How I Got 1000 Views in 24 Hours For My Client’s Instagram Video
Now you may be thinking,“1000 views in 24 hours on Instagram is nothing to write on The Medium about,” but let me explain.
I started working with Femme Noir & The Black YouTube Channel; an all black female dance show celebrating music’s most iconic black female artists. They were producing a feature length documentary when quarantine shut them down. They wanted to release footage to keep audiences satiated until filming resumed. The footage consisted of a simple documentary style shoot, with an off-camera voice asking the interviewee about their favourite black female performer. The top three answers were Beyonce, Janet Jackson, and Brandy.
Assignment 1: Beyonce.
This would be the first video posted to The Black YouTube Channel. Their subscribers were practically zero, and Instagram following minuscule. YouTube is a difficult medium. Even when videos are properly tagged, and thumbnails and titles are intriguing, it is an unpredictable beast. The key to taming the beast is consistent content. Nonetheless, I swung for a home-run on the channel’s first at-bat.
I followed a popular Reaction channel template. If you are a YouTube native you recognize these videos from channels like The Fine Brothers, where groups of people react to a particular piece of media (i.e Elders React To Grand Theft Auto). I created a catchy thumbnail in Photoshop with a colourful border to make it stand out, an all-cap title, proper tags, and a well-written keyword laden description.
Swing and a miss.
Once the video uploaded I knew YouTube tagging paired with catchy titles and thumbnails would not be enough to push the view count over 10. From experience with my own YouTube channel, I knew video view counts need help from external sources. I ensured owners of Femme Noir & The Black YouTube channel shared the video link across all their social media pages; making individual posts, adding it to their stories, sharing mentions, etc.
I took it upon myself to go to my old faithful Reddit; the internet’s favourite quasi-forum with a community of loving users for any thinkable interest. As long as you post videos in appropriate communities, you should be ok…unless you start spamming, in that case, get ready to be banned for eternity. I stayed safe posting in Beyonce and dance communities, bringing the YouTube view count to a whopping 192.
Instagram is built for its own content. YouTube video links are found in a profile bio in the website link area. Links cannot be attached to posts and you need to exceed a follower milestone to have a swipe up feature on your Instagram stories to guide audiences to an external page. Instagram is great for promoting Instagram content, such as posts and IGTV videos. The content is easy to share and users don’t have to perform gymnastics to consume. We uploaded an IGTV version of the Beyonce featurette to the videographers page, Introspective Films who had a stronger following. There were Black YouTube Channel & Femme Noir banners and tags at the beginning of the video so they received exposure on each view. The video performed better than its YouTube counterpart but not to the extent I wanted it to….then
EUREKA!
I remembered previous articles I wrote on Bernays leveraging the power of influencers; those who control the content people view and the beliefs societies subscribe to. Instagram is littered with dozens of Beyonce fan accounts, each with a substantial following. If one of these accounts would share our IGTV video with their followers, views would dramatically increase, and we would reach our target audience. I sent the video to 15 of the biggest Beyonce Instagram fan accounts, and one of them, with 40,000 followers, shared the video to their story. The video climbed to over 1000 views in under 24 hours, with some views translating to followers who will await the next featurette.
A takeaway from this exercise is to know which medium will give your video the easiest path to success. For a video of this nature, and a client just dipping their toes into the video realm, YouTube is not ideal. That doesn’t mean avoid YouTube all together. It’s important to upload consistent content to build a subscriber base, however, Instagram is a friendlier option for clients new to video who want exposure. As a side note, it’s also important to track engagement. If select viewers are engaging with your content; commenting, liking, sharing, and following, that is just as good as any view.
See you at the next stop…
