If you are trying to increase your popularity and influence on Instagram, you should make the most of Instagram Reels.
They are a relatively novel features on a platform that is traditionally known for photos rather than videos, and yet they have been proven to be highly effective when it comes to audience engagement and growth.
From a technical point of view, creating and sharing Instagram reels is quite easy. What is more complex is understanding how to make the most of this tool to make your Instagram account grow and, with it, your influence and ROI.
In this article, we’re going to help you learn everything you need to know about how to make Reels on Instagram.
Instagram Reels are short videos that you can upload and share on Instagram. These are different from both Instagram posts and Instagram Stories.
Instagram posts are made of pictures that you can share on your account that are going to stay on your feed forever. Instagram Stories can be pictures and short videos that go away after 24 hours.
Instagram Reels are short videos that will stay on your Instagram account page forever (unless you remove them) and that will also appear on your followers’ feed.
Instagram Reels are becoming more and more popular since they were launched in 2020. Thanks to Instagram Reels, you can make the most of video content on Instagram too.
Instagram Reels: what are the advantages?
We’ve mentioned that Instagram Reels have a lot of potential when it comes to audience engagement and growth, but what are the specific advantages that they offer?
Increase in engagement and ability to reach more people
Being quite a new feature within the platform, Instagram itself is promoting IG Reels left and right. This means that when you share Reels you are increasing the chances of your post being promoted all over the platform and shown to more people.
This will increase your chances of being seen, being able to grow your audience, and therefore your popularity on the platform.
Increase your sales
One important feature of Instagram Reels is that you can share links on them. If you use them to promote a product or service, you can also share a shopping link on the reel. You can increase the traffic to your e-commerce website as a result of this.
Cross-promoting
There are other well-known platforms that allow you to share short videos: YouTube (thanks to YouTube Shorts) and, of course, TikTok.
This means that you could use the same video as content for all these platforms and make the most of its full potential. This is an effective way of optimizing your resources and time.
Creating IG Reels is easy
One of the main advantages of Instagram Reels is that creating them is super easy. You can do it yourself, with your smartphone, without purchasing expensive equipment, and without hiring professional video makers.
This is also how Instagram Reels help you reduce the costs related to your marketing campaigns, making them more efficient at the same time.
How to Make Reels on Instagram
As we’ve mentioned, creating and sharing Instagram Reels is extremely easy. You have two main options:
You can record a video directly on the Instagram app
You can upload an existing video.
How to record a video in the Instagram app
If you want to record a video directly from the Instagram app, tap the “+” button and then Reel.
Give permission to use the camera and video gallery, then tap the central record button.
How to upload an existing video
After you’ve tapped the “+” and then the “Reel” button, tap on the small image icon on the bottom left. Here you can choose an existing video to be uploaded and become an Instagram Reel.
Now it’s time to edit your reel. With Reels, Instagram has also become an effective video editing tool.
There are tons of ways that you can edit and change your videos until you get the results that you are looking for.
For example, you can add an audio track. This is extremely important when your video does not have any dialogue in it: to make it more engaging, add an audio track to it by tapping on the small audio symbol.
Other things you can do are:
Adjusting the time according to the video format
Adding filters to your video. Filters are well known on Instagram and usually make reels more likely to trend
Adding effects like sparkling stars or falling leaves
Instagram Analytics
If you want to enhance your popularity on Instagram with Reels, it is important that you base your choices on data. For this reason, Instagram Analytics is one of the most important tools.
This tool provides you with vital information like:
When you should publish your reels so that they can have the highest views and engagement
The type of content that is most trending in a specific niche
The age ratio
The gender ratio
Instagram Analytics is also useful to understand how your Reels are performing on the platform. You can use Instagram Analytics to understand what is working with your strategy, what can be improved, and the kind of content that you should not make anymore because it is not getting enough attention.
This information can let you know, for example, the number of people that bookmarked your Reels, as well as the total number of people who viewed the Reel, and how many times your reels have been watched.
Conclusion
As you already know, Instagram has a lot of features that you can make the most of. But just remember, it’s how you use them that counts the most.
If you want to make the most of Instagram, you need to figure out how to use Instagram Reels to your advantage.
Tell us how do you use Instagram reels to manage your content, do you include it in your Instagram market strategy?
If you aren’t you should consider it to really elevate your marketing efforts.
