Have you been putting off creating Instagram Reels because you’re not sure what to make a video about?

Maybe it’s not that you don’t have any ideas, but you are unsure about all the nitty gritty logistics that go into creating high-performing Reels.

The truth is, Reels get way more engagement than a static post… actually 67% more engagement according to Entrepreneur.com. One of our clients did a content creation day with us and after posting two Reels per week for a month, her reach went from 1,600 to 19,000! All that to say, you don’t have to create a video for every day of the week to see success, but you definitely need to start using them because they perform better and will get your account noticed by a bigger audience.

Reels can tremendously benefit your brand awareness, getting your content on the Explore page and in front of new eyeballs within the Reels tab. In these sections, your content is shown to people who don’t follow you. Depending on the quality of your content, a massive opportunity for you to bring in new people to your online ozone.

 

Step One: Define Your Audience

When you are figuring out how you want to position yourself with your video content for Instagram Reels, it’s essential to cast a wide net first. What do I mean by that? Instead of picking a really narrow target audience that you’ll target with your videos, pick something that’s a little broader.

Example of a Dog Trainer:

Niche target audience – you’re a dog trainer and your ICA is people who own new puppies or young dogs

Broader target audience – dog parents of all ages and people who love dogs

Very (almost too broad) target audience – people who have grown up loving dogs but never owning one, and they don’t know if they can get one but love watching all things dogs

 

Step Two: Gather Inspiration for Your Video Content

One of the best ways to get inspired is to watch other people’s content. If you don’t know what’s out there and what’s possible, you will have a really narrow picture of the possibilities. To gather inspiration, scroll through videos on Instagram Reels and TikTok and note 4-5 accounts that you enjoy watching. The key here is to explore content from outside your niche, so find at least 3 accounts that are outside of your industry but somewhat related to what you do, the other 2 can be within your niche/industry. When you have created your list, consume their content and assess it! Some questions to consider are:

 

What do you enjoy most?

What kind of video format do you like watching?

What style of video catches your attention?

How are they using text on the screen?

What kind of environment are they using to film in?

What kind of hooks do they use to get your attention?

 

With the answers to these questions, you can start to mold your own ideas and how you want to utilize video content for social media.

 

Step Three: Your Content Cocktail

Since you’re in the beginning stages of putting together your Instagram Reels strategy, it’s important to test different things out. Your content cocktail is made up of types of content as well as the frequency at which you post to social media. To figure out what works best with your audience, you should try out different styles of filming, different lengths of video, different video types, and different creative details that will make your videos stand out (in Step Four).

 

You should utilize three types of video content: 

• Short (15 seconds or less)
• Long (30-90 seconds)
• Trending (with an arrow next to the audio or found on the Discover page)

 

Consistency is the KEY to success for Instagram Reels.  Posting regularly will boost your content in the algorithm and encourage the platforms to continue sharing your content with the masses. So, what does success look like? Being successful with Instagram Reels means posting 3-5 times per week, and if you can post daily (or multiple times a day) it’s proven to get you even better results.

Seem like a lot of work? It can be! Batch recording your content is how our team can maintain a high level of consistency and post frequency! Here’s how we do it:

1. Outline your content strategy first
2. Come up with your content topics and audio links from Instagram
3. Set aside 2-3 hours to film your content once a month
4. I’m able to film 12+ videos within 2 hours (which for us is one month of content for Reels)

 

Step Four: Make Your Videos Stand Out

There are several ways that you can make your videos exciting to consume and hard to scroll by. With such short attention spans these days, it’s important to grab the watcher’s attention as quickly as you can so they continue to consume the rest of your video. If it’s not interesting within the first 3-5 seconds, the consumer is going to scroll past. Here are some of our favorite tips that we use to optimize our video’s performance: 

1. Use a hook with the text on screen and/or your voice, for example, 5 Steps to Making Better Reels, Does batch recording Reels stress you out? Or, how my client had a 50k launch.
2. Pick a high-quality audio track or one that you upload yourself
3. Don’t forget to use hashtags, make them specific to the content of your video and use 10-12
4. Captions should be short and witty, the video should get your point across and people aren’t reading long captions within Instagram Reels
5. Create cover templates (1080×1920 px) with text or just photos in Canva so you can add these when you post a new Instagram Reel, this will keep your grid looking on-brand instead of using ugly screen grabs
6. Film and create within the platform, Instagram will reward you by sharing it with more people, this will allow you to use the great tools that Instagram has to offer and create seamless transitions that go along with the audio

If you take anything away from this today, our number one piece of advice is to EXPERIMENT! Don’t be afraid to try new things with Reels because you just can’t be too sure of what’s going to land with your audience! Especially if you haven’t dabbled with Reels yet,  you have no clue what your audience is going to love most! 

Finally, don’t stress about ensuring that your Reel is PERFECT. Perfect is not relatable, and if there’s a minor flaw or you’re off by one second when you’re doing a voiceover video – WHO CARES! Post it anyways because done is better than perfect.

P.S. Lo-fi content (also known as low fidelity) is a category of video that’s less produced and rawer. This type of content is performing SUPER well on Instagram right now! So use this to your advantage (because we solopreneurs don’t have a video team following us around all the time).

Get creative and have fun with this feature of Instagram! 

 

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Looking for more support with your video content? We can help you create high-performing video content! 

We offer a hands-on or a hands-off approach, where you can hire us to do it all for you or you can follow our video direction to film your own content. Sherose’s in-house videographer will research, direct and edit your videos for you no matter if you’re local in Boise, Idaho, or New York City! Inquire about our Content Creation Days here.

Reels we’ve created for our clients have reached hundreds of thousands of new eyeballs on their business.