People are tired of Photoshop and filters - they want to see their ideological inspirers live more and more often. That's why the features of social platforms that allow you to do this are so popular today.

At the same time, whether for Facebook or Instagram, the live broadcast function has never been the main one. Nevertheless, after its presentation, people began to use it to promote their accounts actively. Let's learn about the differences between these platforms and find out how to keep the balance if you have accounts on both social networks.

Pros and Cons of Instagram Live

We all used to see Instagram Live in front of Instagram Stories — circles at the top of the Instagram feed. This video is recorded in real-time, up to four hours long, and with the ability to connect up to three guests. Your subscribers will receive a notification at the time of your live broadcast. Since your live video is located before the stories, this will prioritize your content in the rankings, which means you will be able to attract many viewers from your subscribers to your broadcast.

As soon as your social media broadcasting ends, it disappears. However, from some point on, Instagram allowed users to save broadcasts to their videos to become available to those viewers who could not watch them in real-time.

Pros and Cons of Facebook Live

In the case of Facebook, everything works here like on Instagram: all your subscribers will be notified about your live broadcast. Here you can also add up to three guests to the broadcast. And just like on Instagram, you can save your live broadcast up to four hours long to provide an opportunity to watch it for those who did not have time to join it at the time of recording. Also, these publications are available for commenting and forwarding.

On the other hand, unlike Instagram, in the case of Facebook, you can broadcast in real-time from the desktop, which makes this platform more convenient for those who are used to working with high-quality video equipment.

How to Balance Instagram Live and Facebook Live

And now — some tips on how to balance the use of both platforms.

Know your goals and audience preferences

You must understand that Facebook and Instagram have somewhat different audience preferences: strangers are less likely to subscribe to you on the first platform. On the other hand, it will bring you more views as a percentage of your total subscribers. As for Instagram, you can be subscribed simply for beautiful photos in your profile here. It can be people from any place on the planet, and to interest them all, you will need to come up with something truly universal and “in a language that everyone understands.”

Choose a platform that suits your content type and style

If you don't want to boost your profiles on both platforms, consider which suits your style and content better. Since Instagram is more focused on visuals, what is essential, entertaining content, intelligent and severe things will be better promoted through Facebook. However, each case is unique, and if you have become famous far beyond social networks, platform suitability will stay in your way.

Promote your streams on both platforms simultaneously

Suppose you have the desire and time to promote yourself on both social media platforms. In that case, you can go on the most straightforward way and upload pre-recorded videos to online streams with the help of specialized live video tools. (And even loop them, for example, with Gyre, to maximize the duration of these broadcasts. You can test it for free on YouTube or buy a paid subscription to stream additionally on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitch). Thus, you can engage in your "live" content with as many viewers as possible.

Repurpose your streams for different formats and channels

If your Instagram and Facebook profiles have gathered radically different audiences, you must create unique live content for each profile separately, considering your followers' interests. For example, as we noted earlier, posts on Facebook are more formal. At the same time, those on Instagram are entertaining, so before you start streaming, think about how to adapt it to the specifics of each of these platforms.

Experiment and test different strategies and metrics

Remember to look at the live streaming analytics at the end of the streams to understand your chosen topic's success. The fact is that what was positively perceived by the audience on Facebook may be of little interest to your followers on Instagram and vice versa. Therefore, you may have to experiment with your live-streaming style before you find your ideal formula for getting perfect engagement metrics.

Conclusion

As you can see, despite the common purpose, the functionality for live broadcasting on Instagram and Facebook is slightly different. In turn, we hope that we can convey to you the specifics of each of these social networks, and now you can get the most out of it to boost your online popularity.