We enjoyed talking about IGTV so much that we had to split up our most recent blog into two parts! Enjoy finishing up learning more about this incredible resource, and how to use it to your advantage!

As we mentioned in our last blog, IGTV has a lot of different advantages that can make using Instagram a lot easier than ever before. One of them is the use of live links when you share and post them to your feed. For companies and individuals who have over 10k followers, they get a nifty tool in their Instagram stories that allows them to attach a link to their post. This creates a call to action to invite their followers to swipe up and visit whatever link has been connected to that post and it will automatically take them there. Without this number of followers, this tool isn't offered. The great thing about IGTV is that you can post live website links within their description just like the 10k users can in their stories. This is a great tool for newer, smaller, and growing companies and is a much easier call to action for your followers. Have you noticed that even when you put a link in the body of your Instagram post, you can't just click on it? You have to copy and paste it into a browser or copy it letter by letter to visit the suggested website. Now, how many of your audience members will spend the time to do that? This gives you an easy way to promote the website you want your followers to visit and a more guaranteed chance that they will follow through with it! These IGTV videos are also permanent. Unlike going live and posting in your stories that disappear after 24 hours, you will have these videos for as long as you want to have them. It's a place to repurpose and a place that you can use to refer back to for your new followers who join you along the way.

One of the greatest tools we love using social media for is the opportunity to introduce you, your brand, your products, and your services to the world in a very honest and open way. It's endearing and an automatic draw, because it's an outlet people connect to. They aren't seeing a stiff and planned commercial, they're seeing you, your products, and what your company stands for. Live videos are great for this, but if you're giving a tutorial about how to use your products or introducing an important topic that will be relevant to your company for a long time, you might not reach the audience you want to right away.

With every other option outside of IGTV leaving you with videos that only last for a limited amount of time, you might be faced with remaking the same video over and over again. This won't be an issue if you use IGTV to your advantage. You can now have a much longer video that is easily accessible to your Instagram presence, and available to use as often as you'd like. It's convenient and a time saver. It's also a wonderful tool to take your users behind the scenes without having to edit or worry about a video that is too long or too short. You have so much room for creative freedom. You can put your products and services at the forefront of each video and show them off, and what makes you so unique and special.

The biggest thing we want you to take away from this blog series and using IGTV is the ability to connect to your demographic of customers and followers in one of the freest and proficient ways possible. It's much more aesthetically pleasing to its viewers and gives you so much time that your creative freedom and individually as a company never needs to be limited. With this tool your options are, quite literally, endless! As Instagram even says "We are all watching less TV and more digital video" now than ever before. Be apart of that, and compete with the important digital videos that are out there. Your content is needed, and it is very valid. IGTV is a very exciting platform for all of us. Through quarantine and the world, as it is now, we have seen a huge flux of more and more people use this incredible tool, and we are excited to watch it grow. Do you like this aspect of Instagram? Share your opinion with you - we'd love to hear from you! Be well, Summerville!

Social Media has more tools than many of us realize. We've talked about a lot of them here in our blog, and enjoy using them for our own company. IGTV - Instagram TV - is one of the last platform resources that we have yet to talk about!

We have talked in-depth and at length about using social media platforms and their analytical tools to your business' advantage. There are so many different and unique ways of using social media to your advantage, as long as you know what all they offer and you're brave enough to take the leap to implement them. There is one aspect that we haven't jumped into yet, and that is Instagram TV - or IGTV. We aren't sure about you, but when IGTV became popular and prevalent in our Instagram feeds, we kept thinking it was HGTV. Which was perfect because we love those creative shows! Who doesn't want to spend hours watching a show about tiny homes?! But, no. This is a new tool all on its on that one of our favorite social media platforms is now offering to its users.

IGTV videos are different from your stories and highlights on Instagram and they are different from going live on Facebook. You can use it as a stand-alone application or through Instagram itself. It allows you to make much longer videos than what your feed or highlights allow in one video. You can make videos that are up to 15 minutes long! You are also able to have verticle and horizontal videos when you use IGTV, which is exciting for viewers and users alike. Unlike your Instagram highlights, these videos will appear in your feed, just like they would if you posted a picture or video. If you want, they can appear in your story highlights as well. With this new advantage of having longer videos and another tool to use on Instagram, there must be an advantage available to your company by using this new tool, right? That is what we are going to be discussing in this next two-part blog. According to Instagram, they estimate that by 2021 mobile video will make up 78% of all total mobile traffic. Younger audiences are now being drawn towards these more amateur viral videos than more professional and polished ones. Just with that information alone, you can only imagine what power IGTV could hold your business and its growth.

One of the many reasons why we love IGTV is that it allows the user to reuse and repurpose already created content on a whole new platform. Just seeing your already created content in a whole new light can make such a huge difference! You can now show your videos in much bigger and vertical fame, giving your followers a much bigger and in-depth view of what was created. It also gives you another platform to post your YouTube videos. Before the introduction of IGTV, you could only give a small teaser preview of your videos on Instagram. Having 15 minutes to play with is huge! Gone are the days of the call to action of asking your followers to visit your YouTube channel! As important as we consider calls to action, we recognize that social media users want to stay on one platform at a time. Hopping from platform to platform can lead to a loss of interest or not following through. Having the video right there guarantees a much higher rate of views. Also, if your Instagram audience is much bigger than that of your YouTube channel, a brand new audience will now be introduced to excellent already made content. You also don't have to worry about your Facebook live posts getting lost or only being seen by a limited amount of your followers. This can be a new home for them as well, along with any videos or interviews you made for your blog or advertisement purposes. Plus, it helps your videos stay organized while maintaining a professional look within your Instagram feed.

