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.

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.

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.

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.