RIP YouTube: 3 Reasons Why IGTV Is Better Than YouTube

Yesterday, Instagram announced it's very own 'vertical YouTube' platform, IGTV.

As someone with an Instagram following of 130,000, Instagram's new video platform is going to allow me to leverage that audience to totally level up my business. However it's not just great for me: for any marketers, business owners, or personal brands, IGTV is taking social media to the next level...

Why, you may wonder?

Well, I have three main reasons...

It makes sense.

We use our phones vertically, not horizontally. Having videos in this format allows for a more advanced and pleasant user experience, and it's what we are used to doing on our Instagram Stories. The videos are currently up to 10 minutes in length for smaller accounts, and 1 hour in length for larger accounts. Instagram has stated that there will be no time limit on these videos in the future... Watch out YouTube!

Similarly, as a creator, trying to get people to move from one platform to another is HARD. Despite my following of 129,000+ on Instagram, I have only managed to get to 30,000 on YouTube. People don't want to move from one platform to another. And that brings me onto point number two...

It's addictive.

As soon as you open the IGTV app or click on someone's IGTV 'highlight' (see image), videos start playing. This immediately sucks the consumer in.

Get bored? Simply swipe to the next video!

As personal brands and business owners, this means you need to be smart and make the first 5-10 seconds extremely captivating in order to get your audience to stay on your page and not click away.

There is going to be a LOT of content on IGTV, and I truly believe that 'talking head' videos are no longer going to be enough. This means that we are going to have to think outside the box and start actively creating videos, rather than doing the more casual 'talk and walk' style videos we often see on Instagram Stories.

Links can be posted in the caption.

Another massive plus side to Instagram TV is that, just like on YouTube, the user can paste links into the caption of the post just like I have done here:

The downside to this is that it is a little difficult to navigate to where the link is hiding: as you can see you have to click on the title of the video in order for the caption to expand where the link is clickable. Similarly, the link is not underlined so the audience may not actually know that clicking it will take you to another page. However, I can imagine that this will advance as time goes on, and will become even more powerful for anybody who is trying to drive traffic elsewhere (for example to an opt-in page or even to a sales page itself).

Strategies To Implement

Moving forward, creating content specifically for IGTV is going to be critical. I am now going to be putting more time into IGTV than YouTube, as I truly believe that there is more potential on this platform. Focusing on creating these vertical style videos which include calls to action ("comment below if you agree" or "tag a friend who ___") are going to set you apart. Oh, by the way, I'd genuinely love to know your opinion on this below as a comment... I want to hear what your thoughts are about IGTV and IGTV vs YouTube.

Anyho, back to the article. :)

On IGTV, the video continues to play even while someone is commenting on a video: try it on my IGTV video, and you will see what I mean! The cool thing is that you can still view IGTV videos and engage with them on a laptop just like you can with Instagram, despite the fact that IG is a mobile application. The fact that this is already available is making me wonder what their plans are with regards to competing with YouTube on desktop in the future...

Another thing: getting people watching your IGTV is going to be a fundamental element of any marketing strategy now because people need to know you are actually using it. You can share your IGTV videos on your Instagram story with a simple swipe up link (a feature that business accounts with over 10,000 followers have). This is powerful.

Something else to ensure you do is use subtitles. Here's an example of one of my videos that I mean: https://www.instagram.com/p/BkBA6_sh2u5/?taken-by=laurentickner

I uploaded that video to my Instagram feed, not my Instagram TV, but you get the point. On IGTV, just like on your Instagram feed, the videos start playing with no sound if your sound is off on your phone. I polled my audience and 92% said they scroll Instagram with their sound off. So, having subtitles is going to be a critical way to keep eyes on your videos!

Not only that, but if Instagram makes it so that IGTV videos continue to play while you either close your screen or move onto another app, there will be a lot of opportunity to use IGTV as a podcast platform. At the minute, this isn't a possibility on either YouTube or IGTV, but there is a lot of potential here...

I also think it will be interesting to see how scheduling apps such as Later start to create features for IGTV.

It's early days, but there is so much potential!

PS: I don't actually think YouTube will die out. It's owned by Google for goodness sake. But let's be real: we all know how important a good thumbnail and title are to get people to read. Soooo, if you made it this far: please forgive me. ;)

Follow me on Instagram @laurentickner