How Instagram Live Video Can Help Your Business

Last year, Instagram launched its first foray into live-streaming with their Live Video feature on Instagram Stories. As of to date, it’s now used by over 100 million people. Instagram Live Video works pretty much the same as Facebook Live or Periscope on Twitter, it lets you share candid videos in real-time. What makes it unique and draws more attention is the fact that once you broadcast your video and the stream stops, it disappears. It is not saved and there are no replays. People will tend to be on the lookout and follow updates from you.

#FOMO. This unique feature and key difference creates a sense of urgency and feeds on the audience’s fear of missing out. Which is exactly great for any brand or business on Instagram who wants to garner more attention and build up anticipation for what they have to offer. If ever you find yourself running out of ideas and wondering how else you can pique the interest of your audience, live video can help you get that boost you need to keep your content interesting and literally fresh! It’s fairly easy to use, check out the tutorial here for a step-by-step guide. And here are more reasons to give Instagram Live Video a try:

1. More Exposure. Instagram Live Videos come first in the Instagram Stories tray. You’ll see it there right away at the top once you log in. It won’t get lost within your feed so you won’t miss it. At the same time, it will send a notification every time someone does a live video.

2. Real-time announcements or updates. It’s a popular trend nowadays for celebrities and companies to conduct live Q&A sessions. This tactic promotes engagement with your followers and gets you more in-touch with them. Use it to answer customer / follower feedbacks, reviews, comments or to simply interact with them and answer any questions they might have for you. Same with Facebook Live, you can tell your audience ahead of time when you plan to hold your live session so they can send in questions or use the comments section.

3. Unique way to bring valuable content. What’s great about making live videos here is that it can last up to 1 hour and followers get a notification whenever you go live. This means your content won’t have to be restricted to 5 or 10 minute short videos. You can do tutorials or demos and showcase your brand / product extensively. Besides, 60% of people prefer to watch a video than to read a long text about something.

4. Gain more followers. #BTS. People like seeing behind-the-scenes stuff, always. We’re all curious cats by nature. Take your audience through a sneak peek on what’s happening right now or what’s coming up next. Certainly there are other ways to increase your follower base, like using tools such as Archie or posting giveaways and contests for incentive, to name a few. But posting video snippets and giving your audience a look inside helps to keep them intrigued. This also humanizes your brand / company and makes it more relatable and endearing.

Along with the usual pictures and Instagram stories that you post, live video is really a unique way to keep your business relevant and up-to-date with trends. Of course, these are only a few of the reasons to give it a shot as the feature only rolled out months ago. Lots of brands are now using it especially to attract younger audiences, so surely we’ll see more companies jump on the bandwagon.

What do you think of Instagram’s Live Video feature? Have you tried it yet or planning to do so? And what other unique ways can you think of using this for your company? We’re curious to know!