It’s a pretty exciting time to be creating on Instagram, and not just creating Reels. You CAN still grow your account and see success without Reels. Remember, the platform is favoring Reels, but your audience might not be. As in all marketing, make sure you’re playing to what your audience wants and not the trends. We’re here to build long-lasting visibility and not flashy viral content.
What does all of this mean?
While Instagram Reels and the full-length screen are taking a forefront in Instagram’s recent updates and roll outs, we can still create evergreen content or other non-dynamic content for our viewing audience. Last month, Instagram turned all the videos on Instagram accounts into Reels. Maybe this annoyed you, but it’s actually a really cool thing. By making past videos into Reels, they’re easier to share. Sharing to your Stories or sending to friends to share and save breathes new life into older content. You’re also able to create Reels that are longer than a minute with this update.
Important Cyber Safety Update
As always, we have to keep our personal safety and security at the forefront. Instagram recently changed a feature to allow anyone to remix a Post or Reel on a public Instagram account. I know for me, that was a big EEK, since my children are on my account. Not to worry, you can turn off that permission easily. Just go to the 3 lines > Settings > Privacy > Reels and Remix. While you’re there, you might as well check all of your other privacy settings because there have been many new updates, including filtering for specific wording.
As of August 2022, the following are the most effective ways to use the app and see great, consistent results:
Make your photos more visually appealing
You don’t have to be a master photographer, but Instagram has been playing around with the size of photos. Since they’re moving the app to be full screen sometime in the future, vertical images are performing better than square. Make sure you keep any wording within the center square, so that it will still look good on your Profile.
Short Reels, Long Captions
Yep, you read that right. If you can create a short Reel with a catchy hook telling viewers to check the caption, you can get your videos looping easily. While your audience is reading the long caption to get all the juicy details (or the book excerpt!), the Reel will be looping in the background. This will influence your watch time, views AND thus, the average view duration.
You’re doing great at creating awesome content, but if you need some Reels ideas, check out our monthly Reels subscription where you’ll get 4 Reels ideas with step-by-step instructions specifically for authors!
Reels & Trends to Try This Month:
Try this It’s Not Over Yet” Trend. People are sharing their stories with adversary or a journey that seems to be ongoing. If you’re a nonfiction writer, this trend is great for your story. If you’re a fiction writer, this trend is great for your character’s story.
I’m Not Scared of Lions and Tigers and Bears…
Here’s a few examples of trending audio I’ve enjoyed:
- This Snap In audio is great for showing off pretty much anything!
- This audio is pretty universal, but I recommend making it a POV style post for your plot.
- Taylor Swift’s August audio is great for a monthly recap.
Want to uplevel your IG reels game? Grab an IG Reels planner, designed by our IG manager, Raewyn!
