Instagram TV and Video Content as Queen

It’s complicated

With all the updates that happen on all our social channels on a weekly basis, it’s sometimes hard to keep track. The recent news of Facebook/Instagram’s rollout of new video features caused a lot of people within the communications industry to stand-up and take notice—and rightly so. This got us thinking about chess and communications. In chess, the queen is ultimately the most powerful piece on the board. If content is king, then video content is queen.

So, what happened? Instagram (note: Access supports other divisions of Instagram), rolled out a new feature and standalone app called IGTV (short for Instagram TV), which curates longer-form vertical video within a separate tab of the Instagram platform. With IGTV, users with more than 10,000 followers are able to upload videos up to an hour in length. The rest of us can upload videos of up to 10 minutes.

Why does this matter? With brands and organizations placing more emphasis on video   content to help drive awareness and engagement, IGTV is the perfect way to create in-the-moment video to tell longer stories without the expensive production required with other platforms like YouTube.

A viable video alternative

The net-positive of the IGTV launch is that, as we know, activating with YouTube creators can be somewhat cost prohibitive for clients who have smaller budgets. IGTV is a viable alternative for product reviews and integrated videos. As videos are usually shot on creator’s mobile devices (and less expensive to produce), those savings can be redirected to other marketing activities across the paid and earned spectrum.

Impact for brands

With content channels evolving and changing, it’s important for brands to experiment with different methods of storytelling. IGTV is another example of platforms evolving to meet the changing needs of the social marketplace, where content kings and video queens seek to drive awareness, affinity and sales*.

What are your thoughts on IGTV? Let us know.

*In addition to IGTV, Instagram rolled a host of new features including integrating shopping tags into story content. This could help prove out the value of social media in the consumer journey, a topic for a future post.