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How You Can Get More Views On Instagram Video

Get More Views On Instagram Video

A study conducted by Instagram has found that 60 percent of online social media platform users learn about various products and services through Instagram. And 75 percent of them engage in actions that include website visits, google searches, or word of mouth. This post highlights techniques that can help you get more views on Instagram video.

After Instagram launched the video element to the platform, it quickly turned into an online advertising paradise for marketers and small to big business owners. Compared to other social media platforms, Instagram boasts the highest customer engagement. The same can be accredited to their ‘photos only’ feature. After hearing about a brand/product these days, the typical behavior is to visit the social media handle of the brand/product, unlike websites like earlier.

However, the ‘easy marketing’ has also made it crowded out there, and the competition is cutthroat. Since Instagram is a visual medium, to stand out, you need to use proven techniques and some creativity to capture the audience’s attention and stay relevant in the market for a longer time.

As research suggests, video marketing has about 21% more engagement than static posts. Hence, undoubtedly, Instagram is a haven for video marketing experts. Backed by the same research, top brands/products try to maintain their social media handles, especially on Instagram and make as catchy and engaging content as possible.

Getting thousands of views on your Instagram videos is not an easy task. However, there are a few tried and tested ways to increase your Instagram views. According to a recent analysis, 95 million photos and videos are shared on Instagram daily. Nevertheless, most of them go unnoticed as they miss out on common techniques that help one get views on Instagram. 

Read below to learn a few of these techniques.

Best Tips to Get more Views on Instagram Videos

1. Add text to your videos

Most Instagram users today have a short attention span. They randomly shuffle through posts/stories until something compels them to halt and take a good look. As Instagram audio is on mute by default (unless the user taps on the unmute button on the bottom-right of the post), Jonathan Jacobs, partner of digital agency Digital Natives Group, said brands must lead with visuals and/or text. You can also create dynamic text effects to highlight main points that you wouldn’t want any viewer to miss. So in order to accomplish these tasks with ease, you may use any Instagram video editor that will help you to edit & deliver attention-grabbing video.

Instagram-Stories-How-to-Add-Text

Captions are another crucial element that must feature in your marketing videos. A good caption summarizes the concept of the video and is displayed over the video. The user reads the caption, and if he finds it interesting, he is sure to watch that video.

Do your research and try to learn what sort of captions are the best for your video. Remember, a poor caption can negatively affect your entire post, no matter how good the video is. Before posting, take a good look at your video and ask yourself, is this the kind of caption that would make me watch the video? If you answered “yes”, you now know what to do.

Instagram captions potentially can add context to your image and video posts and can point out details that users may not have otherwise known.

BONUS TIP: Your captions should be written in catchy fonts/big/block letters and should be easy to read. Make sure your captions pop out from the video by adding contrasting colors to them. You can also add emojis to your caption, which can stir the right emotions in the viewer while reading it.

2. Add hashtags

Without a doubt, hashtags are very popular on Instagram. Using hashtags helps you reach new audiences and also a particular demographic group as per your need—Instagram posts with at least one hashtag average 12.6% more engagement than those with none. Adding enough hashtags is one of the easiest and most effective ways to get views on Instagram.

How to use hashtag on instgram

How do hashtags work?

When you use a hashtag, your post automatically gets categorized and organized in that category/field of interest/target area. Instagram also facilitates users to follow different hashtags as per their choice. So when you use a specific hashtag on your post, Instagram’s algorithm pushes your post into the timelines/feed of all the users that follow that particular hashtag.

The correct set of hashtags can put your post right before your target audience, even if they never knew or followed your page.

Many brands also use hashtags to jump onto an ongoing trend. This means that if you post something with a hashtag that is currently trending, your engagement will naturally shoot up.

For example, a fitness influencer posts his workout regime with the hashtag #30dayfitnesschallenge. Now, all the users who followed the hashtag #30-day fitness challenge will find the above video on their feed.

