IGTV — What went wrong how to fix it (try to); A Growth Hacker's take

This article was first posted on Medium. Find here.

I tried to step into the shoes of Product Manager (IGTV) Ashley Yuki and Kevin Systrom, Co-Founder and Former CEO Instagram; to look into IGTV: the problems and how to grow IGTV in terms of adoption and user engagement.

We (Instagram) are trying to do a behavioral change to ensure all recordings happen in a vertical format. Our aim is — Simple and intimate videos by creators on Instagram. We do not want to become the next youtube or Netflix. However, in a way, our direct competition is YouTube.

With lack of monetization of content and no clarity on its future, improving adoption and engagement is a task that requires creativity and patience (as required for any content based platform).

As the owner of IGTV, my objectives are

• Increase adoption (people create their channels, and watch IGTV videos)
• Increase engagement (people are active on it, they share, they spend time watching and also creating content)

Here are my strategies that I would focus on:

1. Creation of a steady and large base of quality content-

One of the drivers of a product like IGTV is content. By building and integrating the product within the existing Instagram gives IGTV an advantage of ready customer and user base. Hence it needs not worry about building user base or how to get that visibility.

The hurdle now is content- the users would simply ignore IGTV if they do not find relevant and quality content.

There are three steps to get the content right-

• Find who are the creators we could target, who can provide quality content and be enthusiastic to participate (early adopters)
• Carefully curate the content to ensure there are videos for every category and topics of interests
• Match the Curated content with users’ preferences so that what a viewer sees on IGTV is extremely personalized and relevant to them (mapping algorithm)

In the early stage (Pre-launch stage) a lot of emphasis needs to be put to wooing creators to upload content on IGTV. Early stage beta access needs to be given to influencers, creators on instagram for several categories.

Since Instagram and IGTV are all about visual content, it needs to dig deep into each category (topic of interests) to ensure there is enough content to begin with, for every interest group.

So for every category: Food Blogging, Poetry, Humour & Memes, Travel Blogging, Makeup and Beauty, Fashion, Hair, Skin Care, Music, Dance, Events, Gossip, Celebrity and so on; IGTV team need to handpick most popular as well as authentic creators, approach them to access their privileged Beta Creatoraccounts for IGTV in advance of the launch. People who are trying to be more original. Not just another makeup tutorials. The early birds who are not yet pro.

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2. Problem of too much variety

The problem with a product like IGTV is that it has too much ‘in your face’ content and UI-UX, with so much space occupied by the content, that it makes the entire experience look overwhelming; whether you are just exploring the product or searching for something specific.

There are higher chances of getting bored than finding your favourite video. The UI is not condensed: not many videos it fit into one screen.

There isn’t any option to choose from a lot of videos before watching one (like in YouTube or Snapchat Discover) which makes it cumbersome. The horizontal scroll offers very little space to view and choose from a lot of content.

There should have been an option to scroll up and check out all video options (like Instagram Explore or Snapchat Discover) before hitting on a something that catches our eye.

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3. Tagging of topics to videos

It is also important to tag videos to a certain topic and thereafter show such tagging to users as well, such that they know in advance what they are getting into. This could be done by asking the creators to attach hashtags and classification categories to each video, to ensure it reaches the right target audience and also enhances IGTV’s recommendation algorithm.

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4. Other details to focus on — UI/UX detailing

While scrolling through the IGTV’s videos we observe that there is very little space given to the name/title of the videos, thus whatever that is shown to a user doesn’t prove to be much useful in deciding the attractiveness of that video. It is not enough text to decide whether to watch the video.

The title of the video plays a major role, as we have seen in Youtube. Most of the time it is a catchy title that attracts us than the thumbnail/image.

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5. Personalisation in the algorithm

The biggest advantage of IGTV over other related apps like SnapChat or YouTube is Facebook. With an integration already existing between Instagram and facebook, IGTV could use all the data from facebook to enhance its algorithm to show personalized quality content to its users.

We have the entire data around preferences: What kind of posts are liked by the user? What hashtags the user is following or likes the most? What kind of public accounts the user is following- more into fashion or adventure? What kind of videos the user ends up watching till the last second (more into inspirational videos from Jay Shetty or Latest movie reviews).

Fine tune the content in the app accordingly for- Popular, For you, Recommended, Following categories. Once the personalization is perfected (well, almost) we can go ahead with providing push notifications in the existing Instagram app, recommending users to watch — Top 10 videos you might like (something like that).

