Instagram is a social network focused on visual sharing – a user’s main intention is to share and find only the best photos and videos. As a business owner, you can utilize this platform to boost your visual marketing, enhance brand awareness, and showcase the personality behind the company.

Since 2016 posting videos on Instagram has grown 15%, and the average engagements for video posts have increased by 53 percent. These findings show that engagement growth for video is surpassing that for photos.

Video is a quick and easy way to engage your community online – 95 million photos and videos are shared daily with an average of 200 million people opening the app every day. Businesses must utilize this platform to engage with their community across the globe.

Instagram is becoming the prefect platform to showcase any promotional videos, behind the scenes and/or demonstrations. The key to video being successful on Instagram is to break them down into short, bite-size snippets, almost like teasers. By doing this you’ll optimize the number of times you can share the content on your profile.

Instagram Story Video Criteria

Minimum length: 6 seconds

Maximum length: 60 seconds

Example of Content

  • Behind the scenes content
  • Product demos/showcase
  • Educational (e.g. the best social media tips)
  • Press
  • Customer stories

Apps

While you can film video right on your phone and upload it to Instagram, you can also do it with videos that are found already online (not in your camera roll… be sure to cite). Today there are many apps that let you screen record right on your phone or tablet. It is always crucial to have one good screen recorder and a video editor on your phone.

Android:

AZ Screen Recorder – No Root: This app works on Android 5.0 or newer. The best part about this app is that it is free. Of course, if you want access to some of the more advanced features, you will have to pay a few bucks for in-app products. It is probably worth it.

Mobizen – This app has more reviews than the AZ Screen Recorder app and is also free. This app looks very well rounded and requires Android 4.2. It also seems to be easy to use and has some other great features that you might find useful.

Apple iPhone:

If you have the iPhone in iOS 11, screen recording is a lot easier:

  • Open Settings and tap on Control Centre > Customize Controls.
  • Find ‘Screen Recording’ in the list and tap on the + button beside it.
  • Once added you can leave Control Centre.
  • Now if you swipe up from the bottom of the display to access the Control Centre, you will see the new Screen Recording button appear (it’s a circle with a dot inside it).
  • Tap the recording icon to start the screen recording.
  • Following a three-second countdown, everything on-screen will be recorded.
  • While you are recording there will be a red bar at the top of the screen.
  • When you have finished recording tap on the red bar (or if that doesn’t register, swipe up and then press the Record button in Control Centre again).
  • Tap on Stop.
  • Your screen Recording video will be saved in Photos where you can edit the video if you wish.

Apple Apps

Airshou: This app works perfectly on iOS 9. Professionals often love to use this application for recording of games and applications.

Vidyo: Vidyo application serves users for recording screen videos along with active audio controls. The resolution offered goes up to 1080P with 60fps, and there are so many attractive mixing features for advanced recording results.

BB Recorder: Here is one more screen recorded for active users that helps in easy mirroring while recording. The best part is that it allows easy streaming with an extremely easy user interface. BB Recorder can be utilized for camera recording, live screen recording and basic screen capturing needs.

Video for Instagram

Try out the different apps and see which one works best for you. Once the screen recording is done and saved, you’ll have to edit it! Make sure to save the video to your camera roll and then upload the video to a video editing software where you can adjust the length, play with filters, and add text.

There are many great video editing apps including Instagram. Just search in your app store and try out some free options. There is iMovie, Flipagram, and Burstio, to name a few. All that’s left is to simply upload and share.

 

Video sharing best practices

  1. Choose an appealing thumbnail.
  2. Edit your videos so they are short, to the point and catchy.
  3. Research hashtags, depending on the size of your caption you can use up to 30! Look for long hashtags with a smaller community as well as hashtags with larger communities. Be sure to use the 60/30 rule… 60% small community, 30% large community – this will give you a better chance to rank in communities.
  4. Pay attention to your industry’s trends. What is your competition posting about?
  5. Space out when you post videos, so your profiles composition remains balanced.
  6. Videos offer a unique feature where you can capture both views and likes. Views are only counted if they watch the first 3 seconds of the video.