Hello My Charmed Ones!
Today I wanted to share with you a little hack that I’ve been using as part of my content marketing strategy to help me reuse my valuable content, spread my message across my various platforms and save myself time and energy filling my monthly editorial calendar.
If you follow me on Instagram, you may have noticed that I have been posting my weekly youtube videos to instagram tv as part of my monthly editorial calendar.
Essentially, the video I post to YouTube on Saturday becomes my IGTV post the following Wednesday.
WHY I REPOST MY YOUTUBE VIDEOS TO INSTAGRAM TV?
There are 3 reasons why I have been reposting my YouTube videos to Instagram TV.
First, is because a lot of time and effort goes into creating a video for YouTube but I know that not all of my audience are seeing those videos. For me, although I love creating video content and I think I’m pretty good at it, realistically, creating a video is the most time consuming type of content I create. I don’t want that time and effort to go to waste if I post a video to youtube and my audience doesn’t take the time to watch. I know I put good energy and effort into creating a valuable video and I want to get as many eyes on that video as possible so I can help the maximum amount of people who need the information.
Second, I repost my YouTube videos to Instagram TV because I want to spread my message consistently across all my platforms. In my specific case, YouTube does happen to be the platform with the most followers, however, I know there are people who follow me on Instagram but don’t follow me on YouTube. So, if I have something valuable enough to say in a video, I want to make sure as much of my community as possible gets a chance to see the content. As much as I am all about creating as much original content for your platforms as possible, I have to be practical and if I want a message or piece of content seen so that it reaches my full audience, I know I have to share about it in all the places I hang out online.
Third, it save me so much time and energy when I can repurpose high quality content across to other platforms. With my current editorial calendar, I post on one of my platforms each and everyday. Creating 30 pieces of fresh content a month is a lot, so whenever I can take a piece of content and repurpose it, that is time I am saving myself.
HOW DO YOU REPOST VIDEOS FROM YOUTUBE TO INSTAGRAM?
Now, you might be wondering, how the heck do you even repost content from YouTube onto Instagram because Youtube videos and IGTV videos are in two completely different aspect ratios.
Youtube videos are posted ideally in the 16:9 landscape ratio and IGTV posts are ideally 9:16 portrait ratio.
Well, the little hack that I have been using to successfully accomplish this is to use a 9:16 ratio template to edit my videos into. That way all I have to do is edit my template each week and then drop my latest fully edited video into it via Final Cut Pro X and then export an IGTV version of the video.
MY INSTAGRAM TV VIDEO TEMPLATE
On my template for IGTV, I include a frame for the video, a title, subtitle, my own branding and a call to action to open the video description for more information.
Here are a few examples:
I create and edit these templates in Adobe Photoshop, and you may notice I also switch out the background image just to create some additional interest. When I create the file for the template, I insert the youtube cover image art in the video frame so that the template itself is also the cover image for the IGTV video too. Then in Final Cut, I layer my video clip over the cover art and shrink it down to fit the frame so that the video exports properly for IGTV.
Of course, in final cut, I need to start with a project that is 1080 x 1920 dimensions to begin with. The default for a normal video is typical 1920 x 1080 so I just need to swap those dimensions so the video exports portrait style for IGTV.
UPLOADING MY VIDEO TO INSTAGRAM TV
From there, I typically use the web version of Instagram on my computer to upload the video, cover image and write my description. If you didn’t know, you can use Instagram on your web browser so you don’t have to bother sending the video to your phone to post it. It’s very helpful, you just go to http://www.instagram.com and log into your account and you can use the web version very similarly to using the mobile app.
Need more help with your content + editorial calendar?
I hope this post has been helpful and informational to you. If you have any questions about this process, let me know! I hope this helps you reuse and repurpose your video content if you are also using Instagram and helps you spread your message and content to a wider audience that needs it!
xoxo,