By: Carolina Lafuente
Instagram is the latest social media app to follow the footsteps of Facebook-Live and Periscope through live videos. Unlike Facebook Live however, this is one live show you can’t re-run.
In an interview for AD Weekly, an Instagram rep explained via email that “Your live video disappears as soon as you're done recording, so you can feel comfortable sharing what you want, anytime."
While many brands are still getting the hang of the recently released Instagram story feature, they now have Instagram Live to manage. This adds to whole new ways to connect with their audiences.
Instagram Live allows for more authentic, raw footage since there is no editing that can be done live. It also creates a sense of urgency to audiences since once the Live coverage is done it can never be revisited.
Most brands are using the live feature to bring their audiences into exclusive events and store openings. Allure magazine for example, did with its first Instagram Live story of its editor attending a class with makeup artist Mario Dedivanovic and then sharing tips from the lesson.
While the feature allows for a new way to connect with audiences, the challenge is figuring out when they will be most available to view these live stories in order to get the most brand exposure.
“The biggest benefit of live tools in general is the ability to bring your audience to where you are in real time, but the significance of having live tools on yet another social platform is that your audience is going to vary between the platforms,” said Ben Boskovich, social media editor at Esquire for an interview for Glossy. “Our Instagram audience is a younger and more tuned-in to things that our Facebook audience might not be as receptive to, so now we’ll have a whole new way to reach them.”
As we close off for 2016 in a couple of weeks, who knows what Instagram will roll out next. And the biggest question of all remains “do I really need all these other apps when Instagram does it all now?”
