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Tip
How to Set Up Instagram LIVE
BY: Instagram Business Team
San Francisco, CA
As people are increasingly isolated during the COVID-19 situation, we know it may be tough to stay engaged with your audience. Instagram Live allows you to maintain this direct line, and easily connect with your community in an authentic way. More importantly, you get to receive comments and questions from your audience in real-time. This is a very meaningful tool for building a strong connection between your brand and customers. To help you get started, we are covering how to launch your first Instagram Live and our top tips to drive meaningful connections with your customers.
Make sure you have a strong internet connection to keep the stream as high quality as possible. Swipe right from feed to open the Stories Camera then tap 'Live' then 'Start Live Video'. You can go live for up to an hour, and you'll see when new people join. The longer you stay live, the more time your fans have to join. Your most engaged followers may receive a notification that you're live and your story will move to the front of their stories bar at the top of the feed.
Test Instagram Live on a test account to make sure you’re familiar with the functionality and set-up.
Give followers advanced notice (try using the countdown sticker in Stories or posting on your Instagram Feed).
After your first live stream, try going Live at certain times during the day/week so your audience knows when to look forward to tuning in.
Go Live with a business partner, creator or fan. Using Live With prompts a notification to your collaborator’s followers so it’s a great way to reach new audiences as well.
Try a Live Q&A. Either ask for questions during the stream or use the Questions sticker in Stories to source questions beforehand.
Turn on comment moderation to facilitate a positive community experience.
If on iOS, try the Media sharing button (to the bottom right of your Live recording screen), which allows you to share any video or image on screen.
Share your Live to IGTV. Make sure Post a Preview is on so that a preview of your video will be shared to your feed and profile. You can also download the video to your device. (Update on October 5, 2021 at 10:00AM PT: IGTV and feed videos have been combined into one format, Instagram Video.)
To start a live video, follow these steps:
1. Tap the camera icon in the top left of the Feed or swipe right from anywhere in Feed to open the Stories camera.
2. Scroll to Live at the bottom of the screen to start Live. Before you go live, tap the wheel icon in the top left corner to open controls to select who you would like to be able to view your Instagram Live, who can reply, where it saves to, and how it can be shared. The number of viewers appears at the top of the screen. When you are ready, then tap the Live button.
3. You can take a few moments to say hello to your audience while everyone is joining to see your Live broadcast. Comments from your audience will appear at the bottom. Broadcasters can see questions that are submitted by their audience via the Q&A sticker and select the ones they want to appear.
4. To ensure you won’t see inappropriate words in the comments on your Instagram Live, you can hide offensive comments, and filter comments that contain specific words. Open Instagram settings, scroll down to Privacy, select Comments, and then toggle the Hide Offensive Comments toggle from Off to On. To filter out comments that contact specific words or phrases, toggle Manual Filter from Off to On, and type the words or phrases you would like to filter out.
6. When you're done, tap End in the top right then tap to confirm. From there, you can tap the save icon in the top left to save it to your camera roll, or share it to your Stories. Your Live will stay on Instagram Stories for 24 hours. Once you have saved your video to your camera roll, you can repurpose this content and share on Instagram Stories, feed, and IGTV. (Update on October 5, 2021 at 10:00AM PT: IGTV and feed videos have been combined into one format, Instagram Video.)
BY: Instagram Business Team
San Francisco, CA