There's a new kid in town on the social media block, and it's called Instagram Reels.
We're welcoming a new kid to the Instagram neighborhood. Instagram has social media strategists of the world, including myself, pulling our hair out with a riff on TikTok called Reels.
What is Reels? It's a new way to create and discover short, inspiring, and entertaining videos on the Instagram platform. It takes some playing around with, but Reels is a fun way to create some videos to share with your friends or your audience. You can record and edit 15 or 30-second multi-clip videos with audio effects, and there's some great creative tools in there. So on the creation side, you can create videos with several cuts, timing your wording, add songs that suit your brand's personality within 30 seconds. So FYI, TikTok gives you 60.
Just like TikTok, you can adjust the speed, add some fun effects, and time out your segments. There is a learning curve on how to edit your videos but play around with it. Sometimes it may take you a week to get the hang of an app, and sometimes it may take you a day.
The best way to get started to know if Instagram Reels is good for you and your brand? Basically just start viewing what's already out there on the app and take note of what your competitors are doing. I always tell my coaching students go find three people that are your competitors and see what they're doing on Reels and figure out how to make it better. So, I suggest spending 15 minutes a day thinking about what inspiring educational content your audience will love, and 15 minutes a day looking at the app itself.
Most importantly, this is an app to have fun with, so be yourself and have fun with the app.
Your action step here is to basically look at what three competitors are doing on Reels right now and figure out how you can take your inspiring, educational, fun content and put it there. I'm not saying create new content, take old content, and put it there.