YouTubers everywhere looking for a chance to jump ship squealed with delight at the June 2018 launch of Instagram’s dedicated channel IGTV, where a billion customers already have an active account and were potentially ready to watch. Fast forward a couple of years and traction is low, especially compared to upstart video rival TikTok and the continuing dominance of YouTube. This can mainly be put down to not having the sophisticated monetisation built in of these other two channels.

The game isn’t over yet, and recently Instagram announced they were going to offer a revenue share of ads shown alongside videos. This may or may not be the incentive users need to utilise it more. Time will tell. Lets take away direct monetisation for the moment, what can you use IGTV for? You might not have rivers of revenue flowing in, but used well, IGTV can be a strong accessory to your feed and stories and help build engagement with your brand.

Let’s just cover some IGTV basics. IGTV is accessed in your existing Instagram profile. Use vertical video in an MP4 file format; minimum resolution of 720 pixels; videos must be at least 15 seconds long and no more than 10 minutes long; cover images must be 420 by 654 pixels and once uploaded there is no ability (yet) to edit it. When you are uploading your video, you can choose the IGTV option, and a preview shows up in your feed.

So what is different about IGTV to what is already available through YouTube? As legal icon from The Castle Denis Denuto would say, it’s probably the vibe of Instagram as much as anything else. IGTV’s growth mission is threefold: to connect users to videos being made or shared by the people they already follow, to allow users to build their own TV channel, and to introduce longer-form content with a focus on vertical video.

For small business the benefits of IGTV are being able to have a dedicated IGTV channel without doing anything more than setting it up, and instantly being able to port your existing followers along for the ride. It is also the shift from only having 60 seconds of glory, to having up to 10 minutes to captivate and entertain your fans, a game changer from the current state of play for Instagram video. It is also the simplicity of a video channel that is set up for mobile small screens from the get go, designed to quickly and simply enable you to communicate with your fans, promote your business and deepen your brand engagement. Think about how you might use IGTV video real estate to make content about your products, how-to-videos, explainers, product demos and training videos, along with all the infotainment your fans can handle.