How To Use IGTV For Your Business
As we all know, Instagram has grown to be an extremely popular platform for individuals and businesses over the past few years. We’ve seen how it’s allowed users to showcase their products, businesses, and personal lives in a visual format.
It’s given us a way to put content out there and have an engaged audience that we can interact with on a daily basis. When Instagram released its latest platform, IGTV, it provided a new way for Instagrammers to connect with their audience by giving users the ability to promote video content in longer formats.
However, simply uploading any video isn’t the only purpose for IGTV; so let’s dive into the basics of how to use IGTV, how to create the best content on it, and what other hidden key features it has to offer!
BASICS OF IGTV
Ensure your video is in the right format! This will guarantee that your video is best set up for viewing and your viewers will have an enjoyable experience. Later has a detailed list of exactly all the technical aspects you should check for before uploading your video, under their “How to Create Videos for IGTV” guide.
For quick reference, verify your video has these 4 qualities:
MP4 video format
Length of at least a minute, but no more than 15 minutes if uploading form a mobile device
A size of 650MB to 3.65GB
A 9:16 aspect ratio if in vertical format, and 16:9 ratio if in horizontal format
If you need more assistance with uploading a video, Instagram provides a detailed-step by-step instruction guide on their website.
HOW TO UPLOAD AN IGTV VIDEO VIA A MOBILE DEVICE
Uploading a video via the IGTV app is easy! These steps will walk you through the easiest way to do this:
Open the IGTV app and while on the main page, tap on the top right corner on the “+” icon.
There you will choose a video from your Photos app to upload.
Choose a cover image by sliding to a point on the video that you’d like to display for your video cover.
Provide a Title, Description (don’t forget hashtags!), and add to specific series if you have one already! Here, you can also choose to add a preview of this video on your profile, edit the cover of the profile, and share via Facebook.
Post and wait for your video to post to your IG feed!
Check your Insights on the video later on by tapping on the “...” icon on the video to see who has viewed, liked, or commented on it! You can also see how many people watched your video to the end or when in the video they swipe away.
OPTIMIZING YOUR CONTENT
When sharing an IGTV video, you want to provide value in your videos! Some excellent concepts that Single Grain suggests to consider that perform well on IGTV are:
Tutorials
Product Videos
Insider Knowledge in your Industry
Behind the scenes content
Education videos
Q&A Sessions
Since a lot of people watching videos on mobile, listen with the sound off, add text on your video to provide more context to the video so your viewers have an easier time following along.
Take your time, but don't overdo it. If you want to make your video 10 minutes long just for the sake of making it 10 minutes long, that will show! Make sure to film for as long as you need without dragging it out unnecessarily.
When uploading the video, choose a cover image for each video you upload so you can ensure you’re providing the right visual idea as to what your video is about. You can also share a “preview” of the IGTV video if it is longer than 60 seconds on your Instagram feed. This preview will also appear in the News Feed of your followers!
When writing IGTV descriptions, keep them short and to the point, but let your audience know what the video is about. You can use hashtags on IGTV videos, and you can add up to 30 in the description.
“HIDDEN” FEATURES OF IGTV
There are a few “hidden” features of IGTV! Adding IGTV videos to stories with the swipe up feature to watch the video is available immediately after you upload your IGTV. Note: it will only swipe up to that video, but you are able to set which video it directs too. You can put clickable links in the description, leading to more traffic and conversions. Hack the swipe up feature by sharing an IGTV with a link only in the description. On stories, share your call-to-action for that link, swipe up to the IGTV video and tell people to click the link in the video description!
You can use IGTV on mobile and desktop, you can upload on both, and you can edit your videos after uploading via desktop version! Another feature is that you can upload videos in Vertical or Horizontal since Instagram now supports Horizontal videos on IGTV!
Need more social media help? Check out our membership that offers multiple social media calendars, templates, and over 2,500+ hashtags
