Photo-sharing platform Instagram on Thursday announced that it is rolling out a new tool that will help creators directly reach their audience, engage in deeper conversation and form better connections with their communities.

Instagram announced ‘Broadcast Channels‘ which are a public, one-to-many messaging tool specially introduced for creators where they can invite all their followers and start a conversation with their most interested fans.

“Creators can use broadcast channels as a casual, quick way to keep followers up-to-date. They can use text, photo, video and voice notes to share their latest updates and behind-the-scenes moments and even create polls to crowdsource fan feedback. Only creators can send messages, while followers can react to content and vote in polls,” Instagram announced.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg made the announcement on the social networking platform with his own ‘Meta Channel’.

Only creators can send messages in the broadcast channels and followers can react to content and vote in polls.

The company further mentioned that more features will be added to these channels in the coming months, such as the ability to bring another creator into the channel to discuss upcoming collaborations, crowdsource questions for an “ask me anything” and much more.Once a creator gets access to broadcast channels and sends the first message from their Instagram inbox, their followers will receive a one-time notification to join the channel,” it added.Moreover, followers can leave or mute these channels at any time and can also control their notifications from creators.

Creators can also encourage their followers to join by using the “join channel” sticker in Stories.

“We’re currently testing broadcast channels with a handful of creators in the US and plan to expand in the coming months,” Meta said.

“We’ll be testing broadcast channels in Messenger and on Facebook in the coming months,” it added.