Videos are in, Pictures are out!
For those of you who are looking to grow your following on instagram or even maintain the following that you already have, you might be going about things the wrong way.
Instagram is one of the top social media platforms in the world. A platform that allows us as individuals to attract people to our page based on the content that we post. And it’s no surprise that we’ve now used this platform to help grow our businesses by increasing the amount of followers that we have and increasing our overall engagement and influence. This has led us to ask one simple question. “What can I do to grow my Instagram account?”
I’m sure many of us know that pictures and videos can play an important role in growing any brand or business, but the truth of the matter is that many makeup artists, beauty enthusiasts and hairstylists fail to understand just how important what they are posting truly is to their following, engagement and clientele. Through our findings and experiences on instagram, we’ve come to the conclusion that in order to greatly increase your chances of success, you NEED to be posting VIDEOS .
It is important to consider posting videos just as much, if not more than posting pictures, and here are 4 main reason why;
1. You are more likely to get placed on the explore page and to therefore go viral.
2. You are more likely to get featured on a beauty feature page if you are posting videos
3. You are more likely to have people coming back to your page and follow you.
4. Videos tend to give you higher engagement and higher “perceived engagement”
Now we gave you the reasons, it’s time to get into the why. So why do these things happen?
1.Videos are more likely to get you placed on the explore page for more people
A video can do what a picture can not. It allows you to show your personality, your creativity and also allows for people to learn something from your post.
Videos are just more entertaining to watch. Take a second right now to think of the last entertaining post you saw on instagram. Was it a video or a picture? I could almost guarantee you it was a video. But if it was a picture, leave us a comment and let us know what it is (very curious). Aside from memes, when were smiling, laughing, or ooing and awing at a post, most of the time, that post is a video. Videos are able to peak our interest and entertain us through sound, and moving visuals, and they’re able to do it for a longer period of time. With pictures, what you see is pretty much what you get.
Instagram understands this and because of this, their algorithm often favours videos over pictures by showing them to more of your followers and also by exposing videos to a larger audience through the explore page. When a picture or video is first posted, Instagram immediately starts gathering data from the post which they use in their algorithm, data which we will discuss in a future vlog so stay tuned. This data helps them to see the type of engagement your post is getting, and based on this information they’ll decide whether to show it to a larger audience or not.
Videos especially beauty videos have a higher chance of receiving higher engagement and a lot of traction when first posted because they’re able to offer an entertaining and learning aspect which gets people engaged and increases their likelihood of taking action on your post, whether it be liking, commenting, etc. If Instagram sees that the content you post is creating this type of buzz, then Instagram starts to assume that other people who don’t know you or follow you might also want to see your content, because remember, Instagram is in the business of providing entertainment for their users .
2. You are more likely to get featured on a beauty feature page if you are posting videos
There used to be a time where Beauty feature pages were mainly posting pictures over videos, but as time progresses, you’ll start to notice that most of these same feature pages have transitioned to posting videos much more than pictures.
The reasoning for Beauty feature pages posting more videos is actually quite similar to the reasoning we gave above for instagram. We must understand that the main objective of beauty feature pages is to first and foremost, help shed a light on beauty professionals and grow their following, while growing their following. The best way for them to do this, is to post what they think will give the beauty professional the highest chance of engagement, and what they think will continue to grow their page and keep users coming back for more, and in this case, that’s videos. As said previously, videos especially beauty videos have a higher chance of receiving higher engagement and a lot of traction when first posted compared to pictures, which means it gives these feature pages the highest chance of maximizing the engagement for who they post and for their pages as well!
Engagement looks better on videos then pictures. Perception is everything and when a video has a lot of views, it gives off the impression that there is something interesting about what that person has posted, regardless of the amount of likes.
It only takes 3 seconds for someone to view your video and for that to count as a view on instagram, rather than a picture that requires someone to double tap to show that there was any engagement done on a post.
3. You are more likely to have people coming back to your page and to follow you.
People are more likely to remember you from a video you’ve made, over a picture you’ve posted. The reason why is because they’re associated with your content for a longer period of time. With a video you are giving yourself more time to impress a viewer, more time for them to get to know you through your post, to like your work and to like your personality. When a viewer remembers you or is impressed by you they are more likely to go back to your page and start following you. What’s even more powerful is that with a video, you can add a watermark and expect that watermark to potentially be seen for a longer period of time. A watermark on a picture will most likely be seen for as long as a person who is viewing the picture which is generally only a couple of seconds. Watermarks on videos helps people to remember your name and help associate the work with your name.
People learn more watching videos. People love learning and you can learn a lot more from a video than you can from a picture.
4. Videos tend to give you higher engagement and higher “perceived engagement”
Engagement is often a lot better with videos. There is potentially a full minute of content for a user to comment like or share about. You give the user a longer chance to engage with your post. Upon viewing a picture within the first few seconds, a user has already formulated an opinion about your post, and has already made a decision on whether to like it, or comment on it. Right after that, it’s onto to the next.
To conclude, always stay educated on what’s happening with Instagram and of any new changes taking place, as Instagram loves to constantly alter their algorithm and make new changes. From our experiences we are seeing that Instagram is currently favouring videos over pictures when it comes to beauty posts. Now we are not saying to not post pictures, pictures are also an important part of growing your instagram account, we are simple saying that you must take advantage of the benefits of posting videos. At the end it is so important to figure out exactly what type of posts do well specifically for you and what type of posts are causing people to engage with your content and what’s not.