Live broadcast on Instagram: what you need to know about it

Live broadcasts on social networks, including Instagram — this is exactly the tool that helps bloggers and business representatives get as close as possible to the target audience, increase customer loyalty, increase the number of subscribers, and sales levels. Living emotions are always important to people, they are interested in being the first to know information, to be directly involved in this or that event, even if they are geographically far away. And what if not a live broadcast can provide all this?

Now let’s look in more detail at what a live broadcast is in Instagram. Here are a number of recommendations that will help you prepare and conduct it as efficiently and effectively as possible. Let's pay attention to how to promote live broadcasts on this social network. We will list a number of additional tips that will be useful in practice for every blogger. We'll show you how to organize the most efficient work without any risks or restrictions.

Getting to know the nuances of live broadcasting on Instagram

Live broadcast on a social network, be it Instagram or any other platform — This is a certain video format that is broadcast to the audience literally here and now, that is, in real time. Similar opportunities appeared on Insta almost 6 years ago. They literally immediately won a large number of fans, which gave a new start to their development. And even today, the possibilities of this format are constantly expanding. So, now bloggers have the opportunity to put various masks on their videos, answer audience questions live, launch joint broadcasts with other opinion leaders, etc.

Instagram algorithms also have a positive attitude towards live broadcasting. The system distinguishes them from ordinary stories or posts in the feed. Thus, they will appear at the very top of the story feed, and the caption “Live broadcast” will appear on their cover. In addition, as soon as you go live, the social network will automatically send relevant notifications to all your subscribers, and they can quickly connect to view.

Despite the fairly high level of popularity, live broadcasts are significantly inferior in competitiveness to other formats that exist today on Instagram. It’s not for nothing that they are called options for the brave. This is quite reasonable, because many even very famous bloggers are simply afraid to broadcast live. And there are several reasons for this, ranging from a banal lack of equipment to a lack of experience in public speaking and fear of the camera. But at the same time, live broadcasts open up new, much more impressive opportunities for developing your business and attracting new subscribers. Therefore, it is clearly not worth neglecting. But in order for everything to go as smoothly as possible, and for you to get the desired result from the live broadcast, you need to properly prepare for it and implement everything at a high professional level. And our recommendations will help you with this.

Choosing the right light

Not so long ago, in order to get a good image in the frame, bulky lamps, reflectors, and spotlights were used. All this cost a fairly impressive amount of money, required proper arrangement, and enough storage space. Today, all this lighting equipment has been replaced by a conventional circular lamp. It is completely inexpensive, and the effect of use will be quite impressive even if you use it with a smartphone with a relatively inexpensive camera.

But still there are a number of tips, using which you will get a fairly good result:

1. Always face the light source. And it doesn’t matter whether you use natural light from a window, a ring lamp or a table lamp: the light flux should be directed towards you.
2. If the window is located on the side and you cannot turn to face it, then close the curtains or lower the blinds. This way you can avoid shadows appearing on your face.
3. The entire light flux that comes towards you must be of the same shade. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s warm or cold light, color lighting, the main thing is that there is no transition. But remember that it is better to use colored lighting for the background, and not as the main one.
4. Experiment with lighting several times to see which option will be optimal for your shooting conditions and use it as a basis in the future.

Setting up good sound

During live broadcasts, it is very important to make sure that the audience hears you well and clearly. Therefore, the best option here is to use a quality lavalier microphone. You can connect it to the same smartphone. You can also use the simplest desktop microphones if you wish. By and large, you can even use a microphone from headphones or a phone. The main thing is that you are satisfied with the result.

As with lighting, you need to experiment with sound before going live. Therefore, we recommend making several test streams and watching them on an empty account. This way you can check the sound quality: there should be clarity, good audibility, absence of hiss and any third-party sounds. If it turns out that the sound is not what you would like, it is better to purchase a separate microphone. Sound is in many ways even more important than the picture. You must understand that part of the audience will listen to you rather than watch, while simultaneously going about their business.

