How to Use Instagram's Broadcast Channels

 👋 Hey everyone, it’s Samer!

Instagram started rolling out broadcast channels for business accounts a few months ago, and while bigger brands started apprehensively playing around with it, I think smaller brands and creators have some pretty good leverage to experiment.

ICYMI, broadcast channels offer a “one-to-many” messaging feature. Brands can send direct messages to loyal followers, creating an exclusive chat experience.

I’ve been watching a few brands use these channels, and here’s what I found:

Who is using Broadcast Channels (BCs)?

I tried looking at brands of different sizes and resources to gauge how BCs are being used (btw you can only see the broadcast channels in the below links on mobile).

Nike, the [recently troubled] athletic company, has a broadcast channel called “BTS ✔️” where they share a lot of BTS (and we know people on social love BTS). It has 290K members. They send voice notes too, how cool!

Glow Recipe, the skincare company, has a broadcast channel called “Dew Tell” where their co-founders often chime in and provide updates and BTS footage. It’s fun that the co-founder posts come from their accounts versus the brand account. They have 16.8K members.

Disney+, currently has a thematic channel called “Halloween on Disney+,” which features its own branded background (I remember the media partnerships team at META used to do this for big global broadcasters). They have 29.3K members.

Why start a Broadcast Channel?

With social media being driven more and more by discovery engines, community building should be your #1 strategic objective when thinking of broadcast channels.

If you were my client, I would suggest you start doing the following:

1. Your BC is a semi-closed space that gives your community a true sense of membership. Your audience loves fandoms, so name it something that accentuates the feeling that they are part of a community.

2. Use the channel’s interactive features (polls, questions) to both understand your core community better and also make them feel more seen in your content (using their POVs and reactions). You have a mini focus group available at your fingertips to ask, probe and test, for free, by people who are invested and willing to help.

3. Experiment with this format of a community channel before committing to a full rollout in another platform. I’ve seen many brands and communities form on Discord for example, and while these communities could require more resources and more time investment, a broadcast channel is a microcosm of that.

4. A broadcast channel can be a way to find your voice/approach to becoming the facilitator your community is looking for.

What to Post in a Broadcast Channel

Candid content. A BC is a forgiving place for experimenting with different formats and tones of voice.

Some brands started having a simplified content calendar for BCs.

Here’s one that the photography platform Pexels, uses. It has 3 formats: a question, photo prompts, and community prompts. Simple.