IGTV and Video Marketing for Your Business

In light of reaching 1 billion users, Instagram released their newest product, IGTV! IGTV stands for Instagram Television and is a new app designed for watching longer, vertical videos. You can now post videos that are 15 seconds to one hour long! This is a huge step for the platform, which previously only allowed 1-minute video clips.

In the past, Facebook used Instagram to move into new competitive territory — i.e. Instagram Stories vs. Snapchat. IGTV marks another of those strategic moves. Many folks have speculated that IGTV will help Facebook capture some of YouTube's market space. YouTube is a social media video platform which has roughly 1.3 billion users and practically no direct competitors.

As I'm sure you are aware, videos are the most influential media driving digital marketing today. Online marketing primarily consists of video content. According to Digital Information World, people spend one-third of their time watching online videos, while 74 percent of ALL internet traffic is video! Depositphotos also found that four times as many buyers prefer to watch a video regarding a product rather than read about it.

With the continued rise of video content controlling the digital space, it's no wonder Facebook released IGTV when it did.

This is great and all, but I'm sure you may be wondering why you should care. Well, real estate professionals are always looking for new ways to reach first-time homebuyers and sellers and the National Association of REALTORS found that Millennials make up 66 percent of today's first-time homebuyers— the largest portion, with Generation X coming in second with 26 percent of the market. That's a whopping 92 percent of all first-time homebuyers contained to two generations! They are your target audience. Now you simply have to find the right medium of exposure. Any thoughts? If you guessed online marketing, you are correct! If you thought video marketing, you're right on the money!

Online marketing is more about video content than ever before. With that in mind, asserting oneself as an industry leader is a key part of reaching your desired audience! There is a wide variety of online marketing and content creating you and your business should participate in, but when it comes to social media, video marketing is essential.

YouTube's reach is so large that over 1 billion hours of video are watched every day while 400 hours of video being uploaded every minute. That is insane!

Now try and imagine getting marketing exposure for your videos on YouTube. Yes, the audience is there, but YouTube is such a highly-saturated platform that getting exposure for your real estate videos — or any video — is very difficult. IGTV is a brand new platform which accesses Instagram's already existing 1 billion users; practically a clean slate for someone looking to take the next step in their video-marketing efforts! IGTV is creator-focused and open to anyone who uploads videos in the app or on the web. The layout is simple and designed to utilize your entire phone screen. Instagram has found a way for you to grow a stronger connection with your audience while simultaneously getting discovered by new people.

[Left-Right: Instagram Feed, IGTV Opened, Finished Video Example]

To view the original article, visit the Homes.com blog.