Using the New Instagram Video Feature for Business
Instagram offers social marketers a simple way to make your brand personal.
This social upstart was purchased by Facebook in 2012 and has a strong and growing user base.
With celebrities, youth, and young adults spending significant time on this platform, it captures an important demographic. Since being purchased by Facebook, Instagram has grown by over 30 million users to now have over 150 million.
The Instagram concept has been simple: upload, customize, and share photos via the mobile app with ease of sharing to other social networks , along with the ability to follow and comment on images of other users.
With photos and media being a natural and popular means of sharing and communicating in online, digital media, Instagram is a “go-to” app for mobile users wanting to customize and share photos.
Just this summer, Instagram unveiled a totally new video feature for their mobile app. This new video addition, combined with the ease of sharing of Instagram photos to Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr that already existed, makes it a online tech tool that business marketers should explore!
Instagram’s new video feature is a significant new advancement to offer short, custom, valuable, and easy-to-produce rich media clips.
Instagram Video offers key features including:
Length:
Instagram video offers up to 15 seconds of video recording. Twitter’s Vine app, in comparison, offers a maximum of only 6 seconds of recording. This 15 second length is great for a quick promotion to showcase different business items including:
- a special offer
- new product
- footage promoting an upcoming event
- Live video from a tradeshow or conference
- daily work life to show culture and reinforce branding
These 15 second videos can capture interest, give a quick overview , and hold the attention of even the shortest attention spans!
Edit and Customize:
Instagram offers users the unique ability to easily delete a segment within the video before producing the final version. This is a great feature to have as sometimes there is a clear need to do a “second take”. Instagram video also allows users to add filters, similar to their photo options, to create a unique style for their video as well.
Facebook Integration:
Instagram videos play in-line on Facebook just like YouTube and native Facebook videos. This is great because it offers a seamless experience on the largest and most used social network in the world. When a Instagram video is shared on Facebook, the Facebook desktop user can watch the video right away on Facebook without leaving Facebook.
Since the app is owned by Facebook this is not surprising, but at the same time it is important as it opens up the use of Instagram to not only users on Instagram but the massive audience on Facebook, enabling businesses the efficiency to “create once and use in multiple places”.
This is valuable to busy entrepreneurs and business leaders needing to maximize the use of their marketing time.
Cover Image Selection:
An additional key feature that the new Instagram video tool offers is the ability to scroll through stills from the video and easily select the best cover photo for your video. This is important because it can entice your audience to click through to view the video, and it allows customization of the first impression. Twitter’s Vine App does not offer this feature.
Embed Video in Your Blog:
Now, when you visit an Instagram user page on your desktop web browser, you’ll see a new share button on the right side of your photo (just under the comments button). Click the button to see the embed code. Copy the block of text it offers and paste it into your blog, website or article. When you hit publish, the photo or video will appear.
Embedded photo or videos appear with the Instagram username of the owner, and clicking on the Instagram logo will take people to your page on Instagram.com where they can discover more of your photos and videos.
Instagram video can be perfect for companies to do a quick walk-through of their newest products and services, and for retailers to showcase specials and new products to help draw in more traffic. The new video features offers an opportunity in bite-size multimedia nuggets for a companies to visually their company, features, culture and style. This can help differentiate a company from another.
While the new Instagram video feature was only very recently launched, the potential uses are vast! With Instagram already having over 150 million users and a active user base, this new toolset offers some rich possibilities for small and medium sized businesses.
Have you seen some good examples already?
Here’s one:
Follow these accounts that are using Video on Instagram to see more incredible moments!
- Tony Hawk, professional skateboarder — @tonyhawk
- Wimbeldon, the oldest tennis tournament in the world — @wimbledon
- Snoop Dogg, rapper and actor— @snoopdogg
- Madonna, singer-songwriter — @madonna
- Karlie Kloss, fashion model — @karliekloss
- Burberry, British luxury fashion brand — @burberry
- Jamie Oliver, chef — @jamieoliver
- Verve Coffee Roasters, Santa Cruz-based coffee roastery — @vervecoffee
- Jimmy Fallon, comedian and host of Late Night — @jimmyfallon
- Charity Water, non-profit organization bringing clean drinking water to developing nations — @charitywater
What about your brand? Have you thought about or already integrated some Instagram Videos in your social sharing?
