Summary
If you never made Instagram video before and wondering how to go about, you will find this post instructive and useful, especially if you are using PowerPoint for the same. In a previous article, we have explained creating videos for Instagram stories with PowerPoint. And in that, we dealt on crucial features PowerPoint provides for doing this. We will now discuss 5 practical and expert tips to bear in mind when you plan to make Instagram videos with PowerPoint. But first, let us briefly talk about what Instagram video is and how it helps users to promote products or services on social media.
Why make Instagram video?
In recent times, brands, big and small, are coming to realize that written contents and images no longer suffice to aim for wider reach. They must adopt video marketing without delay and adapt with the latest trends, if only to survive.
In this context, Instagram video is considered as one of the best tools for marketers. For small businesses, Instagram is a big help for video marketing because of the many options to choose from – like IGTV, Instagram stories, Instagram live, and more.
It has also been observed that engagement numbers for videos in general are growing at a faster rate than photos. A main reason for this is that video empowers you to share complex, in-depth stories that can’t be conveyed in a single image.
In a nutshell, irrespective of whether you’re trying to educate your audience, build brand awareness with campaign, or promote your products, it is way better to make Instagram videos and use them to tell your story instead of images or photos.
3 types of Instagram videos
Talking of Instagram video types, there are many ways to look at it. The most important, I suppose, is how and what Instagram encourages you to do with video.
There are mainly 3 of them:
Instagram Stories
Share your everyday moments — this is how ‘Instagram stories’ is defined on their site itself, supported further by the illustrations given therein.
What is great about Instagram stories is that it lets you post as many videos and photos to your story as you want – without affecting your main news feed.
As can be expected, creating Instagram stories is easy. This article explains everything.
To start, just tap the camera icon at the top left-hand corner of the screen. Or, you can reveal the story camera by simply swiping left. As the story camera opens, go ahead, take a photo or record a video as you would normally do on Instagram.
IGTV
Released in June 2018, IGTV is a standalone video app for use on smartphones. It is for long-form video content compared to Instagram feeds. Videos are not limited to one minute. Instead, each video can be up to an hour long.
The video creators are the channels on IGTV. So, when you open the app on your phone, it starts playing immediately, and the videos occupy the whole screen.
Thus, in more ways than one, IGTV is for people that want to popularize their channels with creative long-form video works.
Instagram Live
As the name suggests, Instagram Live is about live broadcasts which you can watch on the Instagram app on your smartphone or on Instagram.com.
Many big publishers use Instagram Live and other platforms like YouTube to broadcast their popular TV programs. To give an example, Doha-based Al Jazeera goes live every week Monday to Thursday at 19:30 GMT on their English channel to discuss important global news events. It is called The Stream.
4 ways to use Instagram videos for ads
It is apparent from above that for the purpose of video marketing, businesses will want to depend on creating well-designed videos for Instagram stories.
Let us now spend a while looking at some interesting types of Instagram video ads.
Instagram Stories ads
Instagram stories ads are full screen, vertical, and they display up to 15 seconds for videos. If a video ad is longer than 15 seconds, it is split into separate stories cards.
Instagram story ads will appear in between the organic stories posted by Instagram users. But, unlike the organic Instagram stories that only last for 24 hours, the ads are not limited in life span, which is a good thing for paying advertisers.
Instagram Explore ads
In June 2019, Instagram launched Explore ads after concluding from the findings that 80% of people follow a business on Instagram. It therefore reasoned that Explore can help them find the next business or product that they might love.
Explore ads will accept both images and videos. However, as of this writing, it is still not available as a standalone placement. And that means, to have them appear in Instagram Explore, your ads need to also run in Instagram feed.
Instagram Collection ads
This is another proof of great marketing minds in action at Instagram, which is to provide users with as many options as feasible to convert them as advertising customers.
The Collection ads will allow you to select a hero image or a video. You can then manually choose the images that will appear below the header. Or, you can have them chosen dynamically.
For more on Instagram Collection video ads, refer the steps explained here.
Instagram Shopping ads
Businesses using product tags to their posts in feed can make them shoppable posts. This is the easiest way to go about. However, if you are keen to add a dash of imagination to your creative juice, you can consider creating your ad from scratch in Ads Manager.
The good thing is, if yours is a US checkout-enabled business, the buyers can make purchases directly in-app. In other cases, buyers travel from the product detail page on Instagram to the respective websites to complete purchases.
Okay, let’s now discuss some practical steps to make Instagram videos using PowerPoint.
5 expert tips for Instagram video with PowerPoint
Those who use PowerPoint only for presentations may not believe that they can use it for making classy Instagram videos on any topic you can think about.
This biggest reason for using PowerPoint is that it is already available with most companies and professionals because they need it for making presentations for business or career.
