After over 5.3 million views just for my Instagram reels
alone, as of August 26,
here's how I've learned how to grow my business through short-form video
with the steps to prove it and stay tuned until the end where I'm going to walk
you through my insights in the backend of my account and show you
exactly what reels are doing for my growth.
Tip. Number one,
to growing your business on Instagram reels is to keep the video length of your
reels short. Now,
I know that you can create reels up to 60 seconds because
Instagram is kind of copying TikTok. TikToks can be longer than 60 seconds.
However, when I think about people's attention spans,
it's like that of a goldfish. It's very short.
So even though you can do 60 second videos,
I do find that my shorter videos,
even the ten second videos tend to perform the best in terms of repeat views
and growth.
I also did a little bit of sleuthing because when you're viewing a reel in your
news feed, you're only seeing a cropped version of it.
And I was curious if Instagram was cutting off reels after 15 seconds
and wanting you to watch them in the reels format of the app,
which is kind of full screen. So I looked at my feed for a little bit,
and I saw a video from Instagram's creator account.
It was 45 seconds and it played in full.
But the thing that I did find out is videos only loop twice.
So if your video is 10 seconds,
it's only going to play twice in someone's feed until Instagram is going to
pause the looping and encourage someone to watch it in their reels.
So another argument for why you'd want a shorter video,
because the chance of someone watching a 45 second video twice,
it's slim.
The chance of someone watching a ten second video twice is a lot higher.
And remember when people are watching your video on repeat that tells the
algorithm, this is a good video. We're going to show it to more people.
My second tip to growing on Instagram reels is to talk fast and edit fast.
Did you catch that? Talk fast and edit fast.
It seems like a weird concept, but again,
people's attention spans are super short.
So if you're slow to get to the point or if you're drawing things out or umming
and ahhing, people don't have time for that. So talk fast,
even though it's not how you would normally communicate and edit fast.
What does that mean?
That means I want you to trim your clips so that there's no dead air.
Even if your clips are so tight together,
that it almost sounds like your words are overlapping. That's okay.
And honestly, that's kind of the YouTube style, right?
With the quick cuts and really short, fast sentences pieced together.
That same concept applies to reels. Now if this is sounding too advanced, like,
"I don't know how to make those edits Elise." Well,
you might enjoy my FREE five-day reels-focused challenge just for you,
the business owner.
We're going to focus on how to make reels that actually bring sales back to your
business. It's called the Reel of Fortune Challenge. And if you're intrigued,
I'll leave the link right below this video.
My third tip to growing on Instagram reels is to save your good stuff for the
end. So what's the juiciest tip that you can share?
What is the one that's going to get the biggest laugh when you are creating
reels and especially when you're adding text onto screen,
which I highly recommend because people want to see you, hear you,
and read on screen what you're saying or what you're suggesting,
try to position your information so that the juiciest most interesting thing
is the very last thing that you share. Why am I suggesting that? The reason is,
is because if people catch a snippet of what you share at the end,
but they don't catch it in full, they're going to be curious.
And what they're going to do is rewatch your entire video from the start to the
end, they're going to try to capture that last thing that you shared.
They might even want to screenshot their screen and you can also tell them to do
so in the caption, hint, hint,
so that people are watching your video over and over to screenshot that one
juicy slide of all your good information.
Now don't go too far with this.
It can be annoying if people like stuff their screen with information and your
brain has no way of processing all that info in one second.
So don't be obnoxious about it, but try it out. Some people might complain.
They might say, oh, your information went too fast, but just say, oh,
sorry about that.
Go ahead and screenshot it when it comes up so that you have it for your future
records. And again,
this helps your reel get more views and reach because as people are rewatching
your video,
the algorithm is picking up on that signal and it knows to share it with more
people.
Tip number four for growing on reels is to use hashtags with your
reels. I get a lot of questions about how to use hashtags with reels.
And in general,
I use hashtags the same way that I use them for posts or IGTV.
