It’s been about 2 years since Instagram rolled out IGTV and while IGTV hasn’t taken off like Instagram probably hoped it would, they’re not dropping it. In fact, all signs point that Instagram is doubling down on IGTV. The recently updated the IGTV app to promote creators and you can now watch and comment on IGTV videos on your desktop.
Now that Instagram is making it easier than ever to use IGTV, should you?
To answer that, we’ll start with the hard facts. Video content is essential right now. Social media posts that include a video have 48% more views than those that don’t. In fact, video was ranked as consumers’ favorite type of content to see from a brand on social media in 2018.
No matter what your industry or preferred social media platform, video needs to be a part of your content strategy. And this is why we think you should use IGTV.
If you’ve hung around the Edgar parts for a little bit of time, you know that we are all about making the most of what you have, creating more content in less time and amplifying your best content so you don’t have to waste time putting out not-so-great content.
IGTV has made some changes since it’s original launch that makes it much easier to repurpose and upcycle other videos and promote them on the Instagram platform. By doing this, you’ll be amplifying those incredible videos you’ve already created, reaching a newer audience, and building your Instagram presence.
One of the ways that brands are catching onto IGTV is by creating series. Creating an IGTV series is just choosing a theme or topic to create episodic (or ongoing) content around.
Is it just us or does serialized content sound very similar to… CATEGORIES!?
Content categories is just another way to organize and schedule your social media content and it’s our favorite way to do so here at MeetEdgar. It’s all about finding the topics or themes you want your brand to be known for and then creating content that fits into those themes on a regular, recurring basis. IGTV series are just another way of creating content categories that showcase your brand and expertise.
So in the spirit of repurposing and upcycling and creating a category or theme, let’s talk about 4 IGTV series you can start immediately!
Repurpose older videos
If you’re thinking about starting an IGTV series, the first thing you should do is look at what existing video content you already have on hand. Do you have Youtube videos of past webinars, product demonstrations, speaking engagements or customer reviews? Anyone of those can be an IGTV series!
One of our IGTV series is “User Spotlights.” To create it, we simply repurposed past videos of customer interviews and reviews. We chose the title “MeetEdgar User Spotlights,” created a graphic for it and then chose how often we would post a new episode (weekly) and that’s it. We already had a library of videos in our YouTube channel just waiting to be discovered by another audience. But why wait for someone to find those videos when we could share them on a new platform?
Upcycle Livestreams
Live streams are a popular video content choice these days but why let that live stream sit only on Facebook or LinkedIn? The real value in a live stream is often in the replay. After your live stream ends, you can save the video and then repost it onto IGTV. This way your live is doing double duty by reaching and engaging audiences on two different platforms.
As long as the video is longer than 15 seconds and shorter than 60 minutes, you can turn them into an IGTV series. Remember though that comments won’t transfer over into IGTV so if you spend a lot of time chatting to people in the comments, you may want to skip posting that!
You can also upcycle any Instagram lives you host. Instagram now allows you to add your live to IGTV after it ends. Previously, the only option to save Instagram lives was to share it to your story where it would live for 24 hours before disappearing. Now you can easily add the live to your IGTV with just the click of a button.
Summarize Podcast Episodes or Blog Posts
Another IGTV series you can easily do is by simply promoting or talking about other content you’ve created. If you publish a weekly blog or podcast, you can use IGTV to share a little bit more about the topic of that content, offer more insights or provide behind the scenes content.
This will not only increase your Instagram engagement and reach, it can get more views, clicks, downloads and subscribes to the existing content you already publish on a regular basis. Also, since you’ve already done the work of writing said post or recording the podcast, you already have the content ready to go! No extra research required.
Q&As
This IGTV series is another upcycling of another Instagram feature: the questions sticker! Hosting AMAs or Q&As is easy thanks to the handy questions sticker in Instagram stories. Simply post a story with the question sticker and tell your audience you’ll be answering any questions. You can make the questions specific to a topic or they can be general.
Collect the questions, then record yourself answering them and turn that recording into an IGTV episode. You can promote the IGTV episode in your stories, which will further increase your engagement. If you do this on a regular basis, like bi-weekly or monthly, you can build your own Q&A series which can be watched by any new follower in the future!
Remember that new content platforms or opportunities don’t necessarily mean new content. The next time you find yourself asking if you should join another platform or use another feature, we encourage you to look at what content you already have and how you can use that in a different way.
