Have you heard about Instagram's new reels feature?
Are you wondering how the heck does it work?
Why should I use it?
And what can I do to use reels to get more
visibility on Instagram?
Well, let's stick around for a step by step tutorial for
how reels actually works on Instagram.
We'll go through it every step in the app,
we're going to walk through how it works.
Some of the pros and cons that you should consider before
using reel so that you can start using this new feature
and get visibility on Instagram.
Even if you aren't super creative,
you're not super funny,
or really you're not entertaining at all.
So if you're new here,
my name is Meredith Marsh and this channel is dedicated to
helping your side hustle thrive with YouTube.
So make sure you hit that subscribe button now so you
can get started.
So, first of all,
what the heck is real well,
if you're not familiar with tick tock,
then there's a real feature on Instagram is probably going to
feel very different to you.
And honestly it should feel different.
It's not like an Instagram story.
It's definitely not like a YouTube video.
It's really kind of a whole new medium,
this simple way to explain it is it's a way for
you to share your tips,
tricks, bring the value in your content,
bring your personality,
your experience,
your expertise,
but in a new and more entertaining way.
And if you're thinking,
Oh, it's so new,
I'm just gonna wait until other people are using it before
I start using it or more likely you're thinking,
Oh gosh,
not another platform for me to learn,
not another algorithm for me to figure out,
just hear me out with this.
First of all,
if it's on Instagram,
it's not exactly new.
Okay. It's probably quite a bit more mainstream than you think
it is.
And you're probably going to want to jump on the bandwagon
sooner rather than later.
So you can see reels here over on my Instagram.
Um, it's Meredith marsh.co.
If you want to go follow me there,
then you can check out what I have.
So here's my regular feed that you can see here.
And then here's my reels.
They only have three up right now.
So if you want to look at people's reels on their
actual channel,
just go to their profile and then search for this,
the real menu here to find reels for people that you
don't follow,
or maybe even for people that you do just come over
to the little search icon down in the bottom,
left ish of the Instagram app.
And then this top square here is dedicated just to real.
So if you tap that,
you're going to see a reels,
video and Instagram going to choose what it thinks you might
want to see.
I'm not sure how it gave me a plant,
but whatever,
if you scroll up,
it's similar to how you would navigate talks for you page.
This is as close as we have right now to a,
for you page.
So you scroll up and whatever Instagram thinks you might want
to see,
it's going to show you.
I want to show you some examples of some reels that
I found that I think are just really good examples.
So here's a really good example.
I liked this one Really stuck in the content creation process.
I want you to take a step back and think,
how can I inspire?
How can I educate?
How can I answer Tane now create with one of these
goals in mind?
Do we have here?
Well, here's one from Monica is DIY a life.
So, um,
this is just her in 15 seconds,
time-lapse building a piece of furniture,
which is totally relevant to her channel.
Um, and so I think that's a really good example.
So you can see here just scrolling through these.
There's not just like a regular Instagram story.
They're kind of funny.
They're kind of entertaining.
So how do you actually go to create a real well,
I'm going to go to the homepage here.
You can either tap on this camera icon in the top,
just like you would,
if you are going to create an Instagram story,
there's the camera.
And all you have to do is just move this little
menu over here.
Two reels.
The other kind of shortcut is to just swipe over and
that will reveal your stories,
your stories camera.
So you have reels,
you have a live video,
you have your normal story stuff,
your boomerang,
all that kind of thing.
So you want to make sure that you are on real
down here in the very bottom,
and let's just go through all of these different menu options
real quick,
and then I'll show you how to actually make one.
So down here in the bottom,
right, you're going to see where you can flip your camera
around. There's a candle and we'll go back up to the
top. So that's just your regular camera flip around.
You can also load up a,
a pre recorded video or anything that you have on your
camera roll by choosing this option down here in the bottom
left, and then over here on the left hand side,
these are your creation tools to create an actual real,
we'll get to those in just a second up here in
the top left,
you have your story controls settings.
You don't really need to do anything with that in the
middle of the top is where you have your flash setting.
So you can turn your flash on.
You can turn it off or you can have it on
automatic. I usually keep mine off and then to exit out
of this whole reels creation,
you could just hit this X over there.
So about the whole creating a real,
let me just show you how this is going to work.
And hopefully you can see me in my video.
So what we have here on the left hand side is
audio speed effects and timer.
We could create this.
Like we would a regular Instagram story where we just tap
this reels icon here,
and it's going to record.
We have the timer up at the top.
You can kind of see,
we only have 15 seconds.
