IGTV Marketing: 3 Big Reasons Why Brands Can’t Afford to Ignore it Any More (Plus 5 Killer IGTV Strategies For Business Success)
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IGTV Marketing: 3 Big Reasons Why Brands Can’t Afford to Ignore it Any More (Plus 5 Killer IGTV Strategies For Business Success)
Are you curious about using IGTV for business? Still wondering what it’s all about and if it’s even woth bothering with?
In this post, I’ll tell you everything you need to know about IGTV to help you make up your mind, and - if you do decide to take the leap - explain how to optimise your IGTV strategy for success.
What is IGTV? A Brief History
IGTV is an offshoot of Instagram that allows you to upload and share videos from 60 seconds to 1 hour in length on their own dedicated Channels - separate from, but connected to the main Instagram app.
Launched in June 2018, the idea was that Instagram wanted a slice of the long-form video pie currently dominated by YouTube and at the time it promised that IGTV would “change the video landscape forever”.
Source: G2
Despite Instagram's best efforts, studies show that brands have been slow to adopt IGTV. In fact, according to a recent G2 study, only 16% of marketers reported having used IGTV.
Source: gartner
But contrary to the above, research by Gartner showed that almost 66% of brands on Instagram employ IGTV, with fashion and department store brands leading the charge.
Who to believe? IThe truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. But what is obvious is that for certain brands that are using IGTV - and utilising its strengths - are finding success.
3 Ways Instagram and IGTV work together to drive engagement
A lot of brands’ success on follows Instagram's decisions to allow landscape videos to be published on IGTV (previously just vertical), followed by the introduction of preview clips in the main Instagram feed, and the ability to jump from Instagram to IGTV (previously siloed in a standalone app).
After previews were introduced, IGTV videos views skyrocketed across the board, increasing by ~300-1000%, according to Later.
Instagram has also launched a feature that allows you to promote IGTV videos in stories - people can tap to go through to watch and share your videos in their own stories.
What's more, the Explore page also features a section dedicated to IGTV — another great way to drive traffic and discovery of your IGTV videos.
Despite some bad press and a sluggish start, the truth is that hundreds of thousands of people are watching IGTV videos every day.
What are the benefits of posting to IGTV?
By posting on IGTV, brands are capitalising on the growing homogeneity of video products across social platforms, as well as the longer exposure that IGTV videos enjoy on Instagram. This is because IGTV content can appear within Instagram — in a user’s feed, in the app’s Explore tab or on an account’s profile page.
Where long-form video is concerned, IGTV has been dubbed by some as “the new podcast”; a place to launch content series' that feature more authenticity and interesting points of discussion that people crave.
Shorter videos - 5-10 minutes long also allow for an expansion of the content that appears in Instagram Stories, and a more comprehensive touch point for customers to engage with.
If you already post long-form content to Facebook or YouTube, you might consider re-purposing it on IGTV for added exposure.
What to post on IGTV (and how to test what will work)
IGTV is a place people go to for long-form content, so ideally you don't just want to replicate Stories there. As it is an offshoot of Instagram in its own right, ideally you will want to publish videos that appeal to those who want to invest in your brand for longer lengths of time.
Unlike off-the-cuff snippets of your daily life in Stories, Instagram recommends is that IGTV videos should be based on a format. They should have a repeatable theme and style that your audience can expect in every episode.
Tutorials and Q&As are a popular option amongst brands, as are casual podcast-like discussions.
To decide what theme(s) to run with, use Stories as a testbed to see what kinds of content resonate with your audience, and what you can expand upon into IGTV. Don’t forget to use tools like the Question and Poll stickers to survey your audience on what they want to see.
5 IGTV Strategies for Success
Now that you know what IGTV is and why excitement for it is growing among brands, let’s look at tips and strategies that will help you hone your IGTV content, to attract the maximum amount of eyeballs.
1. Share and optimise IGTV Previews
IGTV previews are 60-second teasers of your full IGTV content and can be shared to your main Instagram feed. The 60 seconds of footage that plays (without audio unless tapped) is the opening minute of the IGTV video you are working on.
The preview will also appear as a post on your profile page. When someone taps on it, they will see a link to the full video. Viewers of the video will have the option to click to "watch full video on IGTV."
Why are IGTV previews so useful? Ordinarily, Instagram users have to leave the main feed to and visit a separate tab to view IGTV content - which a large majority of them simply don't do.
IGTV previews allow you to capture the attention of your main Instagram audience, hook them in, and drive them to engage fully with your IGTV content. To create and share an IGTV preview, tap on the "post a preview" option that appears just before you publish an IGTV video.
With IGTV previews being a minute long, there is ample opportunity to grab people's attention, but the start and end of the clip is probably your best chance of getting people to act..