3. Schedule your posts to be uploaded at peak hours

Unlike YouTube, the highest number of engagements on your Instagram occur right after you publish the video. This is because Instagram doesn’t take a lot of time to index videos. Knowing when your target audience is most likely to be active is essential to determining when to upload a post on Instagram. 

Peak posting time varies from brand to brand or product to product because different brands/products have different target audiences that follow different time zones. Thus, knowing the geographical location of your audience is key to identifying the peak time.

Social-media-posting-schedule

While some research might suggest that Monday is the best time to upload a post on Instagram, others may say that Monday is the worst day to upload a post. Despite the contradiction, the general rule of thumb while scheduling a post is to post your videos in the afternoon or evening to yield the best results. This is because most users scroll through their social media platforms during their lunch break or just around the time they leave work.

If you have a business account, use the analytics function to identify the geo-location of your target audience. Studying that data will help you find the sweet spot when it comes to scheduling an Instagram video.

Additionally, research also suggests that Wednesday to Friday yields the most engagement, with Thursday being the best and Sunday the worst.

days of engagement

                                             Image source:  ReadyPulse

4. Use the right dimensions for your video

While scrolling Instagram, you may have noticed that you have more propensity to click on videos that have square frame dimensions. Many ignore this involuntary social media user behavior and do not realize the direct impact of video dimensions on the number of views. Hence, choosing the appropriate video dimensions is vital.

Instagram Video Post Dimensions best sizes

Currently, Instagram allows you to upload three types of videos — square, vertical, and landscape. It is important to note that square and vertical videos create more engagement than landscape videos on Instagram.

Here are the specifications for the different types of videos dimension for Instagram:

  • Landscape videos: 1280*720 aspect ratio and 16:9 dimension
  • Square video: 1080*1080 pixels for size and 1:1 aspect ratio
  • Vertical video: 1080*1920 proportion and 9:16 aspect ratio

Vertical videos can increase your likes, comments, and shares. A study proved that more than 75% of video viewing on Instagram is done on smartphones. And smartphone users hold their phones vertically about 94% of the time. Hence, videos with vertical dimensions attract more engagement and, thus, more views. Also, vertical videos fill up the entire screen space, making them comfortable to watch while scrolling through the Instagram feed.

5. Promote your Instagram video post

Here are two of the most effective methods to promote your videos that can help increase your views on Instagram.
Runnings Ads: While all the methods discussed above were organic, running ads would require spending some money to market your video. Spending money to advertise a nice video post will surely put your video before the right target audience.

After closely observing more than 400 campaigns worldwide, Instagram concluded that ad recall from Instagram’s paid ads was 2.8 times higher than organic ad recall.

With the Instagram ad function, you can manually choose variables like geo-location, demographics, interests, and behaviors, among others. However, Instagram ads generally cost more than Facebook ads, so make sure you spend on ads wisely.

6. Post on IG Stories:

According to a survey, people enjoy watching videos on IG stories more than watching them on their feed. Unlike the Insta feed, stories offer many features to invite interaction, which make Instagram videos more engaging for the users. Instagram also allows you to target your audience and receive an actionable audience precisely.  Hence, promoting videos on stories provides you with an edge as your videos are more likely to get full attention, even if for a few fleeting seconds.

post on Instagram stories

Instagram stories appear at the top of the website/app, and it is common for people to click on these stories before shuffling through their feed. This is good news because your audience is more likely to check your stories (if they follow you) instead of scrolling through the feed.

Wrapping it up:

Knowing when your target audience is most likely to be active is essential to determining when to upload a post on Instagram. Partnering with influencers in your niche can significantly boost your visibility and increasingly buy real instagram likes.

Also, there are tons of video content uploaded on Instagram every day. Therefore, having the right video marketing strategy is very important to stand out from your competition. Quality and consistent video posts topped with the strategies discussed above will give you a bullet-proof marketing strategy.

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