So it gives us a little bit of an indication of
where it's going to cut us off.
We can hit stop.
We could go back and rewatch what we just recorded.
We could also edit it just by,
um, basically we would be trimming the onions like this,
and then we could hit this next button here.
So now you can see up here at the very top.
You can see how we have,
uh, just a little bit here.
We have like a little over a third,
I would say,
so we could hit record again and just record another one.
This is pretty boring.
This is like really no different than creating an Instagram story.
But what's really cool about this is the creation tool allows
us to go back and edit each little,
you know,
like chunk of our reel or even delete it entirely.
That's offers a little bit of a different feature and then
Instagram stories,
right? But what are we going to create with this?
So first of all,
we have the timer.
So what this is going to do is Two things.
One, it's going to give you a title,
Like a countdown,
a three second countdown,
so that you could set your phone up.
Like, let's say,
you're not holding your phone in your hand that you need
to set it up or the tripod and then get into
place. You could use the timer for that,
but what's really cool is let's say you,
you have 15 second clip that you're going to do in
total, but the first little bit that you want to do,
let's say you only want it to be four seconds long.
So we hit set timer and then we hit that record
button. We're going to count down.
And then it's only going to record for four seconds and
then stop automatically another cool thing.
Once you have created your first clip within your reel is
if you hit this little align button,
it'll show you,
it's pretty creepy.
It'll show you where you ended up at.
So you can line this up,
hit record again.
And now if you're like in a different place,
or if you have your fingers in a different place,
right? Like this,
now let's just say,
I want to start off from where I left off.
So we're going to hit a line again.
And then all I have to do,
this is so weird.
Then all I have to do is like try and line
myself up as best as I can like this.
And then we have,
you know,
we've lined ourselves up.
Let's look at the effects.
So we have basically a lot of the same effects that
we would have with our regular Instagram stories.
So speed over here.
We one access just regular speed.
If you do half speed,
then you're,
everything's going to be in slow motion.
So you can record in real time like it is right
now, but when it plays back,
it's going to be slow motion,
a DSLR camera at a garage sale recently,
and I'm going to do a real of my actual tips.
So I'm going to start off by talking to the screen.
So here's what to look for.
If you find a camera for sale online or at a
garage sale,
and you want to use it for YouTube.
So that's my first little part there.
Um, I'm just need to show,
there's like three things on this camera that I need to
show. So we're going to say,
make sure it has a video function.
Make sure it has a flip out screen so you can
see yourself,
make sure it's going to auto focus on your face and
make sure you can hook up a mic.
So now we need to add some text to the screen
here. So first of all,
just like regular Instagram stories,
you can just type whatever you want here using the type
tool. Cool.
So, so we have that all typed out.
Usually like to add some color or something.
Let me get a little bit smaller.
We're going to put it up here so you can see
that little blue line up here at the top.
You want to make sure you don't go past that cause
it's going to get cut off I'm in the feed if
you do.
So we have that.
You can see our text down here at the bottom and
right now the tax is going to be on the screens
throughout the whole reel.
So what we want to do is actually the only wants
us to be on screen while I'm saying these words.
So what we're going to do,
scrub this over here to about right there.
And then we're going to say,
I'd say,
make sure it has a video function.
I'm just using my finger to scrub through here and kind
of trim the edges like this.
So right about there.
So here's what it looks like now.
Here's what to look for.
If you find a camera for sale online or at a
garage sale and you want to use it for YouTube,
make sure it has a video function.
Make sure it has a flip out screen so you can
see yourself,
make sure it's going to auto focus on your face and
make sure you can hook up a mic,
but we're going to go ahead and go to the next
thing here.
We can type in whatever we want for our caption.
Now we can change our cover.
Now for this.
I'm just going to save it as a draft because I'm
not ready to post it yet.
And then we have it here in our drafts folder,
basically on our reels feed.
And you could go in and post it from there.
So don't be afraid thinking that you're not creative.
You're not entertaining just to go and look at what other
people are doing with their reels.
Also go check out tick tock,
if you haven't done that yet,
it's really,
um, interesting.
And I think it may get some creative juices flowing for
you. And if nothing else just go over to my Instagram,
Meredith marsh.co,
make sure you follow me there,
see what I'm doing for my reels.
And you might be able to find something that you,
you can pick out and apply to your channel.
And yeah,
if you're creating videos because you want to grow your side
hustle online using YouTube and Instagram and video content,
make sure you hit subscribe to this channel because that's what
we do over here.
And I'll see you in my next video.