Ever since IGTV was launched just over a year ago many creators have tried to take advantage of its potential – with mixed results. While that is partly due to the fact that IGTV is still a fledgling platform that is growing, in most cases it is because of common mistakes that people are making.
If you intend to start creating and publishing content on IGTV, there are five mistakes in particular that you will want to avoid:
- Recording horizontal videos
IGTV is a platform that is designed specifically for vertical videos. Its entire experience is built around that, and although you can technically publish horizontal videos they don’t perform nearly as well.
To put it plainly, you should make it a point to create vertical videos, and the best IGTV video size would be vertical HD videos of 1080×1920.
- Not selecting a good cover image
When you upload videos to IGTV it will automatically use the first frame as the cover image. However when uploading you will also have the option to set a custom cover image – by uploading an entirely different image or selecting a different frame.
The cover image is one of the first things that people will see when they run into your IGTV content. That is why it is so important to select one that is good and can attract attention and convince viewers to watch your videos.
It should be noted that once the video is uploaded you can’t set a different cover image – so you need to get it right from the get go.
- Creating videos that are too long
Despite the fact that IGTV was created as a long-form video platform, that doesn’t mean that all your videos need to be as long as possible. The platform allows you to upload videos that are 10 minutes (or 60 minutes for larger accounts), but you shouldn’t feel forced into creating videos that are that long.
Generally the videos that attract the most views and are most engaging are shorter videos – typically 2 minutes or less.
- Not taking advantage of hashtags
Hashtags play an important role on IGTV – just as they do on Instagram itself. If you don’t take advantage of them you’ll be leaving the discovery of your content largely to chance, and that will probably backfire.
Ideally you should carefully choose the right hashtags, and use them to categorize your IGTV videos and make them easier to find. Technically you can include up to 30 hashtags, but it is often best to stick to 8 or 10.
- Not cross-promoting IGTV content
Although IGTV does have a lot of potential, it is still a (very) new platform. As a result the internal audience is not as big as other social media platforms, including Instagram itself.
Seeing as that is the case, you should always cross-promote your IGTV content. That can be done via a regular post on Instagram, or even by posting on other social media platforms where you have a strong following – such as Facebook.
If you are able to avoid all of the five mistakes listed above you will definitely have a much easier time finding success on IGTV. Not only avoiding these mistakes allow you to acquire more viewers, but you stand a much better chance of building up a following on the platform.
After you’ve established a foothold on IGTV, you can start to make further improvements by learning from the content that you’ve already published and figuring out what your viewers respond to. That will let you truly acquire a strong presence on the platform.