Creating Posts For Instagram Marketing
Why use videos for social media?
Before I begin with the technicalities, I just wanted to talk about why using videos for social media is crucial for customer engagement.
In 2017, creating engaging content was the highest rated asset for social media marketing, and still is the most relevant skill to have for B2C (business to consumer) marketing in 2018. Youtube alone has over 5 billion video views a day! However, for this blog, we will be focusing mostly on Instagram, as it’s the biggest upcoming app/website for businesses.
So why does Instagram need a blog on how to create and upload content?
Well, unfortunately, Instagram is probably the most awkward marketing platform for content creators.
Heres why:
- The main reason why Instagram is such a pain is that to upload to the platform, you must use a mobile device as it does not allow images to be uploaded from Mac/PC. Although there are ways around this nuisance such as using 3rd party applications on chrome or if you’re using a Mac device then you can change your safari to act as a phone screen which then allows you to upload straight from your web browser, for a more in-depth tutorial click here -> How To Upload From Safari & Chrome
- However, step one’s solution doesn’t cover Instagram stories, from quite a lot of time researching, I’ve found a minimal amount of solutions for being able to upload to Instagram stories from a computer with ease. Some of the processes I’ve seen required emulators (software that is used to display mobile content) and touch screens computers (if you’re fortunate enough to have one then you should be fine!).
- Another issue with uploading to Instagram is the sizing, aspect ratios and video layout. Due to it being predominantly designed for mobile devices it doesn’t have a regular layout and is very interchangeable regarding photos, but is a different story with videos.
Instagram Sizing Templates
The Classic Square:
The square template can be used both for video and photos. In Instagram, this is the only resolution available for videos (excluding stories). This can create a bit of a problem for making videos for different social media like Facebook and Youtube as they both normally support landscape videos (1080 x 1920). So this usually means creating two copies of a singular video to make it compatible with Instagram or if you are lucky enough you can just crop the sides original video using the in-app cropping tool providing you’re not cropping valuable information.
The Full Screener:
Using this template for portrait images should allow you to make the most of phone screens, making it the full height of the person’s feed (this depends on phone sizes) making sure you are missing space for your valuable content.
The Landscape Image:
Most photography is shot landscape, so if you have a beautiful sunset or want to just show off your new car, this is the template for you to use. However, the problem with landscape images on Instagram, they are presented as smaller due to Instagram fitting your image on mobile screens. So any information based posts or company announcements should be posted portrait for maximum effect!
The Instagram Story:
This template should only be used for Instagram stories, this can be used with videos and photos so do what you wish with it!