How are brands leveraging IGTV?
For those of you who may not know, IGTV is a live TV network on Instagram where you entirely control the broadcast. Instagram added the IGTV feature after reaching a huge milestone, 1 billion users, which is why it’s slowly becoming the next best channel in your marketing mix.
Brands have been working with influencers on IGTV to tell a deeper story about a product such as featuring makeup, cooking tutorials, workout routines, and parenting hacks. Brands have been using IGTV on their own channels as well, live streaming to their audience fashion shows, campaigns and behind the scenes content and adding to their channel.
Viewers can comment while watching the videos which showcase at the bottom of the screen to create a space for group chats – this allows you to broadcast directly to the user while generating a high volume of traffic to your social media profile.
What do I need to know?
You can create a live stream for up to an hour or 10 minutes depending on your follower count, verified and larger accounts with over 10,000 followers can get an hour and smaller accounts get 10 minutes of live broadcasting.
You are limited to filming vertically because Instagram believes that this saves the hassle of turning your phone around while watching videos on your phone and tablet and has so far proven successful in its approach. Kylie Jenner’s makeup tutorial generated over 250,000 viewers within minutes of the broadcast.
How popular is it with creators and brands?
Instagram is directly challenging YouTube by offering a simple way for creators and brands to host live videos.
Brands and creators have a TV station at their fingertips with huge audiences.
You can capitalize on the binge factor – you can create a library of quality videos and upload them quickly for your audience to watch endlessly, similar to a TV show, they check in to watch every day (think endless re-runs of Friends). Soon enough, you’ll see your daily traffic reach new peaks.
Will IGTV be successful in the long run?
Currently IGTV is not offering advertising revenue or supporting advertisement endorsements, meaning creators and brands aren’t making any money from their live IGTV streams.
Instagram’s main focus is to increase engagement first as a test run and then focus their efforts on making IGTV a stream of income for creators as well as allow brands to advertise freely and monetize on influencer’s live streams. Competition with Facebook and YouTube is fierce among brands – so Instagram is limiting itself by not offering a way to monetize IGTV.
IGTV is still taking its first baby steps but has so far been incredibly popular with brands to give their users a reason to keep coming back and engaging with their content. Once advertising revenue is implemented, IGTV may change the way we consume live TV forever.
Written by Kimberley Edwards.