Social Media Marketing Tips for Northern Ireland Businesses – Instagram TV

Utilising IGTV for business

Coronavirus changed lots of things in the digital world and our reliance on Instagram being one of them. However, Instagram saw an interesting spike in one of their features – IGTV. As we craved human interaction more and more whilst locked down in our homes, brands and businesses utilised a relatively fresh feature otherwise known as Instagram TV or IGTV, to really engage with their audience and create a really captive group of interested consumers.

Social Media Trends

This is a trend that isn’t going to slow down. With businesses choosing impromptu lives and IGTV segments instead of carefully curated content to grab the attention of their customers. Whilst IGTV is a feature everyone can use, we feel that not many people know the ins and outs of it, so we’ve created the lowdown on all things IGTV.

What is IGTV?

IGTV is a long-form video channel accessible from Instagram and as an app in it’s own right – butt not many use it in this way! On the grid, you are limited to videos under 1 minute and stories disappear after 24 hours… so the answer is IGTV. This allows brands and businesses to post longer videos that will live in the IGTV feed but all is not lost – you can also post a preview to an IGTV on your feed which links the two. Verified users can post IGTV videos up to an hour long whilst regular users can upload 10 minute long videos.

It’s a space where content can be produced consistently and most people use it to showcase a longer content series on a weekly or monthly basis. IGTV is also a space where you can save any of your Instagram lives. So if anyone missed your IG Live, they can rewatch in their own time as a  video on the IGTV feed. Meaning you can get your audience’s attention without them having to download the app.

Social Media Marketing Tips for Instagram TV

Only post content that warrants a longer format
A signature tip is to use IGTV for its purpose. Ensure your video warrants being on an IGTV – so it’s longer in length and provides real value. Unfortunately IGTV isn’t just a place to be cross posting your IG stories. It’s important to utilise each platform individually. Think YouTube style formats – tutorials, interviews, Q&A’s – all this content now has a home on IGTV!

Social Media Marketing Tips for Instagram TV – Promote

IGTV is a format in its own right, you can link directly through to an IGTV from Facebook, Twitter, an email – pretty much anywhere. Not only will this help raise awareness and extend the reach of your content, but it acts as more activity on those platforms too, so IGTV has a real multi-faceted approach.
You can also do some easy things to improve your IGTV views like sharing a preview and linking on your own story and as aforementioned it’s really key to post an IGTV preview on the feed to entice your followers to watch too!

Social Media Marketing Tips for Instagram TV – Your brand identity

Remember to stay true to your brand. Just because you are making longer content, doesn’t mean you need to step away from your brand identity. So ensure to make it as YOU as you possibly can as not only will this will help your IGTV content fit into your feed, but it will ensure a cohesive customer experience. So stick to your same branding, fonts and colours!

Social Media Marketing Tips for Instagram TV- Silence is key

It’s a little known fact that videos should be optimised for “sound off” as all videos initially begin this way by default. So make sure your video is optimised to play without sound. So ensure that it makes sense without sound, or has subtitles. These can be easily added in iMovie, Premier Pro or if you are working from your phone, we recommend the InShot app.

Social Media Marketing Tips for Instagram TV – Hashtags Hashtags Hashtags