Instagram reels

Instagram Reels For Business Ideas: A Content Plan

Instagram Reels are becoming one of the most important ways for businesses, yes businesses can connect with their dream followers and ideal customers online. 

Trust me when I say you are not alone if you’re confused on how to post on Reels and what to actually post. 

We will be creating a reel’s content plan complete with examples of brands that are doing Reels really right and all the tips you need for publishing and optimizing your Reels content and be sure to stay tuned until the end. 

I’ll be sharing a case study on what it would look like and what results in you can expect if you only posted reels for 30 days. So let’s dive right in. 

Why Should Businesses use Instagram Reels

There are many companies that use Instagram Reels to share behind-the-scenes footage of their businesses, giving a human touch to their brand.

In addition, it’s interesting to see the work that goes into producing a video, something that doesn’t get showcased on other social media platforms.

Benefits of Instagram Reels for Business

Importance of Instagram Reels

First of all, why are Instagram Reels even important in the first place? 

Reels are a new form of content that was kind of birthed from TikTok really short form micro-types of videos that are under 60 seconds, under 30 seconds and they really give viewers a really great insight or quick tip or inspiration just by watching this short-form video that they can loop and rewatch and that is really kind of the future of video. 

So let’s walk through the four places that you can actually discover and find Instagram Reels. 

Discovering Instagram Reels

So, first of all, you can find it in the center of your screen, where there is its own reels tab for scrolling and watching these looping videos. And then you have your regular Instagram feed. 

Discovering Instagram reels

So just like we’re carousels and IGTV videos would be, this is where reels that are shared to the feed will be viewed. 

And what I’ve really noticed is that reels that are on the feed can be almost a week old and still getting a lot of views and reach and engagement and then they can also be shared onto Instagram stories for a 15-second preview. 

This is a really great way to tap into your Instagram stories audience and get views over to your reels channel. 

Put your Instagram Reels under the reels tab on your profile

So this is where all of your Instagram Reels videos will go where people that are on your profile can discover them and binge all your reels content. 

Put your Instagram Reels under the reels tab on your profile

So if you’re wondering a little bit about how reels can go viral, I found out there are two main factors that have contributed to this. 

  • One being that your reel is a little bit more general meaning it’s gonna reach a broader audience.
  • Another factor means that you’re utilizing trending audio and music in your video.

But I wanna preface by saying that if you’re a small business, this might not always be the route that you wanna go just because you’re getting millions of views on a video, doesn’t mean it’s always helping you reach your goals. 

So let’s dive right into the three main types of Instagram Reels that you’re gonna see. 

The first one is Education

So this is where you want to teach people how to do something, give them a really quick tip or hack or demonstrate something. 

This is really great for positioning your brand as an expert in whatever it is that you do that is really going to solve a problem for your ideal customers and clients. 

And here are some examples of how to utilize educational reels, the first being a style that I love to utilize and that is actually talking to the camera. 

This is a really great way to humanize your brand when creating video content, but also offering a ton of value. 

Demonstrate Your Product

This is a really great real example. If for whatever reason you don’t wanna show your face on video. 

If you’re struggling with how to create ideas for your educational reels, a really great weight is by looking at what are the frequently asked questions that you’re getting from your customers or clients, and how can you make a reel that’s addressing those. 

Creating reels around the solutions or tips that your product or offer provides is another way that you can educate your audience without pushing your product too much. 

So now let’s dive into the second content type and that is entertainment. 

Entertainment

And this might be what you think about when you think of Instagram Reels, the dancing, the pointing but I wanna preface that you absolutely don’t need to do any of those types of video styles. 

It just means leveraging the trends and the audio and the music to really make sure that you’re staying current in the reels’ culture. 

Entertaining reels are really great for creating that relatability factor because they’re utilizing humor and they might have a lot of energy with utilizing dancing or a lot of movement that’s really going to draw your viewer’s attention to your reels. 

And if for whatever reason you don’t have music on your Instagram Reels, you can still leverage these trending sounds and audios. 

If you go onto a reel where you find music that you want to use, you’re going to tap use original audio and then you’ll see the option to either save the audio to use for later or top use audio where then you can film your reel and utilize that trend. 

Search music for entertainment

So it’s really important when you’re utilizing these types of entertaining reels is to make sure that it makes sense for your brand voice and feels authentic to you.

One of the benefits of using these types of entertaining reels is you’re able to have a built-in format of how to create these videos by seeing how other people are using these trending audios. 

Inspiration

The last content type for your Instagram Reels ends inspiration, which essentially is just telling a story. And this is really great from sharing that struggle to success story, sharing the transformations of yourself or your own clients and customers. 

One of the great ways to kind of celebrate a huge milestone in your business with your customers and this brand is showing how one of their new products actually got into a big name store. 

This type of video is actually a really great way of utilizing clips that you might already have on your phone and putting them together so they truly tell a story. 

While we talked about the three main types of Instagram Reels, you might just use whichever one Reels the most authentic to your brand with this type of video format, or what I found really helpful for my own brand is actually by doing a hybrid combining entertaining with educational reels. 

Content Plan

As for your next steps with your content plan, the first thing you wanna do before posting is starting consuming. 

This is gonna really help you understand the culture of how other brands and businesses are utilizing the apps and it’s gonna inspire some trends that you can start with. 

And once you start posting your Instagram reels, you’re gonna wanna start looking at the analytics to see what performed well and how you can create more of this. 

There are a few metrics that you can look at to see what’s performing well

So first of all, you can just look at your reels tab and see how many views, comments, and likes your videos are getting. 

To see even more in-depth metrics, you’re gonna wanna go to your Insights tab and that’s where you’re going to see the impressions and reach of your account and you’re also going to be able to see how many new followers your reels are attracting. 

Insight overview

And you have these features if you have a creator account or a business account. 

As I mentioned, this isn’t an exact science, so you’re gonna wanna put together those vanity metrics, those likes, comments, and views, and how they are going to relate to impressions, reach, and followers. 

That’s gonna give you a really holistic view of how reels are helping your account grow or maybe what you need to tweak in your strategy. 

Now, you’re probably wondering how often I need to be creating all of these reels. I wanna start with a sustainable strategy that’s still going to help you see really great results. 

The more Instagram reels you create, the better results you’re going to see. So three to four reels are a really great starting point and when it comes to should you delete reels that don’t perform as well? 

Do not delete your reels, because even if one reel doesn’t perform well, it might actually boost another reel to perform a little bit better. 

The key to your reels content strategy is really focusing on how you can give valuable content to your followers and also the people you want to attract to your Instagram

So while you can occasionally sell and promote your launches and campaigns, you really wanna focus on valuable reels content. 

As promised, I’m gonna be sharing a case study on what happened when myself and other business owners only posted reels on our account. 

The group that participated in these 30 days of placing consecutive reels was a really big mix. Some people had only 100 followers. 

Some people had thousands of followers and some people were product businesses and other people did service. 

Conclusion :

So it really gave us a good idea of how reels performed for everyone. Those business results looked like an increase in their leads and sales on their products. 

And for my personal results, I saw my video views starting around 1000 to 2000 now averaging 10,000 views per video. And I also saw a huge increase in my following. 

I really wanna encourage you to take this challenge, test out using reels consecutively for 30 days and post them on your feed. 

I guarantee you’re probably gonna see some really great results. The next step in your content plan is creating your Instagram Reels. 

2021-08-14

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