Do you want to increase your online sales? Are you looking for new channels to build brand awareness and grow your business? To what extent are you familiar with social media marketing via different features and applications?

In this article, we’re going to describe important aspects of a fantastic social media feature and its role in boosting sales: Instagram TV–IGTV.

What is social media marketing?

With more than 3 billion active users around the world, social media is the number one means of brand awareness. It can provide business owners, especially small businesses, with an unrivaled audience reach.

Marketing and boosting sales via social media is the priority of many companies. Countless brands are active on the top social media services to generate leads and convert them into sales.

Working with different social media applications is so easy, but marketing on them can be a little hard. You can’t rely solely on some mediocre pictures/videos if you want to generate leads.

Your social media knowledge and command of working with different features of social networks is paramount. You need to enhance your social presence using all the capabilities of social networks and your creativity in content generation.

What is the importance of Instagram marketing?

Instagram is one of the best apps for marketing and has more than 1 billion monthly active users in the world.

It’s a multimedia-based social platform and allows you to share your moments in different formats such as regular posts, stories, Live, and IGTV. With these funny features each of which can help you get ahead of the competition in marketing.

Among all the abilities of Instagram, IGTV is a unique one. You can’t find any other social features that can help you in your video marketing.

What is IGTV?

Instagram TV is a standalone video application for Android and iOS smartphones that its basic functionality is also available through the Instagram app and website. It allows you to post longer videos compared to Instagram Stories.

It was launched in June 2018 and was introduced by Kevin Systrom former Instagram CEO. It’s one of the newest features among all social media platforms so you can make the most of it and grow your business.

To share videos using IGTV, you need to log in with an Instagram account. Smartphones allow you to upload videos of up to 15 minutes in length with a file size of up to 650 MB.

On the other hand, desktop web browsers allow you to upload videos of up to 60 minutes in length with a file size of up to 3.6 GB.

It should be added that a similar difference in size and length of videos exists between regular and verified/business users. Verified or business accounts with more than 10,000 followers can upload up to 60 minutes videos with 3.6 GB size.

On the other hand, typical users can only upload between 15 seconds-10 minutes of videos with 650 MB size.

IGTV vs. other social video content

Let’s clear the ability of IGTV by comparing it with other video features. Video length in IGTV might be too short compared to YouTube, but it’s too long compared to regular video posts or videos in stories on Instagram.

Video length in regular posts on Instagram is limited to 1 minute and in stories to 15 seconds. However, video ads in both posts and stories can be up to 120 seconds. Of course, if you use Live on Instagram, you don’t have to be worried about size and length.

Here is the IGTV video format for comparison:

• MP4 file format
• The vertical aspect ratio of 9:16
• The minimum frame rate of 30 FPS (frames per second) and a minimum resolution of 720 pixels
• The maximum file size for videos that are 10 minutes or less is 650MB
• The maximum file size for videos up to 60 minutes is 3.6GB.
• Cover photo size: 420px by 654px (or 1:1.55 ratio)

Why IGTV is important for marketers?

Content creation is at the heart of every social media marketing strategy. Attitudes towards social media content have mainly shifted towards visualized ones.

It’s anticipated that by 2021, video streaming will be responsible for 78% of total mobile data traffic. Certainly, Instagram TV will play a significant role in this field.

More than 70 percent of Instagram users are aged less than 35. It’s well-established that most of youngsters prefer to watch long, funny, and high-quality videos. In other words, the more entertaining, the better.

So, as a marketer, you need to think of the best ways to create and curate video content to reach out to your audience and increase brand awareness. Based on what we said, IGTV is one of the most useful tools for this purpose.

Build your marketing strategy for IGTV

Building a marketing strategy is recommended if you want to increase your ROI. Please don’t start creating and posting pictures/videos on Instagram without certain goals and plans.

The first step is to set clear goals to be able to act based on them and measure your performance accordingly. Your goals should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.

Then you need to define your audience and target them on Instagram. Remember that you can’t reach out to everybody. So, use social tools to find your niche audience on Instagram.

Try to do research on your competitors to find out their content styles, followers, schedules, etc. Then you can create your own style for your videos and use it in all your activities. Keep in mind that the format and style of your videos can make users remember your brand.

Finally, scheduling is a wise course of action if you like to appear regularly in the public eye. The thing is that if you post too frequently, your audience will be bothered and your engagement rates will decrease.

On the other hand, if you post infrequently, your audience might forget you and this can damage your brand reputation.

Create viral hashtags to increase your discoverability

Hashtags are at the core of the Instagram searching algorithm and the best way to get your content found by users.

