Instagram has quickly become the top platform for connecting with exercisers over the past few years. The Instagram Live feature is an incredible way to connect with your followers in a direct, transparent, and authentic way.

Unlike pre-recorded Instagram Stories, Instagram Live is a totally unedited stream for your followers to tune into and engage with — which, during this shutdown time, will make it feel very authentic and give more “real-ness” to your content. Instagram Live also allows your followers and exercisers to submit their comments and questions in real-time and get their answers in real-time without having to wait. This interactive engagement can be a hugely beneficial tool for building a stronger connection between your facility and exercisers during this critical time!

Hosting an Instagram Live can also help boost your discoverability on Instagram. For example, every time you go live on Instagram, your followers will receive a notification, and your live video will be bumped to the front of their Instagram Stories feed, giving it more viability and attendance than a typical Instagram Story.

In addition to the actual live broadcast, your Instagram Live will stay on your Instagram Stories for 24 hours so your audience can catch up on it if they missed it. This in turn opens your content up to a much larger audience, especially if you continue to mention your Instagram Live video across different social platforms that do not have this capability. And we definitely recommend always mentioning your planned Instagram Live videos on your Instagram Stories and news feed in advance!

Content to Share on Instagram Live

You may be wondering what content would be good to share on an Instagram Live vs. a typical Instagram Story post. With the ever-changing business implications of the COVID-19 impact, many facilities have had to shut their doors. It is more important than ever to keep your members engaged with your brand and develop that community feel they crave online. Instagram Live is a great way to do that through:

1. Holding group training classes
2. Hosting Q&A sessions
3. Allowing trainers to go live with their at-home workouts
4. Getting on and chatting through different #fittip topics that will help members through this time. Here are some ideas:
   1. Nutrition tips
   2. Mindset tips
   3. Stress relief

How to Set Instagram Live Settings

Now that we have discussed the benefits of Instagram Live and some great use cases, let’s jump in and learn how to actually “Instagram Live”. It may sound a bit intimidating at first, but it is an incredibly easy tool to use.

Step 1: Adjust Your Instagram Live Settings

Before you start an Instagram Live video, it’s a good idea to check your settings and ensure they are exactly as you want them to be.

1. Open the Instagram Stories camera and swipe left to the “Live” mode.
2. Tap the wheel icon in the top left-hand corner to open your controls.
3. Select who you’d like to be able to view your Stories (and Instagram Live videos), who can reply, where it saves to, and also how it can be shared.

Step 2: Filter Out Offensive Comments

No one enjoys seeing negative or offensive comments, and they can also be distracting if you see them as you are recording. Instagram allows you to automatically hide offensive comments, and manually filter comments that contain specific words or phrases. To do so, open your Instagram settings, scroll down to “Privacy,” select “Comments,” and then toggle “Hide offensive comments” from “Off” to “On.” To take it even a step further, to filter out comments that contain specific phrases, toggle “Manual filter” from “Off” to “On” and then type the words or phrases you wish to filter out separated by commas.

Ok now that that is covered, let’s have some fun!

How to Go Live

Step 1: Open the Instagram Stories camera and swipe left to the “Live” mode. One you are in, it will show you how many of your followers are currently active within Instagram, giving you a good indication of how many people will receive a notification if you go live right then.

Step 2: Tap the “Live” icon to start your broadcast! We recommend giving your followers a few moments to join before jumping right in to the topic of your Live video, so as many people as possible can be present and engage with you without having to go back and watch what they missed.

Step 3: During your Live video, you will have the option to choose from a number of features to make your broadcast more engaging. You can:

• Share questions from your viewers to the screen by tapping the question mark icon.
  • Remember – You can only share a question once a viewer has submitted it. Make sure to remind them during your broadcast to “submit” their questions.

• Send a Direct Message to someone about your Instagram Live by tapping the paper plane icon.
• Invite someone to co-host your Instagram Live by tapping the faces icon.
• Apply a filter by tapping the filter icon. It’s a good idea to decide which filter you want to use in advance, so you can find and apply it so the Live video has consistency throughout it.
• Share an image or video by tapping the camera roll icon in the right-hand corner of the screen.
  • Remember - When you add an image or video from your camera roll, your video live stream will move to the top right-hand corner of the broadcast screen, on top of whatever media you’ve chosen to share. 

• Add multiple images and videos to create a cool “slideshow” effect. Just tap the next image or video you want to share from the panel at the bottom of the screen.
• Add a comment to the live stream by tapping “comment”. You can also pin a comment to the top of the feed by tapping and holding it.

Step 4: Once your Live video is over, tap “End” in the top right corner and make sure to tap “End Now” to confirm.

Step 5: Tap the save icon in the top left to save it to your camera roll (highly recommend this), and/or share it to your Instagram Stories to be viewed over the next 24 hours.

And you are DONE. It’s really that simple!

Enjoying going live on Instagram? Check out our guide on Facebook Live and keep the content flowing!