Video has become a more important tool for brands over the last few years as a fresh and exciting way to break up the never-ending monotonous scroll, but in our current marketing climate, video has really solidified its place as an indispensable part of every marketing plan.

A great way to incorporate video to your current social feeds is to use it to teach followers something about your business. Creating a video to tell an interesting story about your business or how some of your products work is a lot more attention-grabbing rather than writing a long caption for a photo.

“Essentially, you’re trying to explain a lot of detailed information in a few seconds. But when you do it well, you see higher engagement and build a better rapport with your audience.” – Sprout Social

Today we’re going to focus on Instagram as a video platform and discuss what options are available.

Instagram “stories” allow for unique creative designs by incorporating polls, questions, gifs, doodles, and music. They are a great way to engage with your audience, but will only stay visible for 24 hours and then disappear. You can save the story’s content for the everyone to see publicly after this time period by “highlighting” it on your profile, though you won’t be able to see who has engaged with it after the initial 24-hour post is complete.

You can also “go live” on Instagram (similar to facebook live video), and create a real-time video for your audience to watch. You will be able to see how many people are actively watching it and who is commenting. It’s a great opportunity when you want to be your most authentic self and tell your viewers, “Here I am. This is what I do.” We don’t recommend using a script for a live video (though a rough outline can be helpful if you want to steer the conversation) – it’s more effective as a tool to interact with your follower base in the moment.

If you want your video to have even more staying power, you can post a pre-recorded 60-second video into your feed just as you normally would post an image file (though different social media schedulers have different requirements with regard to video file types, but if you’re posting it directly from your phone, the process should be seamless). By posting pre-recorded video into your feed you really have full control over your messaging and can invest more time planning it out. Also worth noting: in this type of post, everyone will see who and how many followers have liked or commented on your video vs. a video story, where user engagement data is visible to only you, the poster.

And finally, here are some great tips for creating Instagram video ads to keep handy for your next content-planning session: 5 Instagram Video Ads Tips to Wow Your Audience