First, what is IGTV?
IGTV is a platform provided by Instagram called; Instagram Television. This is
where users have the opportunity to upload videos which are too long for their
Instagram stories or feeds, Instagram stories are a maximum of 15 seconds each
slide and videos on an Instagram feed can be a maximum of 1 minute 30 seconds.
Limiting users to what they can showcase through their profiles. However, IGTV
only allows you to create a video or upload a basic video, it does not enable
the user to showcase all of their editorial skills.
IGTV, although a
good addition to Instagram is restricted in ways, if not only by the sheer fact
that if someone is searching for something specific like an answer to a
question – they would first hit up youtube as it is common knowledge that
youtube is 99.9% likely to have the answer.
Business Users:
If you are a
business owner and you are looking to expand and advertise your business
through online videos, providing they are short videos (between 15 seconds and
10 minutes – until verified) then IGTV would be a great way to receive new traffic,
since Instagram is an app which uses the likes of hashtags and ‘you may know’
features there is a great opportunity to widen your audience. However, if you
are looking for a more specified audience then Youtube is a great since videos
are generally found by being searched so ensuring you put the keywords in your
title or description your video will be displayed, then according to Youtubes
algorithm the more views you get, you will then be ‘recommended’ to people who
have watched similar video clips. IGTV does have the upper hand in this since
Instagram's algorithm isn’t as hard to achieve but also has more use for
hashtags and keywords in a search.
Variety of Content:
Youtube offers a
wider range of content, but this could also be due to the fact that it has been
around longer. However, IGTV is mainly used by influencers, fashionistas,
beauty artists, hairstylists, and celebrities. Whereas Youtube is used by…well,
everyone.
It is not only the
variety which is comparable though, but there is also the fact that the length
of a video on youtube can be much longer meaning that there can be more
information in one video, so if you are creating a video about a university
degree topic to tell others how it may interest them or to help them have a
better understanding on the topic, you may need longer than 10 minutes. Or if
you are the one looking for information, you may need a video that goes further
into the political situation of a country than what you would get from a
10-minute video on IGTV – plus, that isn’t really a topic found on IGTV, to
begin with.
Putting Your Talent Out There:
Now, this is where
it gets hard to say whether IGTV is going to kill off Youtube because, in
reality, you are more likely to be seen on Instagram, however with Instagram,
you could be a fleeting video which is looked at once and no further attention
is given…unless it is a well-known influencer who has seen your video and then
reposted it on their Instagram story/feed. However with Youtube, if you are
noticed and someone likes your video they can then share that video onto their
social media, websites, send it via email, text message, they can also
subscribe to your page which means they will be notified whenever you post
something new – kind of hard to miss right?
If you are about the
visual representation and showing off your videoing skills, then IGTV is going
to be more friendly to you since their overall quality of videos is generally
higher than Youtubes – IGTV also gives you the opportunity to finalize your
edit before you upload. Whereas Youtube is a simple upload option. That’s it,
no final buffering, no final adjustments, it is uploaded how you make it. So if
you are not completely savvy on how to make your video look attractive Youtube
can’t help you out whereas IGTV can offer that helping hand.
Analytics:
Now, this is for
those of you who are interested in how well your work is doing online, IGTV
offers you the basic knowledge, how many people viewed your video, liked it,
shared it and well…that’s about it. Whereas Youtube really goes into detail
about your audience, views, likes, dislikes, locations of people who viewed
your video, and just the finer details really. This is a great help for you to
be able to target your next video more.
Video Displays:
We’re talking about
the general display of the videos here not the specification of the video. IGTV
has their main feed, which shows you videos that Instagram believes you’ll be
interested in. This could be due to your recent hashtags, profiles viewed,
videos viewed, videos like however it is a little generic and sort of just
places videos it vaguely thinks you’ll be interested in. Whereas Youtube is
much more specific if you searched for ‘how to cook potatoes’ then the next 6
or so videos coming up on your recommended for you will be about cooking
potatoes. Another point is that the way you search on Youtube is specific and
Youtube uses keywords like any other search engine, whereas to search on
Instagram you have to use Hashtags and they are specific to that hashtag so if
you search #pinkdogs it will only show you videos with the hashtag #pinkdogs
connected to it – even if there is a video of a pink dog without that hashtag
it will not be shown to you.
Conclusion:
Will IGTV kill
Youtube? We do not believe it will, we believe that somehow in the future they
can work alongside each other but since the target markets differ so much and
the way to use them is completely different we believe that they will both
remain strong mainstream apps on the internet. It is relevant to how you want
to use it, want you want to achieve from it, and where to go from there.
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