or device in “Do Not Disturb” mode.
Also, make sure that your device is physically ready for live streaming. That means investing in a tripod for your phone or device, so that it can say still as you live stream.
3. Promotion Before Broadcasting
Pre-broadcast assets and material allows you to get the word out about your business. Luckily, resources like Colorcinch let you create these assets and material with different sizes and formats:
- Pre-sized posts
- Graphics
- Story templates, etc.
By promoting your broadcast with assets and materials, you’re raising awareness about your brand, while garnering more viewership for your Instagram Live videos. With assets and material in your live videos, you’ll be showing viewers everything, including the benefits of them tuning into your broadcasts.
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4. Repurpose Live Streams In Stories And Highlights
Who says that live videos can’t be repurposed?
“When you reuse live videos in your business’s Instagram Stories and highlights, you’re giving your video content a refresh,” says Tyson Heighway, a business blogger at Paper Fellows and State of writing. “Once a live video ends, that doesn’t mean you should trash it if you don’t want to. In fact, you can instead direct future traffic to your broadcast. Here, you don’t have to be restricted to the 24-hour replay mark in Stories. You can add the live video to a new or existing story highlight instead.”
To save your live video Story to share to future traffic, just do the following:
- Tap the three dots at the bottom-right corner of the screen.
- Select “Copy Highlight Link.”
- Capture the link to use for any marketing strategy (i.e., email lists).
BONUS: Offer Incentives
Lastly, businesses should take advantage of using incentives to attract viewers – the same is true for Instagram Live. Incentives get people to act, especially those looking for good bargains. So, if you want to ramp up urgency for your broadcast, you can with Instagram!
Here are a few ways to offer incentives for your live videos:
- Broadcast live Q&As, where you can answer questions posted by viewers. Viewers love to be heard; so, recognizing their questions helps a lot. You can also let your followers know ahead of time that you’ll be answering people’s questions live.
- Gamification lets you engage with viewers during a live stream. You can play games with viewers, or host things like quizzes and contests that they can participate in and win prizes.
- Letting people know about scarcity is another good option when offering incentives. Scarcity refers to letting people know that supplies (i.e., products, seating, etc.) are “limited” or “won’t last long,” unless they interact with your business. Instagram Live lets you offer such incentives to people, so that you can get more viewership to your platform and your business.
- Now, disappearing incentives, like scarcity, have a time window. However, disappearing incentives have set deadlines, which can help you garner viewers and get more interactions in little time.
Conclusion
Ultimately, Instagram Live can help you improve your business in more ways than one. By utilizing Instagram Live, not only will you build your business’s online presence, but you’ll also attract viewers and, eventually, followers.
Just keep in mind: broadcasting on Instagram Live takes time and effort. Therefore, be sure to organize how you plan your live videos. By having a plan, your live videos will soon attract viewers, and soon bring your business more customers.
Elizabeth Hines is a writer and editor at UK Writings and Write my essay. She is also a contributing writer for Essay Help. As a digital marketer, she helps companies improve their marketing strategies and concepts.
About
Joshua Lyons Marketing, LLC was established in 2015. Since that time we have provided digital marketing services to business and professionals. We help our clients increase their online exposure as a means to increase sales and revenue. Our core services include search engine optimization (SEO), website development and content creation. We also provide other online marketing services, such as email marketing, marketing consultations and various types of advertising. Our team is based in the Milton, Pace and Pensacola, Florida area. However, we work with clients throughout the United States. Read More