Reel, IGTV, Stories … these are the different options to publish videos on Instagram

Reel, IGTV, Stories … these are the different options to publish videos on Instagram

Whether you are a professional content creator or an ordinary user who just wants to share his latest recording with his contacts, Instagram is an excellent video publishing platform.

In fact, its big problem is that it offers perhaps too many options to publish them, and someone little versed in the application does not quite see the differences between opting for one or the other.

Let’s take a quick look:

Feed videos

Instagram, originally an exclusively photographic social network (even more: exclusively square photos) began to allow the publication of videos in 2013.

Originally, the maximum duration was 15 seconds, which the platform ended up extending. These ‘normal’ videos appear in the same feed as the photos, and only a ‘Play’ icon that appears in the center of them distinguishes them from them.

• Video length: Between 3 and 60 seconds.

Instagram Stories

Instagram stories are posts (they can also be images, not necessarily videos) that are usually accompanied by text or other special effects.

They can also integrate elements such as countdowns, hashtags and surveys, so they are widely used in online marketing strategies.

They have two distinctive elements distinctive element is its ephemeral condition:

And yes, if you’re wondering, Instagram was ‘inspired’ by the ‘stories’ that its great rival (at that time) had previously launched: Snapchat.

• Video length: Maximum of 15 seconds.

IGTV (Instagram TV)

We could define IGTV as ‘the YouTube of Instagram’: This format allows content creators to publish their long, high-quality videos, and it also has multiple functionalities focused on monetization.

Since Instagram removed the IGTV button that appeared next to the one for direct messages, the way to access these videos is through the news feed, the IGTV channel in Explore, from the creators’ profiles or through the dedicated app.

• Video length: Up to 15 minutes (if we upload them from the mobile app) / Up to 1 hour (if we upload them from the web version).

Reels

We have already gone through ‘the Snapchat of Instagram’, the ‘YouTube of Instagram’ and now We only have – effectively – ‘the Instagram TikTok’.

Instagram Reels is a format created shamelessly in the image and likeness of the Chinese network, it was launched by Instagram at the beginning of last August.

Instagram makes it easy to add music to these short videos with which users try to take advantage of the few seconds available to offer musical and / or humorous clips.

The problem (for Instagram) is that many of Reels’ posts are, directly, TikTok videos replicated on this platform just to reach more followers.

• Video length: Maximum of 15 seconds.