Benefits of Using Instagram TV to Market Your Business Page

As an Instagram user, you have probably noticed short previews of longer videos auto-playing on your regular feed as well as the Story feed.

12:58 04 May 2021

As the preview ends, you are prompted with an option to continue watching the video. If you tap your screen in agreement, you get access to the rest of the video. The video that appears is longer than the ones you generally see on your post feed and your Story feed. These long videos are part of Instagram TV uploads by your fellow Instagram users. Instagram TV is a fairly new feature of Instagram, and it seems to have become popular in recent times among both Business and Personal account holders. Instagrammers, especially influencers, seem to be using IGTV reasonably regularly. Do you want to consider using Instagram TV, or IGTV, for your account? Are you wondering if there are any real benefits to using IGTV for your Business? Let us check what IGTV can do for you.

 

The Basics: What Is IGTV?

 

A long-form immersive video feature, Instagram TV was launched in 2018 to give Instagrammers a revolutionary video watching experience. The videos, when played, take over the entire screen. IGTV compliments the existing video uploading feature of Instagram.

 

Like any other content upload, to ensure your IGTV video upload features on the personalized feeds of fellow Instagrammers, you need it to have a great audience engagement rate. This means your marketing strategies IGTV should aim at gathering likes, views, and comments. The more audience engagement you have, the more discoverable is your IGTV content on Instagram’s Search and Explore tab.

 

Currently, you can upload concise videos on Instagram. A regular video post can only be up to 60 seconds long, while a Reel can be only up to 30 seconds. In comparison, an IGTV upload from a verified account can range from 15 seconds to 60 minutes in length. This time limit is 10 minutes for regular accounts, which is still somewhat longer than an average Instagram video post.

 

These videos can be shot vertically or horizontally and stored separately on an IGTV channel when you upload them. You do not need to make any extra investments to start your IGTV channel. Any Instagram user can have an IGTV channel. Viewers do not need any additional downloads to view videos on your IGTV channel either, as they are directly viewable from the regular Instagram app. However, for an exclusive IGTV content experience, they do have the option of downloading the IGTV app on their devices.

 

How Does IGTV Factor into Instagram Insights for Your Business Page?

 

With regard to insights that affect your Business page’s performance and visibility on Instagram, IGTV’s insights are measured like those of other Instagram uploads. IGTV’s engagement rate is also calculated based on the number of views, likes, and comments the videos receive. Typically, you cannot see the number of IGTV likes or views on a video unless you check the insights for the same. When you check this count, you can also check details like the names of the audience accounts who have liked your video.

 

Instagram’s algorithms personalize each user’s home feed with the posts it thinks the user is most likely to interact with. IGTV videos, too, are placed on the feed based on the same calculations by Instagram. The algorithms focus on:

 

• What content you have interacted with or searched for in the past.
  
  
• Which profiles you engage with frequently.
  
  
• The time any content is uploaded, with the most recent ones gaining visibility space over others.
  
  
• The frequency with which a creator uploads content.
  
  
• The frequency with which a user browses their home feed.
  
  
• How long a user spends on Instagram.

 

What Benefits Can IGTV Marketing Bring to Your Business Page?

 

Here are some ways your business can benefit from IGTV.

 

1. The Channel Experience

 

The most significant benefit to using IGTV as part of your marketing strategy is audience traction. As already mentioned, IGTV has its standalone app that lets the user view and interact with long video content on Instagram exclusively. This, in effect, brings the user a television watching experience with a twist. Similar to the traditional broadcasting experience, IGTV features “channels” that are nothing but the profiles of the video creators. Views can browse through various channel content and interact with what they like. They can choose to follow and binge-watch videos much as they do on Netflix or YouTube, but at the same time, they have access to all of Instagram’s social communication features as well. This makes the experience much more versatile than traditional television watching. This also makes the feature suitable for attracting organic audience engagement to your Business page.

 

2. Visibility Boost

 

When audience traction increases on any Instagram content, it gets automatically pushed up on the platform’s algorithms for higher visibility among new audiences. A view on an IGTV video gets registered when an Instagrammer spends at least 3 seconds on it. When Instagrammers pause on a video while scrolling up and down their feed, they allow the video to gather unique impressions, and this helps further the content’s reach. This lets your content get a natural visibility boost on Instagram’s metrics. With greater visibility, your content also climbs up on the display feed rankings when users specifically search for content using relevant keywords or hashtags. Greater visibility ensures better brand building as your content gets visually associated with your profile and thereby your brand. All of this makes IGTV a useful part of the video marketing strategies you may have in place for your business.