Have you started to use IGTV in your own business workflow or platform? Have you been having fun with so much freedom at your fingertips? Let us know! We want to know what you think of this extended and exciting arm of Instagram. Make sure to follow up with the second half of this blog the next time we post, we can't wait to share more wonderful information about IGTV with you!

Social media can be overwhelming. Each platform is starting to offer more to each of their applications. Sometimes those bells and whistles they keep adding on can add to your frustration. Thankfully, if you just take a moment to understand why these little additives are so important to you and your company, you can stay ahead of the times and right in front of your followers with no difficulty.

2020 has been an interesting year, to say the least. To keep you distracted from the news and the hours of scrolling we have all been doing this past week, we wanted to keep on chugging with business as (mostly) normal. We want to give you something to think about while you're working remotely from home or while you're focusing on the next step of what to do. So let's get right into it, and talk about one of our favorite social media platforms; Instagram!

Instagram can be a place of joy, frustration, confusion, and an amazing advertising tool. We've talked about the importance of staying on top of digital marketing trends and how they can truly benefit you and your company if you stay on top of them. One of the biggest trends happening on Instagram right now is the use of the story option. You can add pictures or videos to your story, and it's an interesting and unique tool that more and more companies are starting to take advantage of. Companies are posting pictures and videos of things at the moment and connecting to their followers in ways they never have before. What's exciting about them is that they give your audience and your followers a real behind the scenes look into the heart of your company. Stories give your followers a sense of humanity because they can see the people at the heartbeat of the company and product they care about so much. It's comforting and endearing. In a world drowned out by social media and that is taking away our human connection from one another, this incredible tool and trend are turning us into beings that crave this insight and are pushing us to be apart of it all. In this two-part blog post, we are going to be discussing why using Instagram stories can be very helpful to your online business, and why you should be using them in your Instagram account.  

Ready, Set, Engage!
Are you still skeptical about using stories on Instagram? Does it make you a little uncomfortable to think about as an option for your social media, or you see no point in it? Well, the first huge benefit of this particular tool, is that it will give you page top-notch engagement, and allow that engagement to be consistent. Stories aren't something that lasts forever on your profile, they only stick around for 24 hours and then disappear. You can decide to keep them on your Instagram page as a Permanent Highlights if you so choose to (which, if it's great content - then we encourage you to place it into your permanent highlights. The key is to reuse content!) they'll be around as long as you want them to. You can use Instagram Stories to get your followers excited about your product and to stay in contact with you. It's a great storytelling tool, and a great way to add excitement to what's happening right now. You can build up the excitement for every story by mentioning in your Instagram profile that if you watch these videos or look at pictures, your followers might receive special deals, get exclusive looks at new products, and be the first customers to hear new information. Automatically, your followers get excited about being a part of this "in crowd" and will keep them coming back for more. They will check in on your actual profile more often to see when the next video will appear, and while they're visiting they will get to know you and your brand better. Even though not everyone will get a chance to see these Instagram stories, everyone who will see them will get excited.

No Point in Perfect
The great thing about going posting in your stories is that every video or picture you post to it never has to be perfect. They still need to follow proper business etiquette, but if the video quality isn't the best, if the lighting isn't perfect, or the weather didn't turn out that day to do an outside shoot, that's ok! These imperfect moments shows real humanity to the whole situation and in your company. You are just like your followers, posting videos and content that comes from the heart and is going with the flow of life. Do you know how refreshing that is in comparison to perfectly cut little videos that took hours and cost tons of money to make? You can find those everywhere! But where is the heart in those?

These videos and pictures can also be seen and will be seen as real-time moments and action shots. Plus, if this is fun or important information and it doesn't look quality perfect, that's also ok. It's the heart of the content that matters and what your customers, followers, and viewers will remember. The message will still be delivered without messing up the flow of your profile, too. Your Instagram profile can be kept picture perfect and on-brand with the consistent and professional flow you've built, all while still using the stories to show off your brand in a more personal style.

Algorithms of My Heart
Instagram has been seeing a lot of big changes in the last year or so. Now that Facebook owns Instagram, we are very confident that there will still be many more changes to come. One of the biggest changes we've seen is how posts are displayed and what determines the order that they are displayed in. They used to be shown in the order of when they were posted. Now, they are shown in order based on what the built-in algorithm believes you will enjoy the most. This is based on your interests, what you look at regularly on your Instagram page, and what you have created as your personal demographic. If your company doesn't fit into this algorithm, then your posts and account could go unseen for some time, or maybe not even at all. The great thing about using stories or going live in this situation is that they are posted in real-time and are posted in the order that the users post them in. Your followers will have a better opportunity to see you pop up on their feed without getting lost in the shuffle if you use Instagram stories. The more you post in your stories, and the more they're clicked on, the more often your posts will be seen in your follower's feed. This will help click you into their algorithms, and help to become a permanent part of what they see every time they open the app.

That's all for now! What do you think about Instagram stories so far? Are you already using them and this blog post made you appreciate them a little more? Are you getting excited to try out an Instagram story for the very first time? Or are you still a little confused about what it all means?  Keep all of this in mind until our next blog, and please feel free to reach out and ask any questions you might about this topic. We are here to start that conversation with you. Until then, stay safe, healthy, and smart. We love you, Summerville!