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Tip

9 April 2020

How to set up Instagram Live

BY: Instagram Business Team

San Francisco, CA, US

As people are increasingly isolated during the COVID-19 situation, we know that 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 for driving meaningful connections with your customers.

Getting started

Make sure that 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.

Tips for businesses
Before you go live:

  • Test Instagram Live on a test account to make sure that you're familiar with the functionality and setup.

  • 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.

While you are on Live:

  • Go live with a business partner, creator or fan. Using Live With prompts a notification to your collaborators' 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 you're 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 the screen.

After you end your live session:

  • Save your live video and upload it to Stories.

How to set up Instagram Live

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 the feed to open the Stories camera.

2. Scroll to Live at the bottom of the screen to start your live video. 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 that 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 that you would like to filter out.

5. If you are on iOS, you can tap the camera roll icon in the bottom right to share photos and videos from your camera roll to your live video. When you add a photo or video from your camera roll, your video live stream will move to the top-right corner of the screen. To stop displaying your photo or video, swipe right on your camera roll below and tap
. Bear in mind that only you can see the photos and videos in your camera roll while you're sharing a live video.

6. When you've finished, 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 video 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.

BY: Instagram Business Team

San Francisco, CA, US