In a visual world where 30% of Instagram users have purchased something on their mobile and the recent updates which allows people to purchase directly through the platform, Insta is an amazing platform for your business to make an impact. So how do you make sure your content flies on the platform?
Ratio
You’re going to hear from us a lot about this, but the aspect ratio does make a world of difference in the videos you post in the platforms. Unlike Facebook, landscape video sides don’t get cut off on Instagram. In this case, square videos just LOOK better on the platform. It also creates far better engagement, as we noticed with our Paintbox campaign.
** TIP** there are several smart phone apps that can this task off of your hands.
Instagram Stories
Debataly more important now than your main feed, this feature gives your audience a running commentary of your company's daily activities. Keep each clip short (3-4 seconds) and make them as creative as possible! One feature that sets Instagram Stories apart from Snapchat, is that you can choose who sees your stories and who doesn’t with a filter system. What a way to add an incredible amount of personability to your content.
Annotations
Just like with Facebook, annotations create insanely eye grabbing videos that can attract a wider audience to your posts (if you’re using the right hashtags of course). Also like with Facebook, videos on Instagram play automatically without sound, so providing a reason for your audience to engage with your content while scrolling is a must. Annotations also work incredibly well with Instagram Stories, as like with Snapchat you’re able to to draw on your stories, add stickers and overall stretch your creative muscles.
Description box
Utilize the description box on Instagram like you would do on Youtube. This can be a way for you to add call to action for your video, maybe to like, comment share. Coupled with this you can use the description box to send people to the url in your profile - a simple “link in the bio” type message is great to get people on your website. We used this method extensively to promote our partner Youtube channel’s content to their highly engaged audience on Instagram. Engaging with a visually lead community who want to gain more value from your content saw us gain a fair amount of viewership, subscribers and externalpage views.
**TIP** use Bit.ly to track where and to see how many people are clicking through via the link.
Tagging
Looking for an easy way to add even more personalisation to your content? Then tagging usernames is definitely the way to go. This be done before you post your content as well as after. Use this to increase engagement from your target audience; one example of this we’ve found that has worked well for our own Instagram posts is tagging cast, crew and relevant pages in our behind the scene shots. This increased the shareability of our posts, encouraged valuable comments and gained us some quality followers.
Adding to this, any piece of content you post on the platform has to make use of of Instagram’s powerful tagging system. This allows for you to find relevant hashtags for your content. I.e if you’re posting about the Emmy’s then #Emmys, #Emmys2016, #Emmys16 is a good start. Compared to Twitter, Youtube and Facebook, Instagram is pretty helpful by actually showing you a list of hashtags and how popular (or unpopular they are).
**TIP** if you have a competitor who has insanely popular content on Instagram, look at what hashtags they are using and start using them yourself.
Do you have more tips on how to create engaging videos on Instagram? Then drop us an email! We may be a London production agency but we are all ears for your opinions and suggestions and want to collaborate you! Make sure you sign up to our mailing list in the footer too!