And so, it makes perfect sense to use PowerPoint to make Instagram videos for optimum utilization of resources, thus avoiding expenses on other tools which you may not need after all.
Also, bear in mind that it is easy to make PowerPoint videos in all the usual variants, viz. 1:1 square, 9:16 vertical, 16:9 rectangle, and even 4:5 vertical.
With that in perspective, let us look at some handy tips while using PowerPoint to make stunning Instagram videos that impress viewers.
It’s worth mentioning that the same tips will apply for designing most social media videos – especially video ads – in any platform. We though love referring to them for use in PowerPoint as it is versatile yet easy to do.
So, here we go.
1. Use snazzy images
Smart snazzy images, illustrations or clip arts work awesome for Instagram videos. They appear more attractive when shaped or cropped, which is easy to do in PowerPoint.
Sourcing the right images is easier done than said. That’s right, you can access high-quality professional images for free from PowerPoint’s own repository or from sites such as Unsplash.com.
The great thing is that when you paste one or more images on your slide, PowerPoint immediately and automatically suggests a range of nice-looking designs with the images. This is the easiest way for anyone to create impressive designs even if she has never designed anything before.
Take a look at the following GIF.
2. Catchy messaging is crucial
I personally like crisp short messages for branding.
Slogans like Apple’s “Think Different”, Nike’s “Just Do It”, Coca-Cola’s “Taste the Feeling”, or McDonald’s “I’m Lovin’ It” are kind of all-time greats that have transcended geographical boundaries for their reach and popularity.
So, here are two messages we often use for video ads for our brand, VidBazaar.
- Love artistry? Desire eloquence with our designs.
- Get the best designs you dream about.
Are they good? Do you like them? Tell us in the comments below.
3. Design that woos
Nothing comes close to the crucial aspect of video designing for an ad to be click-worthy. PowerPoint gives a huge leg-up to create great designs, and it is continually improving at this.
Now, like many of us, if you are not a trained designer, you need some inspiration to go about.
So, what we do is, do some image search on Google, and select the ad designs that look gorgeous yet simple. We then replicate them for designing Instagram video in PowerPoint.
Here is an example where we transformed a static image from Google image search to 2 excellent 4:5 vertical video templates.
Want to know how the video ads look like? Well, they are shown below. The two PowerPoint video ads have been created from the above static image. Both are top-sellers in our store. Click to see them play.
4. Fifteen seconds or less
Facebook says the following for mobile video ads for Instagram and other places –
Make your video length 15 seconds or less so that people are more likely to watch until the end. Video ads that are 15 seconds or less are also eligible for Instagram Stories and Facebook in-stream placements. If you want to use existing video that wasn’t originally made with mobile in mind, trim it down.
To get an idea about how video length works out in practice, you will find that both the videos above are 10 seconds each, and they are pretty okay from an ad’s perspective.
If you want similar video ads for your business or your client’s, get the 2 PowerPoint video templates, modify them as you wish, and then publish them to social media.
5. Same beginning and end
Remember, video ad often auto-loops on social media. Facebook video ads that are 30 seconds or shorter will loop for about 90 seconds.
So, if your video is 15 seconds long, it is likely to loop at least 5 times, or even 6 times, on Facebook. Same is true for video ads as Instagram stories. As we have mentioned above, Instagram stories longer than 15 seconds will be sliced into 2 or more parts.
That being the case, having same beginning and end is excellent idea because it shows ‘continuity’. That means, when the Instagram video loops, the viewer will see the same continuous sequence without any break in the video scene.
Feeling confused?
Watch again the 2 videos above that start and end with the same scene. When an Instagram video like them loops, viewers like it since there is no break in the video scene.
In a similar way, when you use one or more videos inside your Instagram video, ensure that that the inserted video(s) is/are itself looping, so that the final video too can be designed in a continuous sequence.
Watch the beautiful example below with 3 videos, so you know how this works. PowerPoint in fact is ideal to create this type of Instagram video.
Incidentally, this video is just 8 seconds long, and is therefore an ideal candidate for Instagram stories advertising. If you want similar cute videos for your business, send us email to hello@vidbazaar.com.
Summing up
There is a big focus on faster and easier video content creation as revealed in a recent study.
Businesses are looking at different options to make videos that
a) are less time-consuming and
b) have low learning curve from start to finish.
At VidBazaar, we offer customizable video templates made with PowerPoint, which can be easily altered to create unique videos in less than an hour. What’s more, we have recently started done-for-you service for patrons that want to have our templates re-designed for their needs.
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Top image courtesy, Lance Matthew Pahang, Unsplash
Founder at VidBazaar.com | PowerPoint & Canva Video Ad Maker | Guest Speaker