They first appeared on Twitter and soon became common on other social networks. Hashtags are such important that brands consider certain strategies for using them. Niche-related hashtags and branded hashtags are being vastly used by regular users and brands to reach maximum visibility.

Using hashtags on IGTV videos is also recommended. Just like a regular post, you are allowed to use up to 30 hashtags in an IGTV video.

The optimum number of hashtags can’t be formulated but you can conduct competition research to find out how many hashtags your competitors are using.

Try to create unique hashtags for your own brand and use them along with the common niche-related hashtags.

Promote your IGTV videos using Instagram Stories

Instagram Stories is one of the most sought after features across all social media platforms. Many individuals and brands use Instagram Stories to share their moment with their followers.

This thing is that many social users don’t have the time to watch long videos. This is a useful way of drawing the attention of your followers to a longer version of your moments.

Actually, you need to create a story in which you summarize your long IGTV post. This is a useful way of drawing the attention of your followers to a longer version of your moments.

Instagram Stories is a perfect channel for promoting your IGTV videos. With Swipe-up links, you can link your stories to your IGTV videos. However, this option is only available for verified users.

Videos can be displayed by Instagram Stories as a slideshow. Each video can be 15 seconds long. So, stories are the best option to promote your previously generated videos on IGTV.

Use Instagram Live videos for IGTV

Instagram Live is the friendliest way of interacting with your followers. However, it can’t be organized and prepared so that you can send your message completely and accurately.

Actually, many things in an Instagram Live happen spontaneously and you can’t manage all of them.

IGTV, on the other hand, can be used to modify and curate content in a Live and republish them using IGTV. This is a great way to repeat your message and get higher exposure. Remember that many users might lose your Live.

By repurposing your Live, you can show them those pieces and make them feel they are a part of your brand story.

You can record your Live including all comments with standard tools like

1. ApowerMirror
2. AirShou
3. Apowersoft Screen Recorder

Leverage the power of Instagram influencers for IGTV marketing

Influencer marketing is the best means of increasing brand awareness on social media. More than 60 percent of marketers want to increase their influencer marketing budget in the next fiscal year.

IGTV has great potential for influencer marketing campaigns. Its aspects actually seem to be a perfect fit for this purpose.

First, you need to find niche influencers using valid sources like Awario and BuzzSumo. This is a must if you want to find trusted influencers.

Social Tradia has reported that many influencers are not highly-engaged and want to sell their Instagram accounts. So, try to find the best options for your brand and build a long-lasting relationship with them.

There are two approaches you can adopt in influencer marketing. First, making videos for your account and including influencers in them.

Second, asking influencers to make videos and use your products/services to promote your business. No matter which of these approaches you choose, you need to make sure that the result appears organic, not too promotional.

Cross-promote with other social platforms

Social media cross-promotion is an easy and cost-effective way to get higher engagement rates and increase social impressions.

In fact, you need to share your evergreen posts on other social media services. This will encourage social users on other platforms to visit your main account (for example, Instagram) and follow you.

We recommend you share your IGTV posts at least to top social networks such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.

Facebook

For sharing your IGTV videos to your Facebook Page, which is already connected to your Instagram account, you have three options: Instagram app, IGTV app, and Instagram webpage.

If you want to have cross-promotion using the Instagram app or IGTV app, you first need to upload your video on your app.

Don’t forget to add a compelling cover photo, title, and description. Now, you just have to tap the button next to the option “Make Visible on Facebook”.

On the other hand, for sharing your IGTV videos using the webpage, go to Instagram.com. Then, upload your video and add a cover photo, title, and description.

Now, select IGTV and Facebook Page below “Where Your Video Will Appear” and click Post. Your video will be posted to your IGTV channel and your Facebook Page.

YouTube

Repurposing videos on your YouTube channel to share on IGTV (and vice versa) is a useful way of getting your content promoted.

You can convert your previously uploaded videos on YouTube and share them on your IGTV. This can save you time and money and promote your accounts on YouTube and Instagram.

Try to use video editing tools to change the aspect ratio and other characteristics of your videos according to the IGTV requirements.

Twitter

You can tap “Copy Link” in the IGTV video menu and paste the link into a tweet to share the video with your followers on Twitter.

This will significantly help you to get the attention of countless marketers on Twitter and redirect them to your Instagram account.

Using viral hashtags is a must when you’re doing this and can help you to get maximum exposure.

Final word

We tried to describe the important aspects of IGTV. Of course, practice makes perfect. You need to try it yourself to learn how it works. Remember to analyze your performance using Instagram Insight to know your best performing video. This can help you to optimize your performance and increase your ROI.