Choose the appropriate type of ether

Broadcast options that you can use as a basis — enough. You yourself choose what is relevant for you and will allow you to solve this or that task. You can choose:

1. Discussions on a particular topic. This means that you set a topic and develop it, supplement it with your own thoughts, ideas, and share practical experience. This option provides greater rapprochement with the audience and helps convey your point of view to subscribers
2. Presentation or review. These are the recently popular product unboxings. The main task is to beautifully open the packaging and show subscribers the product in as much detail as possible, talk about its features, advantages, and highlight the disadvantages, if any.
3. Webinar or lecture. This is a kind of free master class or lecture, which is designed to introduce people to the features of the products or services provided, and encourage them to purchase a paid course or paid consultation. Audiences also enjoy master classes on preparing certain dishes, baking, creating decorative items, children's toys, etc.
4. Answers to questions. It is necessary to maintain your status as an opinion leader from time to time. Therefore, invite your subscribers to send you questions that interest them, and then answer them live.
5. Backstage. A unique format that often always appeals to the audience. What we're talking about here is that you're showing people what's often going on behind the scenes. So, for example, if you are planning to launch an event, you can show preparations for it. Even the same photoset can be shown from the outside and it will be really interesting.
6. Report from the scene. A similar live broadcast format would be appropriate when opening a new store, confectionery shop, launching a new brand or product on the market, celebrating an organization’s anniversary, etc.
7. Joint live broadcast. This is a live broadcast format that allows you to combine in one video the speech of two opinion leaders working on similar or related topics. That is, you can build such a broadcast in the form of an interview, a battle, or simply a non-binding friendly conversation.
8. Announcement of the winners of the competition. If you announced some kind of competition in advance, then the selection of winners can be broadcast live. This will allow the audience to make sure that the drawing is truly fair. In turn, this will increase the level of trust on the part of the audience, and they will be more actively involved in your subsequent companies, even if luck does not smile on them this time.

Prepare your audience for your live broadcast

Start live broadcast on an empty profile — This is an unwise decision for Instagram or any other social network. The fact is that the site will not bring organic traffic to such content. That is, before launching the video, the audience must be ready. You can unobtrusively inform your subscribers about this, ask them in advance to ask you questions on a particular topic that would be interesting to them and that you could voice during the broadcast. This is how you will prepare material that the audience will definitely like, and gather subscribers on the channel during the broadcast. It may well be that after receiving the list of questions, you will have to completely change the broadcast format that you planned, reshaping it to suit people’s requests.

Theses and preliminary plan for the speech

Having a pre-prepared speech plan and abstract — this is something that will save you from worries and unnecessary nerves directly during the broadcast. If you don’t do this, then your thoughts will be confused, you will lose the consistency of presenting your thoughts, which will ultimately negatively affect your broadcast and cause denial from the audience. But this can be avoided if you write down the key thoughts in advance in the sequence in which you will present them.

Another point that you may miss without first drawing up an abstract — this is that with a chaotic broadcast, you can simply get away from the topic that interests your audience. This means that you will not be able to satisfy people's interest and you will lose subscribers.

But in any case, you should be prepared for the fact that on the live broadcast everything may not go as you planned in advance. The whole point is that you are communicating with living people: they express their thoughts to you, you give counter arguments. So you can really move on to another topic and there will be nothing wrong with that if it corresponds to the interests of the audience, if this transition is carried out in close cooperation with them.

If you wish, you can present your thoughts in the form of a checklist and arrange it beautifully. Even if you expose it in the frame, nothing bad will happen.

Launch the broadcast in test mode

This recommendation is relevant for everyone who plans to launch a live broadcast for the first time. In this case, it is optimal to register in a separate Instagram account without subscribers. It will be enough for one of your friends or acquaintances to join it solely for the purpose of testing. During such a broadcast, you will be able to check a number of key factors:

• connection stability: how smoothly the picture is, does the sound match it, how clear is the image;
• how evenly does the light fall, is there any glare on the lens, try switching from the main camera to the front one;
• you will be able to evaluate the sound quality, the presence or absence of third-party noise;
• see how the comments flow, where they come from, how easy it is for you to read them, is it convenient to do this if several messages arrive at the same time;
• find out which buttons are displayed on the screen during a live broadcast and what each of them is responsible for;
• is there a delay in feedback from users and how significant is it in time;
• you can try adding pictures to the broadcast (to open them just click on the corresponding button in the upper right corner), transfer them to the main screen, show yourself as a miniature and change the settings back.

