Social media plays a crucial role in our life and has completely changed the way people interact with each other and promote their business. Social media is one of the most rapidly evolving fields. Time to time, new tools and technologies are being developed within social channels.
Flexibility and being prepared for such changes is the only key to fit social media into our lives and business.
On 21st November 2016, Instagram announced two new updates: Live video on Instagram Stories and disappearing photos and videos for Instagram Direct.
Instagram will be competing directly with the existing live broadcasting products like Snapchat, Facebook Live and Periscope. But what makes Instagram live videos different from others is that it gets disappeared as soon as the broadcast ends. Snapchat stories are already the most popular among all. Like Snapchat, Instagram users will able to post photos and videos that disappear after 24 hours. Just like Snapchat you can easily write or draw on your photo or video and add emojis. Unlike Snapchat, Instagram doesn’t have selfie lenses used to add things like a dog or alien face which in my opinion is not much of necessity. But in the social media world which is not static at all, this feature can also be announced in the future. The live video feature is already a buzz on platforms like Youtube, Snapchat, Twitter, and even Facebook.
How to Share Live Video
There are two ways you can share your live video or story, and both are super easy. You just need to swipe right on your Instagram home screen, or you can click on the plus sign located on the uppermost left and the camera popup will open where you can capture an image or record a video story.
SourceHow can your brand benefit from Instagram Live video?
Run Special Offers
With Instagram live, you can offer some special deals and discounts to your customers. These special offers will become extra special when incorporated with Instant live.
Q Â & A sessions
Live videos can be a great tool to engage with your audience. What makes it more interesting is that you can have a Q and A session with your audience in real time so that you can know the expectations and feedbacks of your customers more quickly. At last, it can act as a live video customer care service.
Product Launch
Instagram live video can serve you as a platform for launching a new product or service and making regular announcements. Many brands have used this criterion via FB live and Snapchat in the past and also succeeded with their goals.
Behind the Scenes
People always get excited and overwhelmed when they get a chance to see the private life of their idols and favourites. You can use live videos to display behind the scenes which can be a great source to establish an emotional connection with your audience and it can help promoting your brand more effectively.
Project Status
With Instagram live you can regularly update your clients and customers with the status of the running project. Project status reporting is one crucial element of project management, and Instagram Live serves as an excellent tool for doing so in a fun manner and that too in real time rather than reporting via a simple boring document.
Run contests
With Instagram live you can run real-time live games which can help to a great extent for your brand exposure and promotion.
Takeovers
You must be familiar with Snapchat takeovers and how brands have benefited from it. Instagram have now introduced the same. An Instagram takeover is when a special guest is invited to take control of a Brand’s Insta account temporarily. It can help brands by the Cross-Promoting content in which you promote the content of some other Insta account whom you have a takeover or vice versa.
Grow Your Audience
You can use Instagram live video to build your audience more quickly. And more audience means more promotion which means more leads and which further means more sales. More Instagram followers can help you gain more traffic to your website and also serves as a free advertising tool.
Boost sales
With so many benefits you can add more leads and sales to your business with the help of Instagram live videos. Show off your creativity and convince your audience that why you are different from your competitors.
SourceIs your business live yet? Turn to Instagram and create some live action to get noticed and grow. We would love to have your feedback and comments on this news piece and how you are using Instagram for your business.