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6. ‘Search’ in its existing format is redundant

The entire search experience is disappointing and requires enhancements. Video based product demands more use of ‘search’ than an image sharing platform. While searching for a topic, the only search results are channel names. It is nearly impossible to know the exact channel/creator name for the type of video you are trying to look out for. (Eg. I want to look for a hair care video on DIY treatments for dandruff. But I am clueless as to who would be the person posting such videos). This makes the entire search functionality useless.

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7. Explore feature

The consumer does not necessarily opens up the product with a specific topic in mind. 

Explore feature on IGTV (like that of Instagram Explore) would prove useful for a user to choose what kinds of topics to see or what kinds of videos are popular/recommended to me. Seeing a lot of video options in a vertical scroll is better than the existing horizontal scroll which seems never ending and ineffective.

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8. Onboarding

It is important to not ignore the onboarding. Interactive onboarding is currently missing. When I open up IGTV for the first time or create my channel for the first time- the onboarding steppers feel lukewarm and are not depicting the message/positioning of the product clearly. There can be better interactive design (UI) to depict the right message that IGTV wants to convey (what to expect from IGTV).

One idea is that the onboarding could be effectively used to understand what kind of videos a user likes to watch. A user might have kept their instagram very personal, and as a result may not have followed a lot of creators/influencers. Onboarding pages could give them an option to follow creators (Suggested for you) with some description on what topics to expect from them, some photos.

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9. Finding perfect content most suited for IGTV format

We also notice that for every type of video content a user has set preferences.

For eg. if a user wants to watch a movie trailer or an educational video they would go to YouTube, rather than searching for it on Facebook, Snapchat or Instagram.

This is because the content itself paves way for such a psychology associated with the product. Before Instagram stories, we found immense pleasure peeping into the lives of our favourite celebrities via Snapchat stories. Hence such a niche has to be explored- what kind of content perfectly fits IGTV and what kind of videos can be aligned with users’ psychology as the go-to place for such videos. Certain types of content fit perfectly well for instagram and its audiences- Fashion guides, fashion look-books as this forms the majority of content consumed on the existing instagram.

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10. Brands focus

Brands are seeing IGTV as a good place to post content and want to be ready when monetization takes place. IGTV can be used as a place where users can follow the brands they love, and brands can use IGTV as a platform to post more than 15 sec videos. This can lead to a better brand engagement than existing platforms like facebook. Brands can create your own media strategy which is video focused.

Since brands are the most to win from such an experiment, it would be wise to invite brands to create and showcase their content on IGTV. IGTV can pilot with niche brands that are looking to promote their products, create awareness and share relevant content for its positioning.

Why would brands and other creators post content on IGTV?

With not much competition around in IGTV, being the first-to-market brandmay seem appealing to them. Seeing the potential of the existing user base of Instagram, creators wouldn’t mind experimenting with IGTV as a platform to enhance their marketing activities. Brands are all about stories; and storytelling could be done right with IGTV.

The hurdle here is that brands are already receiving the required amount of visibility and engagements from Instagram stories. The content of IGTV needs to become more interactive where users are not just watching a video but perhaps participating in it too (eg. polls or questions within the video. Like/Dislike within the video. Button to redirect to an offer etc.)

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11. In app notifications (cross promotions)

Once the content is ready, algorithm to align needs with content is set, IGTV can start sharing notifications in the existing Instagram accounts to recommend popular videos for their followed areas of interests/creator. This however needs to be controlled and monitored for success, in order to avoid spamming. Experimentation of another in app notification is also required- by sending a sample group of users a notification for a new video posted by a creator they are following (friend or public figure).

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12. Enhancements for creators

While working with the initial set of creators (Brands, Influencers etc.) their concerns need to be actively looked into to improve the product before it gets too late. There are several pain points in the UI-UX of IGTV for a creator while setting up a channel. The UX is not intuitive. It is difficult to spot how one can upload a video. The flow of posting video is completely missing and drastically different from the existing Instagram UI.

After entering IGTV for the first time, there are no callouts or demo to show how to use the app, what to expect, what more you can do, how to create your own channel etc.

If you want to share a video directly from your gallery, you cannot. For eg. if you are watching a video in your gallery and click on share button, the existing google share would give just two options for Instagram- Post on Feed or Post on stories. No option to post on IGTV channel, despite having a channel.

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13. Learn from competitors

Learn more about how SnapChat is trying to get things right with its stories and explore tab for video content.

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This was my humble attempt at what went wrong and what could be done as a turnaround growth strategy for IGTV. Call out to all growth hackers, CXOs, product managers and marketers to comment your views, suggestions! Looking forward to newer perspectives.

SIMRAN SONI

Growth Hacker @ Travel Tech startup, passionate about business, Management grad, Ex consultant at EY, KPMG. Here to share and read about interesting ideas.