5 Tips for IGTV
IGTV– a platform said to “revolutionize long-form content” and rival Youtube has seen a recent influx of popularity.
Company stakeholders wanted the new medium to emulate seamless scrolling and discoverability that one experiences when scrolling through an Instagram feed, in the form we have all grown accustomed to: vertically.
The reason that IGTV’ers aren’t seeing a huge growth in following from their videos may partly be due to the product’s lack of search bar for content, topics and title, only showing results for profiles. This means that IGTV may not be the best platform to grow your following, but it should not be rendered useless. Here are some tips for using IGTV to its fullest capacity to reap the benefits it offers, unique from other platforms.
1 . Use Feed Previews
While its first debut didn’t go as well as planned for the company, it was eventually the feed previews that helped it grow. Brands are benefitting tremendously from this update, for example. Sephora’s Instagram account was averaging 60-80k in IGTV views before the update and are now getting over a million after the update. Giving users a feed preview allows them to decide if they want to keep watching and also allows them to easily click on the video to watch the full-version without having to spend time looking through IGTV.
2. Promote
Before uploading give behind the scenes previews on stories, use a countdown sticker until its debut, upload to Facebook, go live post-uploading to talk with fans and get tips on what to create next. If you are using IGTV, odds are you already have a pretty good following across other formats ie: IG story, IG Live, Youtube; drive them to IGTV through the formats they already follow.
3. Don’t go overboard
Even though Instagram’s limit for verified creators is 60 minutes, stick with 2-5 minutes as your happy medium, which is what the standard has been for videos with high retention on the platform. Think: Longer than videos you share on the feed but shorter than YouTube videos.
4. Aesthetics still important… for thumbnail
IGTV is especially good for close-up, focused videos, think: showing makeup products, shopping hauls etc. And the scrolling experience is a lot more visual than it is on YouTube, so be sure to make your thumbnail attractive and enticing with good quality.
5. Fuel your creativity
More and more creators are using IGTV to test out new ideas, concepts and themes as opposed to Youtube. Why? Because they don’t want to waste advertiser dollars on new ideas that may not hit the mark. IGTV is more native– it doesn’t require hours of editing nor expensive equipment. Instead, the IGTV producing norm is to grab your iPhone, shoot, upload and that’s it. This being said, episodic content is becoming more and more popular and so it becomes important to have a balance between content experimentation and episodic content that the viewers keep coming back for.
Don’t let your IGTV run flat– reach out to us at captiv8 to learn how best to use it for your brand.
