IGTV has been somewhat overlooked since it launched back in 2018. Instagram are starting to push it more this year by introducing ads, enabling creators to monetise their videos and allowing Instagram Lives to be saved to IGTV. So how does IGTV work and how can small businesses use it to improve their social presence and make sales?
What is IGTV?
Essentially it’s just long form video on Instagram. Whereas the Instagram feed allows videos of up to 1 minute, on IGTV you can share much longer videos, much like you would on YouTube. Although when it started out it was vertical video only, you can now also share landscape video making re-purposing video content from other platforms much easier.
While IGTV does have a standalone app, it’s also baked into the Instagram app. On profiles you can tap the IGTV logo to view videos rather than grid posts and you can share videos to your Stories as you would any other post (currently IGTV videos shared to stories do not cross post to Facebook.)
Is it worth your time?
I vote yes. We all know video is popular and is a great way to connect with your audience and longer form videos perform well on other platforms; Facebook recommends a minimum of 3 minutes for videos, for example. It’s also a way to avoid posting longer videos using the carousel function; many of us have got round Instagram’s 60 second limit by cutting longer videos into 1 minute sections and sharing as a carousel grid post. Wahey for no more faffing like that!
You can use hashtags for IGTV just like you would on Instagram proper so you have a great opportunity to have your video content discovered. Additionally IGTV videos are included in the explore feed and previews can be shared to your grid.
In big news, URLs in video descriptions are clickable! That means that IGTV gives you an opportunity to link to places without needing to send people to your bio link. This is a real game changer for Instagram and a great reason to consider creating longer form video content on the platform.
Accessibility note: you currently need to burn in subtitles for IGTV videos as you cannot upload caption files.
As an aside; pre-recorded videos are a great option for people who don’t love going live but want to dip their toe in the video waters.
What to post
Of course this will depend on your business and audience but here’s some ideas
- Intro video; talk about who you are, what you do and why. Let people get to know you.
- Product/service highlight: explain in detail one of your products or services, who it helps and how.
- How to: how to use your product, how to do something relevant to your business, how to do something and why your product helps with that.
- Interviews: chat with some interesting people and share it.
- Vlogs: behind the scenes or day in the life style vlogs remain a popular type of content.
- Testimonials: create a fun testimonial video or ask your clients to send a video clip saying how awesome you are!
- Meet the team: if there’s more than one of you, why not introduce your team members and have them talk about about why they love working for you or what led them to do so.
- News and views: talk about industry news or your thoughts on related news articles.
Devilishly Handsome Productions have shared some more ideas for Instagram video marketing over on their blog.
The IGTV basics tl;dr*
While it’s not set to overtake YouTube just yet, Instagram is such a popular platform that I think IGTV needs to be a part of your Insta-plan right now. With huge viewership on Stories and ever increasing app usage, it just makes sense to share any video content you create on the platform, even if you don’t have the resources to create content specifically for it.
*tl;dr = too long; didn’t read. The key information from the post.