Your Instagram video marketing cheat sheet.

​Instagram is an invaluable platform for Realtors, mortgage lenders, or any small business owner or entrepreneur to market their services.

There are a lot of tools within Instagram (which will soon surpass Facebook as the most popular social media account on earth) that allow you to reach your audience and grow your brand efficiently, and none are more powerful than Instagram’s video features.
 
In fact, 73% of consumers report that their purchase decisions are impacted by a brand’s social media presence (including Instagram), and videos on IG garner 21% more interactions than photos alone.
 
Instagram is tailor-made for consuming short video content on mobile devices, but all of the options and features for posting videos on Instagram (IG) can get a little confusing for the layperson - or anyone over 25 years old!
 
The IG video posting options:  

• Instagram Stories, 
• Instagram Live,
• Instagram TV, 
• And don’t forget about plain old regular video postings to your Instagram account. 

 
If you don’t know how, when, and why to use each of these, your marketing could be a lot less effective than you’d like.
 
So, today I’m going to give you a quick breakdown of the each of those Instagram video options, with notes, parameters, and best practices.

​Post videos directly to your Instagram account.

• This is the “regular’ video posting on IG, just like you’d post a photo to your feed. 
• You can post videos in vertical or horizontal format,
• And these videos can only be up to one minute long.

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​Instagram Stories

• Instagram stories are prominently displayed so you’ll get more visibility. 
• But the videos you post on IG Stories can only be 15 seconds through the app,
• And they disappear from public view after only 24 hours,
• Although you can add them to your Highlights for longer viewing.
• With Instagram Stories, it’s best to use vertical video and that goes full-screen.

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​Instagram Live

• “Live” is a feature within Instagram Stories.
• It allows IG users to stream video to their followers in real-time.
• Instagram Live videos offer increased visibility (your profile picture has a ring highlighting it), engagement, and analytics.
• Once you’re done with the live-stream, you can save and share the video to your Instagram Stories for replay.
• Instagram Live limits you to 60 minutes per stream but, once you hit the 60-minute mark, you can simply start a new live stream and on and on.

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Instagram TV

• Instagram TV is like a hybrid between YouTube and Instagram stories, and it was actually rolled out as a direct competitor to YouTube.
• The big difference with Instagram TV is that it only supports vertical videos (best viewed on mobile devices), so your horizontal videos will be cut off or won’t work.
• Therefore, it works best with custom vertically-oriented videos – not trying to repost videos you already shot for YouTube or elsewhere.
• You need to create a Channel on Instagram TV (easy to do) and each user gets only one Channel.
• Instagram TV videos can be up to 10 minutes long,
• and they don’t vanish like Stories – they stay on your channel unless you delete them manually.
• But Instagram TV also has a dedicated app (separate from your normal Instagram) and a desktop app, helping to position it against YouTube.
• Videos can go longer than 10 minutes from the desktop app and you can add custom cover art.
• The other huge plus to Instagram TV is that you can add a description to your video including a clickable web link – something you can’t do with any other Instagram video posting.
• Instagram TV also works really well with Facebook’s algorithm (Instagram is owned by Facebook), so IG TV content has an inherent advantage for exposure and getting a large number of views.

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So, which Instagram video tool is right for you and your business marketing? Let’s talk and find out!
 -Norm  :-)

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