With many positive responses worldwide, the use of Instagram Reels has become a new social media strategy method for many businesses.

As of late 2020, Instagram Reels are now available in more than 50 countries around the globe. With their rapid increase in usage, they also play an essential role in your business’s social media strategy.

Worldwide known brands like Red Bull, Louis Vuitton, Balmain, and more, are all taking advantage of Instagram Reels to help grow their brand awareness and social media presence.

Well, this article is going to show you exactly why you need Instagram Reels for your business and how important they actually are.

How do you create Instagram Reels?

Instagram Reels can be created in two different ways:

• The first way is to either hold down the record button in order to capture video footage
• Or, you can use the second way, which is to upload your videos from your camera roll directly

An Instagram Reel can be created from either one video or multiple clips that are recorded. Here are the main specifications of Reels:

• You can only create Reels from mobile, not desktop. Even when it comes to uploading, they can only be uploaded from a mobile device.
• Reels that are completed can be from 1 to 60 seconds long.
• Every video is uploaded in 9:16 portrait mode

Here are the steps in creating a Reel:

Go on Instagram, and click on the plus sign next to chats. After, click on “Reels.”

Once you are on Reels, you have many options to choose from. You can add music, adjust the speed of the Reel, add effects and filters and change the video layout. You can also adjust the period of time your Reel is supposed to last (15-60 seconds).

After you set all of this up, you just have to press the record button and press it again whenever you are done. After you are done recording, you can edit your Reel with text, stickers, and drawings.

Click “next” once you are finished and right after, click “share” to make your Reel visible.

Additionally, if your Reel gets featured in the explore tab, you will be notified about this. Featured Reels are usually those chosen by Instagram to help people discover new things and original content. You can learn more about reels here.

How can you track Instagram Reels analytics?

Whenever you incorporate Instagram Reels in your business strategy. You should pay attention to your metrics to keep track of how well you are performing. However, to access insights on Instagram, you need to be on a business or creator account.

Here are the metrics that are included in Instagram Reels:

• Likes
• Comments
• Shares
• Saves
• Plays
• Number of accounts reached

You can look up these metrics in insights and constantly monitor these metrics as they can directly impact how popular your Reels become. The speed at which you get likes on your video will instantly affect how many accounts you can reach on Instagram. Shares are another great way of reaching more accounts too, as they are considered to be a part of word-of-mouth marketing.

The best ways to use Instagram Reels for your business

Include your product or service in your videos

If world-class brands like Louis Vuitton and others showcase their products with Instagram Reels, why wouldn’t you? Even if you take the proper steps as mentioned above, your Reels can be featured on the explore page, allowing users who aren’t following you to see your product. That is the main goal you should try to achieve.

However, if you want to achieve this, you have to take the necessary steps such as:

• Targeting the right audience
• Using hashtags in the description when posting your content
• Using descriptive captions
• Text overlay

Use hashtags

Hashtags are trendy on Instagram. According to a study, on average, whenever you use hashtags in your description, it averages 12.6% more engagement than if you were not to use any.

Instagram allows you to use up to 30 hashtags. Although, try to mix them up by using fewer hashtags that are more frequently used by other accounts and more of those less frequently used.

For example, if we take hashtags such as #love, #marketing, and more, these hashtags have millions to billions of followers and are used by so many accounts. These hashtags won’t help your Reel stand out as your post will get lost in the millions of others posted each second.

Instead, you can try other alternatives such as #marketinglove, #productlover, #greatvibes, and many other creative words you can think of. Hashtags with a large amount of usage will make your post disappear in just a second. Try typing a primary keyword such as #marketing in the search tab on Instagram, and you will get many alternative hashtags you can use. Here is a photo to help you better understand.

Also, don’t forget to use hashtags that are related to your content. Avoid using any that don’t relate to your content at all. This will only bring you users that aren’t interested in your content.

Include offers

Using Reels to announce any discount or new deals you are offering is an excellent way of getting the word across. This can be done successfully when you have been using Instagram Reels for a certain period of time. It works even better when you can get featured on the explore page.

However, whenever you create a Reel, avoid sounding like you are desperate to sell the product or service. Try sounding like you are a friend and make your Reel enjoyable. For example, if every Reel you created was talking about the latest trends in marketing, then continue that tone even when presenting a new product or deal.

Everyone loves to be persuaded to buy something, but nobody likes to be forced into buying anything. That is why you want to build your authority from an early period before you get to the stage of creating a Reel where you include deals and offers.

Set up Instagram Reels ads

If you are doing good organically, setting up Instagram Reels ads is never a bad idea. Instagram ads are good for reaching a wider audience and increasing user engagement. Otherwise, with Instagram ads, you have many different advertising objectives, which are:

• Reach
• Conversions
• Views
• Traffic
• Brand awareness
• App installs

Many brands across the globe are already experimenting with Instagram Reels ads and find it to be a great way of increasing brand awareness and their overall content performance. Even though Instagram is an excellent social platform for organic growth, sadly, its organic growth rate has fallen below 1.6% as of 2021. This fall in organic growth has encouraged users to go with ads that will help their content achieve higher social media rankings.

Include behind the scenes

Behind the scenes can be interesting to include whenever you are setting up an Instagram Reel. Your audience only sees the perfect parts of the video, but they don’t know what it took to achieve perfection. This is similar to when you watch a movie; you see the perfect scenes but don’t know how many times the scene had to be practiced to be perfected.

Behind the scenes can be entertaining to watch; they have lots of humor and show uniqueness in your brand! So, why not use them in your videos?

Record Reels with ‘How a day in our life looks like

Especially if you are an influencer or own a brand, these videos are super interesting to watch because they usually see your daily activities while at work.

A day in life includes daily activities you go through, what your life outside of the office looks like and what kind of person you are. We are all human beings and we share some similar, so these types of videos are entertaining to show.

Conclusion- Why you should start using Instagram Reels now

The rise of social media platforms is continuous, and the fact that they are the new way of interacting with your audience. Social media is your best bet, especially for the younger generation who absolutely don’t pay attention to traditional marketing.

Instagram itself is one of the best social media platforms to use across the globe. The platform has over one billion active users, and that is helpful for you.

You could think of Instagram Reels just like another version of TikTok, where you don’t have to be an extremely popular brand to get good traffic and followers. The beginning is only a bit harder. Once you’ve started, it just gets easier!