You will also have the opportunity to experiment with the masks that we have already discussed above. Like other tools you'll be able to use when streaming online, it's at the bottom of the screen. You are interested in the shaded smiley.

Launch live broadcast

Now that you have tested everything and made sure that everything works the way you would like it, you can proceed directly to launching the live broadcast. To do this, you need to go to your feed or personal page and click on your photo. After this, a screen for creating stories will open in front of you. Scroll through the settings almost to the very bottom until you see the words “Live broadcast”. Here you need to select the camera through which the work will be carried out, in particular the main or front one. Also in this settings menu, the social network will show which of your subscribers are currently online and their total number. If you see that there are very few people, and you did not launch the announcement beforehand, then a more correct and reasonable decision would be to move the live broadcast to another time or date.

We would also like to draw your attention to the fact that today we are launching a live broadcast on Instagram — This is an opportunity that can be used exclusively from a smartphone. This option is not provided on a computer.

The nuances of working with subscribers live

Attract your audience to your live broadcast — this is only half the task that will confront you in this situation. It is also very important to keep people’s attention throughout the broadcast. You must be prepared for the fact that during communication, people will send you messages, greetings, emoticons, and likes. Questions can also be entered in an additional form. You will also need to constantly monitor the number of people who are currently listening to you.

But with all this, you should show interest in your audience and maintain interactivity with them. This can be implemented in different ways:

• ask related questions and ask the audience to ask you questions in response;
• forgive me to predict the answer or give you a hint, put reactions;
• announce at the very beginning of the broadcast that the most active user will receive a prize at the end of the broadcast.

And remember: you must respond to all comments, including negative ones, by smoothing them out.

Features of launching a joint broadcast

At the beginning of the article we already mentioned that joint broadcasts — This is one of the latest innovations that has been implemented on Instagram. Here you can exchange opinions not only with the audience, but with the second participant, and unobtrusively advertise each other. It will also be possible to hold some kind of talk show, during which two opposing points of view can be discussed, asking the audience to take the side of the one whose opinion and arguments seem more reasonable. All the topics that you will touch upon during your joint broadcast could become ideas for subsequent video promotion. That is, a joint broadcast — this is quite a useful tool for each of its participants.

To start a joint broadcast you need to perform a number of simple steps:

• the broadcast is started by one of the participants, while the second — joins the ether;
• the first participant clicks on the icon with the image of two faces at the bottom of the page, thereby inviting another participant to join;
• the second participant accepts the invitation, after which the screen is divided into 2 separate parts and you can start a joint conversation.

When broadcasting together, you will have access to all the same functions and options as when broadcasting individually, namely comments, masks, adding pictures, etc. The difference will be in the visual design, because the screen will be divided into 2 separate parts, and also the fact that the broadcast will be available to two participants at once and, accordingly, a double audience.

When preparing a joint broadcast, you also need to work it out in advance and think through it down to the smallest detail. Otherwise, you may end up with some not-so-pleasant surprises that could cause negative reactions from viewers. Also, no one has canceled the rules of mutual politeness: you must respect both your audience and each other. By the way, you can run an advertisement for a joint broadcast in both stories simultaneously.

Ending the live broadcast correctly

The overall impression of the broadcast will also be influenced by the note on which you end it. There are several options here:

• summarize everything that was said during the meeting;
• announce the next online meeting and advertise what it will be dedicated to;
• inform that this broadcast will be available on IGTV;
• ask the audience to share this broadcast with their friends and order the product;
• summarize the results of the competition if you announced it at the beginning of the broadcast.

To end the broadcast directly, there is a corresponding button at the top of the screen. After you click on it, the social network will offer you to share this broadcast on IGTV or delete it. You yourself must determine the option that suits you, because if the video is deleted, it cannot be restored. We would recommend downloading this video to your phone, because no one is immune from technical failures. Now that your video is available on IGTV, you can launch a story with the announcement. This way, a much larger number of users will see it.

