About two months ago, Instagram launched its long-form video platform, IGTV. Instead of the 15-sec (or 60-sec) story videos, now you can upload videos up to 10 mins (if you have more than 10,000 followers, you can upload videos up to an hour long.)

This is quite exciting for content creators/influencers, as previously they needed to have a separate YouTube channel to distribute the long-form video content.

However, the IGTV is NOT just another video platform. It has its own unique way of doing things, which means you can’t just copy & paste everything from YouTube/other channels over.

MOBILE FIRST: As you can expect, Instagram is promoting its video platform to be mobile-first, meaning the videos are vertical (9:16).

We’ve had a few blogs earlier about the best filming accessories for iPhone/Smartphone and the complete smartphone video kit, SmartCine. Those are great tools for IGTV, as they help boost the three most important aspects of a smartphone video: the stability, visual quality, and audio quality.

If you have some of the tools that help with any of the three factors, you may be looking for the following gadgets to further improve your video quality.

- Stability Boosting: A solid gimbal/stabilizer to increase your video quality significantly. You can also use a ball-head tripod if you are making a video without much movement.

- Visual Boosting: High-quality external lenses and light ring for the extra capability to zoom, to see in the dark, and to capture various angles.

- Audio Boosting: External microphones for pro audio.

In addition to the equipment suggestions above, we also chatted with a few influencers to get their thoughts on the tips to how to win on the IGTV channel:

- Keep it short: While you can upload a video up to 60-min, most Instagram users are used to the super-short video formats, and they are always ready to swipe to the next story. So keep it short as three to four minutes.

- Winning through view-time and personality: Unlike YouTube, the primary way of getting watched on IGTV is not by “keyword search,” but through the “Discovery” function, which links audience with their existing following accounts and people that they like. Taking that into consideration, and creating content that caters to your followers, is the key to growing your audience on IGTV.

- Use an editing app: You can absolutely upload your video to a MAC/PC for editing. But there are some amazing apps to make this job easy and convenient on your phone. Most editing apps function as a traditional editing tool, like iMovie and Videoleap. If you are used to editing videos on your computer, these are good choices as you won’t need to relearn most of the functions. If you are new to video editing, try an innovative editing app that is similar to photo editing apps. For Ex. Spark Camera and Quick.

Now you are ready to become an IGTV star – what videos are you going to post on IGTV? Let us know in the comments!