You could put your focus in the first 10 econds or so, crafting a compelling message that encourages people to tap through to watch in full right away.
Or you could opt for a slow build, leading up to the 60-second mark and ending with a cliffhanger that means viewers won't be able to resist watching more. Build curiosity and excitement throughout.
As mentioned earlier, IGTV feed previews will initialy play without sound until tapped. So think about how your visuals can compel without audio, or make sure to edit in subtitles where needed.
All of the above are things you will have to think about even before you start filming, so factor this strategy into the planning stages of all your IGTV content.
2. IGTV Preview Covers
As the whole aim of an IGTV preview is to drive people to watch your IGTV videos in full, Instagram offers a few ways to make it function as effectively as possible.
Before you create a preview, you can also choose:
- a cover image: a still shot to represent your video, chosen from a single frame of the video itself or an image uploaded from your camera roll.
- a profile cover: positioning your thumbnail image into the square grid on your profile.
Since the thumbnail will appear in your profile grid and will only show a small IGTV logo to distinguish it, you will want to make sure it slots nicely with the rest of your content, and that it matches your brand aesthetic.
It the thumbnail really won't fit, you can remove the preview if you wish - it won't affect the visibility of the IGTV video, but rather defeats of the object if you're aim is to craft one that drives views.
One other thing to consider with IGTV covers is whether your video is in portrait or landscape mode. When shown on your followers’ feed it is cropped to the portrait size with the aspect ratio of 4:5. On your Instagram profile grid, it appears in a square with an aspect ratio of 1:1.
The tricky part is choosing an image that works well for all of these sizes and placements simultanously. One simple fix is to ensure that the subject of your thumbnail is right in the centre of the frame, so that inevitable cropping will ensure that it is still visible.
And whatever image you choose, make sure that it grabs people’s attention. A close-up on someone’s face - to evoke emotion - is a good idea, as is an unfussy design with colours that stop people scrolling to take a look.
3. Optimise IGTV titles and captions for search
At present, IGTV's search only returns results for channels and nothing else - so concentrate on building captions that will draw attention fron non-followers in the main Instagram feed.
Because IGTV is on mobile, any long IGTV titles will be truncated. Therefore, it's crucial that the first handful words of your title grab people's attention and make them want to watch.
Note: When you post an IGTV preview, your IGTV video’s full title becomes the first line of the caption of that preview. So, you need to select a title that describes what the video is about and that works both as a title and a caption. However, if you do want to change your caption or make it more descriptive, you can always go back and edit the preview post after you have posted it.
Also include relevant hashtags in your description. Your videos will show up on the corresponding hashtag page on Instagram, where people searching for or following that hashtag can discover your content.
You can also add clickable links to your IGTV video descriptions - a great way to drive your IGTV viewers to your website, or to relevant external links.
4. Promote your IGTV videos effectively
Although IGTV content is disseminated through the main Instagram app, you can't rely on the platform to carry out promotion on your behalf. Make use of all the tools that Instagram offers (and external avenues) to generate as much buzz around your IGTV videos as possible.
A couple of days before an IGTV video is due to go live, this could include teasing screengrabs of the video on your Instagram stories.
As the launch gets closer still, you could add a Countdown sticker in your stories to encourage people to be notified when the IGTV video goes live.
Of course, you'll want to create an IGTV video preview as part of the publishing process. At the same time, you’ll want to share it with a call to action from your Instagram Stories. The ordinary 'Swipe Up' link option is available for accounts with over 10,000 followers. But you don’t need 10K followers to promote an IGTV video. As soon as you publish your IGTV video, you will have the option to share it to your stoties with a Swipe Up link attached.
Depending on the type of video, you may want to invite users to provide feedback and discuss what they've seen. You can do this through Instagram Q&As in your stories or through Instagram Live.
Over the longer term, you can use stories Highlights to save and collate the links to your IGTV videos - easily accessible from your Instagram profile page.
5. Working With Instagram Influencers
Many brands that are getting results with IGTV videos are partnering with social media influencers to support their marketing. In particular, micro-influencers - those with a following between 10,000 and 50,000 are a wortwhile group to target.
As an emerging platform with less competition than the likes of YouTube, IGTV has provided a fresh opportunity for smaller influencers to gain real traction.
In support of their ordinary Instagram feed, these influencers are producing long-form content that resonates with their audience - that you can tap into.
Whether it's through content containing sponsored product mentions or just direct payment, the market brand-influencer relationships on IGTV is only going to grow.
Over to you
Have you taken the plunge with IGTV? Or are you going to experiment with it soon? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
Andrew Macarthy is a social media consultant and the author of the #1 Amazon Web Marketing Bestseller, 500 Social Media Marketing Tips.
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