A Checklist for Using Live Video that Promotes Audience Growth and Engagement on Instagram
Instagram is a great platform for video marketing. In fact, social media and video marketing are both effective means of boosting your brand recognition, increasing your customer loyalty, and improving your overall online presence.
It’s no secret you can expose your content to a larger, more relevant community, and reap the above benefits of video marketing on Instagram.
Here is a checklist of tips that will show you how to do exactly that:
Use Hashtags in Your Instagram Videos
Hashtags can help you to attract more followers, get more likes, increase your local visibility, and improve engagement with potential customers, all of which help to generate more leads for your business.
More leads mean more conversions, and more conversions means more business. Hashtags are not just for your Instagram photo posts or Stories. You can (and should) use them for your videos as well.
Choosing the Best Hashtags
Choosing the best hashtags to increase your videos’ visibility on Instagram can be difficult. In general, your hashtags need to be popular enough to cover terms being searched by Instagram users, but specific enough to reach your target customers.
For example, if you are a nail salon, #happy and #summer are too vague. Something like #summernailart would be a better hashtag for your Instagram video.
If you incorporate your location into your hashtags, you’ll make your business even more visible—to people near you who care about summer nail trends, aka potential customers.
Use Video Hashtags to Research Hashtags for Your Videos
To find hashtags for your Instagram videos, research your competitors, your audience, and your competitors’ audience to help find the most appropriate hashtags.
Your video content is where you can stand out and put your uniqueness and creativity on display. Don’t be afraid to use current popular hashtags as well.
Run Instagram Video Ads
Having an Instagram business profile affords many benefits, one of which is the ability to advertise. With the number of Instagram users out there, it can be hard to expand your reach with just organic content.
Take advantage of Instagram’s paid advertising options, which act as a catalyst to boost your following. With Instagram advertising, you enjoy all of the advanced targeting offered by Facebook. You can target highly specific demographics, and even upload an email list to get a lookalike audience.
Post Your Videos at Peak Times
To get more views for your Instagram videos, make sure you’re posting them at the right time.
Have a Mobile Marketing Mindset
Peak times will differ depending on the industry, product/service, location, and target audience.
Put yourself in the shoes of your target audience and think about their mobile behaviors. When are they most likely to be checking their phone? Are they busy moms who might browse on their phone while waiting for their child’s bus to arrive?
Are they urban working professionals who tend to browse Instagram while on the bus to and from work?
Look at Your Instagram Metrics
Look at your Instagram engagement metrics to see which days and times of day are best for engaging with your followers. If your business targets college students, engagement might be in the middle of the day and late at night.
If your ideal customers are working professionals, engagement may occur mostly in the evening. Check out your engagement and post accordingly.
Don’t Rely on Sound in Your Instagram Videos
Because Instagram videos need to be tapped on to start the sound, your initial attention-grabbing elements should present immediately. These may include vibrant colors, eye catching action, your logo, a flash of engaging text, and more.
There are plenty of successful Instagram videos that have music or speaking, but your message shouldn’t be predicated on sound because some people may not listen at all.
Go Behind the Scenes
What makes social media so engaging that any old John Doe can get an exclusive, behind the scenes look at the human side of their favorite brands and businesses.
You can increase the number of Instagram video views by appealing to this desire in online users today. If you’re on the verge of releasing a new product, let your audience in on the secret.
If you think your production process is visually pleasing and uniquely appealing to your audience, record it and share it with your followers.
Give Your Videos a Professional Look
You can get more views on your Instagram marketing videos by giving them a polished and professional look.
Here are some applications that will send you on your way to making beautiful advertising shorts:
- Apple iMovie (Mac): Apple’s iMovie application is available free with all new iPhones, iPads and Mac computers. It’s a user-friendly tool that will allow you to perform basic edits to your video including captioning, adding music, enhancing the quality, reducing background noise, and more.
- Windows Movie Maker (Windows): Similar to iMovie, Windows Movie Maker is another easy-to-use video editor capable of creating fresh social videos without all the extra (sometimes complicated) features that come with programs such as Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere Pro.
- Wonder share Filmora (Windows/Mac): This software app is extremely affordable and specializes in quick video edits and enhancements.
- Cinefy: Cinefy has hundreds of filters and animations while giving you as much editing power as a desktop software, with the convenience of a mobile application. With programs like these, you can get crafty and spruce up your Instagram marketing videos without spending hours learning a specialized skill.
- Create Shareable Videos: If you make content that is easily shared and interesting enough for your followers to want to share, you will easily increase your views.
- Repost Your Videos: It’s important to be putting out fresh content on your social media profiles and blog posts. But also, don’t be afraid to recycle and repurpose your content as well. Take smaller snippets from longer videos that you have (interviews, demos, tutorials) and post them to Instagram with a relevant hashtag.
You can also repost a video from the past. A few months from now, you will have a new set of followers.
Repost your most helpful videos to reinforce a message, area of expertise, or simply to get more views from new followers sharing your videos.
When it’s all said and done, Instagram is a great platform for sharing videos that educate your audience, attract more customers, and help to express your brand voice.
By following this checklist, you will get more views for your Instagram videos and start seeing more engagement from your followers!