Coronavirus: Using Instagram Live to stay connected to your audience
How do you stay connected to your audience during Covid-19?
Knowing how in interact with your audience has suddenly become a little harder. After holiday parks were advised to close by the Government it doesn’t feel quite right to be pushing for holiday sales, so what do you post to keep your audience engaged? Unfortunately, there is no handbook on dealing with this global pandemic, but we do know a few tips that may help.
Staying connected to your audience is more important than ever. With more people at home self-isolating and practicing social distancing, views for Instagram Live and Facebook Live have more than doubled since the lockdown began. Take advantage of this, use this time to grow your brand affinity; rather than pushing for sales, allow your brand values to shine and add a personal touch to your brand. While social videos cannot replace real life connections, they offer a modern solution to the interaction your audience is looking for.
You might be wondering, what can I show that people really want to see? This is a chance to expose your brands personality. If your park has great entertainment, show it! Perhaps your entertainment team know some killer dance moves they can teach your audience, or a silly science experiment that can be done using household items? Anything to keep your audience entertained and create a positive space.
Go behind the scenes
Both Instagram Live and their Stories feature are great tools to show some behind the scenes of your brand. Have you got a new project in the works? Or are you considering some changes on your park? Make your audience feel like they are part of the journey.
Give a tour
Why not go live with a tour to show off all the great locations or views of your park. Perhaps you have some new wildlife friends still enjoying life on your park you could catch on camera?
Most importantly, have fun! Enjoy yourself and spark engaging conversation with your audience.
Before you go live
- Plan what you want to say/show: Going live can be a little daunting so make sure that you have an idea of what you want to say, and the message you are trying to get across to your audience. But keep it natural and let your personality shine through, people connect to authenticity.
- Do a little research: Instagram has a nifty insights feature which can be accessed via your profile. This reveals the average age range, gender split and the time of day that your followers are the most active. You can use this to tailor your content to ensure that it is relevant to your audience.
- Give your followers advance notice using Stories: Try going live at specific times of day so that your audience know when to tune in. If you don’t know when is best to go live, just ask! The poll feature on Instagram Stories is a simple and easy way to find out your audience’s opinion. You can also get people excited about your Instagram Live by promoting it using stories and posts in your feed, let them know why they want to watch!
Going Live
- Go live with a friend / co worker: Going live with another person not only gives you someone to bounce off of, but it will also alert your collaborators followers that you are live, attracting new viewers. Just remember to maintain those important social distancing guidelines however as you don’t want to open yourself to criticism.
- Turn on comments to facilitate a positive community experience: Allowing comments on your Instagram live will help you to see what your audience really want to know/see. It opens up a space for viewers to communicate and engage with not just you, but each other. Break the barrier between viewer and creator to create an open form of discussion.
- Have fun and be positive! Remember to have empathy for your audience and offer compassion. Take into consideration your tone and how it could be interpreted, we don’t want to turn a blind eye to Covid-19. But it’s similarly important to be positive. The main focus of your Instagram Live should be to offer your audience a little distraction or pieces of advice to help lighten their day.
After you go live
Save your live and upload to Stories: Pop your Instagram Live on your story. This will put your video right at the front of the Story feed, making it available to be watched for 24 hours so that it can be seen by anyone that may have missed it. You can even upload your Live to IGTV to maximise your content.