 

3. Greater Flexibility with Content Creation

 

Short videos make it difficult to create content variety. However, with the ability to create videos up to 60 minutes long, you now have the possibility to enhance your video marketing by creating various types of content. Some of the types of videos you can make include:

 

• Informational videos on your products and services.
  
  
• Educational videos on subjects associated with your business.
  
  
• How-To tutorials.
  
  
• Product reviews and testimonials.
  
  
• Behind the scenes videos.
  
  
• Brand stories.
  
  
• Demonstrations.
  
  
• Delayed upload of live footage of events, or IG Live sessions.
  
  
• Response videos to queries and comments.
  
  
• Influencer videos hosting guests and displaying services and products.
  
  
• News and announcements.
  
  
• Hook videos sharing tips and tricks.
  
  
• Testimonial videos.

 

The list is endless.

 

All IGTV content needs to be pre-recorded. This means you can plan and edit videos to your liking before you post them on your channel. You can add subtitles, captions, sound effects, memes, and even animate your content to add uniqueness to your content. When you upload your content on IGTV, as a creator, you further can:

 

• Choose to upload the video as part of a series.
  
  
• Create or choose a cover photo for the upload.
  
  
• Post an optional 15-second preview to your Instagram home feed.
  
  

4. Gain More Conversions

 

Videos can help you sell your services. As IGTV videos have higher opportunities for audience engagement, the possibilities of gaining more conversions through the videos are also hence high. If you can build a sense of connection with your audience, not only will your follower keep coming back for more video content, they are likely to turn into your potential business partners, social-media collaborators, and clients. The more trust you manage to create with your content generation, the higher is your chance to get your audience to be more than virtual followers.

 

IGTV allows you to add clickable links in the description of your video. Be sure to provide URLs of functional landing pages here, as you are highly likely to get customers and leads through this space. Optimize this description by using primary and secondary keywords, relevant hashtags, and tag lines. Also, remember to make your IGTV content shareable on other social websites like Facebook, as you can get higher traffic, and thereby the possibility of conversions, for your content this way.

 

5. Create a Community

 

Social media marketing strategies are only half effective if your focus is only on hard selling. Your business can do infinitely better if you concentrate more on building a positive brand image. A humanized brand is far more likely to have a loyal and organic follower count than an impersonal one. With IGTV videos, you can focus on creating a better brand consciousness. Some tips for this:

 

• Observe the trends in your niche and do your research on how best to use video marketing to create a community around your brand on a long-term basis.
  
  
• Make your content audience-centric. Identify and explore what they want to see and hear from you as a brand.
  
  
• Engage with social causes.
  
  
• Entertain when necessary. Your channel needs not to be focused on only one type of video or one content-making genre.
  
  
• Provide opportunities for audience participation.
  
  
• Respond to comments and messages. Acknowledge what your viewers have to say.
  
  
• Keep your interactions civil when responding to trolls or any other form of offensive audience engagement.

 

Use IGTV to build relationships and forge connections with your viewers. This will automatically bring goodwill to your brand.

 

Check Your Marketing Strategy Performance

 

Instagram has several helpful in-built analytics that enables brands to review their performance and step up their marketing game as and when necessary. IGTV, too, comes equipped with its insights. The statistics are detailed and helps you build a serious video marketing strategy for your business. You can not only check the time of maximum engagement and types of engagement (like views and likes) – you can also view your average “audience retention”. In turn, it’ll tell you how much time your users typically spend watching your content.

 

Based on these analytics, you can adjust your marketing strategy to build better engagement ratios on your videos. Some of the things analytics can help in planning better include:

 

• The schedule of your IGTV postings;
  
  
• The need to create auto-responses to acknowledge comments and interactions;
  
  
• The inclusion of stronger calls to action in your video descriptions.

 

Conclusion

 

IGTV is a free feature that anyone on Instagram can use. There is no harm in trying out the long video form of content creation to check if it works for your brand or not. If you are unsure whether you should invest time and effort on a routine basis to build up your IGTV strategy, consider starting by repurposing old content and uploading these to your IGTV channel with relevant hashtags keyword-enriched description. Be sure to check whether your video adheres to Instagram’s policies and guidelines when you do this to avoid running into any unwanted roadblocks. Also, ensure that your upload meets IGTV’s video requirements in terms of technicalities like aspect ratio, mobile viewing optimization, and so on.

 

IGTV combines the power of broadcasting networks and social media interactions in one platform. This allows businesses new potential for growing an audience reach and for promoting their services. As a new feature, IGTV sees constant trial runs and updates. Keep track of the changes and keep yourself ahead of your competition. Used well, the feature is sure to be of immense benefit for you!