have you heard about Instagram’s new app, IGTV? Well, I am sure you have. But, would you like to learn all about its launch, how it works and how to build your presence on it?
Instagram was launched in 2010, but the video feature wasn’t introduced until 2013. At first, you could only upload clips that were up to 15 seconds long. The duration was then raised to 60 seconds. But now Instagram has launched a new app called IGTV where you can upload videos that are up to an hour long.
IGTV will help Instagram compete better with social networks like Facebook and YouTube. Statistically, 45% of people spend more than an hour watching videos each week on both these networks.
If you are serious about promoting your business or blog with video, IGTV should be a big part of your strategy.
There’s so much you can do with this new network. Hence, I have written a complete guide that will help you get started with IGTV. I will show you how to navigate it and how you can use it to successfully to build a presence.
How does IGTV work?
At the moment IGTV can only be accessed via mobile devices. If you haven’t already installed Instagram on your device, you can access it by downloading and Installing the IGTV app.
A major difference you will notice on IGTV compared to other popular video social networking apps like YouTube is that the videos are portrait orientated i.e. their height is more than their width.
IGTV
Usually, on most video apps, the videos are landscape oriented, i.e., more width. This is because we have all grown up getting used to watching videos on TV and PCs.
But Instagram has decided to opt for a portrait view, probably because its parent company, Facebook, found that its viewers were more likely to watch portrait/vertical videos than landscape videos.
This might be because portrait videos look better on mobile devices which is the only way to access this network currently. It could also be because over the past few years we have grown more accustomed to selfies and vlogs.
This view will be especially beneficial for some content creators like vloggers.
How to create a channel on IGTV and upload videos
To create your channel on IGTV, click on the tool icon next to the search field first.
IGTV Settings
In the popup menu that appears click on ‘Create Channel’.
Create IGTV Channel
Then click on ‘Next’ on the next two pages that appear. And after that click on ‘Create Channel’ to create your own channel.
Your channel will be created and your profile picture will appear in the place where the gear icon was earlier present. If you click on this you can check out your channel.
Here you can see all the videos you have uploaded.
To add videos you can click on the ‘+’ icon next to Browse and choose the videos you would like to upload from your device.