Promoting live broadcast on Instagram

The purpose of any live broadcast — attract the attention of as many subscribers as possible. This can only be done if you launch advertising for your future broadcast in advance. That is, you need to inform the audience that you are planning a live broadcast, highlight the topic it will be dedicated to, and indicate the exact date and time. You can notify your audience in 2 ways:

1. Launch a story with the announcement. You can add a countdown timer to it so that subscribers can receive a reminder from your broadcast. You will find this counter in the top menu. You can run a similar story literally every day, or directly on the day of broadcast or every few hours.
2. Posting a post in the feed. The content here will be approximately the same. That is, you need to convey information about the broadcast itself and what your audience will receive if they join your idea. Along with such promises as learning something new and interesting, you can also promise people participation in sweepstakes, provision of promotional codes for the purchase of goods, services, etc.

Additional recommendations

We will also give a number of additional recommendations that will help you make your live broadcast as effective, thoughtful, and convenient as possible for you personally and for your audience:

1. Broadcast duration. The maximum period of time during which the broadcast can last — it's 1 hour. But according to statistics, no more than 20% of your audience will watch it to the end. You can hold the attention of the maximum number of people for 20-30 minutes. And this is even with the detailed thought out of the speech. Therefore, it is not recommended to broadcast broadcasts longer than half an hour.
2. Saving live broadcast on Instagram. After the broadcast ends, the social network will offer you to save the broadcast in stories. The maximum time he was here was — 24 hours. During this time, everyone will be able to view the recording, after which it will be automatically deleted. You also have the opportunity to upload your broadcast to IGTV, that is, the social network’s own video hosting. This can only be done by first saving to a smartphone.
3. Enable or disable comments during broadcast. This is done through the “Privacy” settings menu. Next we find in this tab “Comments” and click on the button asking you to enable hiding offensive comments. If you completely want to turn off comments during a live broadcast, then here you need to click on the ellipsis in the lower corner of the screen directly during the broadcast and select the “Turn off comments” item there.
4. Pinning comments live. It often happens that the audience often asks the same questions. You can choose this option and pin it along with the answer. To do this, just click on the “Attach comments” button.
5. Add broadcasts to popular ones. Any broadcast that attracts the attention of more than five hundred people during the broadcast is automatically transferred to the publication search page as an interesting post.
6. Optimal time for live broadcast. There is no definite answer; you need to proceed from the behavioral factors of your audience. This can be done by analyzing profile statistics. See when your users are most active and schedule your live broadcast at that time.
7. Provide gifts for participating in broadcasts. You can promise your subscribers gifts, promotional codes, bonuses. Organize live sweepstakes and do everything that attracts a large number of people. You can also promise access to a free checklist, a discount on a product, which people will watch after watching the video (the link will be at the end of the viewing).
8. Be sure to make an announcement. This will allow you to plan your time in advance and prepare suitable questions. Upon completion of the broadcast, it is recommended to make an additional post for stories containing the conclusions of this very broadcast and advise people to watch it while it is still active.
9. Try to combine positive and negative. The audience quickly gets tired of both overly successful and tired, always problematic stories and posts. This also applies to live broadcasts. Behave as it happens in real life. Along with joys and pleasant moments, sometimes there are difficulties and problems. The presence of real human emotions in your blog will cause a response from your audience and increase interest.

To summarize

As you can see, there is nothing complicated or impossible in Instagram live. The only thing is that you need to carefully prepare for it and think through everything to the smallest detail: take care of lighting, sound, try various functions, draw up a script. It is also important to think through interactive ways to contact the audience and launch an announcement of the broadcast. Launching targeted advertising can give good results, but this is more of a recommendation than a necessity.

But in any case, you must understand that stable, functional, safe work with Instagram and any other social networks — This is the key to additional use of a tool such as mobile proxies. Such intermediary servers will replace your IP-address, geolocation with their own parameters, thereby ensuring a secure and confidential connection to the network, bypassing various regional restrictions, preventing blocking when simultaneously working with a large number of accounts on social networks, using programs that automate actions.

The best proxies in terms of functionality and price are offered by the MobileProxy.Space service. Follow the link https://mobileproxy.space/en/user.html?buyproxy to get acquainted with the features of cooperation in more detail, and also take advantage of a free two-hour test. Also at your service is a technical support service that works 24/7 and quickly resolves any difficulties that may arise when working with mobile proxies.

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