I include them with all of my posts and I include up to 30
hashtags. The other common question I get is where to place the hashtags. Now,
again,
I've heard the rumor that Instagram reels don't recognize hashtags when they're
not in the caption. I don't know if this is true.
It kind of just sounds like a rumor to me, but if you are on the cautious side,
include your hashtags below your main caption.
My fifth tip for growing on reels is to use done for you rerl ideas.
What? Yeah. They exist because I have brainstormed reel ideas for you.
Now, if you're a subscriber here on my channel,
you've probably seen these videos already where I've brainstormed reel ideas for
product businesses, for coaches.
So go ahead and check out my channel and find those videos.
Or if you just want the ideas delivered to your inbox,
I've got a freebie for you. Head to elisedarma.co/reels
and download six free reel ideas for your business today.
My sixth tip is to share your recently published reel to your
stories for even more views.
Did you know that your reel will play in your stories?
It will play up to 15 seconds in your stories. Well,
Instagram counts those views as part of your reels view count.
So the more you can share your recently published reels to your stories and
generate views from your stories,
the more it's going to generate overall views for your reel and hopefully boost
your reels. Reach.
My seventh tip to growing on Instagram reels is to find the early
trends on TikTok. Now,
this doesn't mean you need to be posting on TikTok per se,
because I know TikTok can be a little more complicated in terms of making reels,
and it can be a major black hole of distraction because there's so much
entertainment there, but the truth is currently trends are starting on TikTok.
So that could be dance trends, music trends, audio trends.
And then after a few weeks, they kind of trickle on over to Instagram reels.
So if you want to be ahead of the curve,
I'd recommend that you have a voyeur account on TikTok.
Just use it to look at what's trending on Tik Tok.
And then if you want to actually learn my process of how I make videos on TikTok
and then repurpose them over onto Instagram reels,
I've shared the whole process for you right here in this video.
And if you don't want to go that route totally fine,
you can still draw your inspiration from TikTok and then go into the Instagram
reels app and try to find the same audio,
try to find the same filters and make your own version of that trending TikTok.
My eighth tip to grow in an Instagram reels and probably my best tip is this
don't worry about fancy dance moves or fancy edits or getting the perfect
take. Honestly, when I look at some of my best performing reels,
they're the ones that were so quick and easy to make.
I didn't put much time or effort into it because I did it just for fun or just
as a joke. And lo and behold, those are the reels that have been taking off.
So let me show you some of these reels as an example,
and I'm going to take you behind the scenes of my account.
I'm going to show you my insights so that you can see exactly how reels are
helping my account grow. PS.
We're going to cover all of this and more in our upcoming free live reels
challenge. It's called the Reel of Fortune. How could you not want to join it?
It's for you, the business owner.
I'll leave the link right below this video and be sure to sign up today. Okay.
So here's a reel, that's less than 10 seconds long.
I did it in one take using audio from TikTok and it has almost 300,000
views.
Um, super simple, no cuts, no edits. In fact,
if you want to use this exact same audio for your reel,
go ahead and find this reel over on my profile and then tap the audio right
in the bottom left corner.
And you're going to see this button that says use audio. When you tap that,
it's going to load it into your reel and you can just start filming right from
there. Here's another reel that I made really quickly. In fact,
it was a remix to someone else's reel and it has over a hundred thousand views.
All I was doing was reacting to that video and the engagement exploded.
So next I want to take you into my insights. So let's go ahead and tap insights.
And I want to show you what reels are actually doing for my account.
So tap where it says last seven days,
and I'm going to go over to last 90 days.
I want to see as much data as I can get,
and then I'm going to tap into accounts reached.
So I want to look at my reach and then I want to see which type of
content helped me reach the most accounts. And there we have,
it really helped me reach over 300,000 accounts,
much more than posts,
which helped me reach 147,000 accounts and more than
IGTVs and more than stories and live videos.
So now we can really dig into, okay, what were my top posts in that period.
So this post right here reached over 42,000 people, which was amazing.
You can see a theme here that my animated memes and gifs do really well.
I can look at what stories helped my reach grow.
And people really loved this nail story of me asking for people's
opinion. That was my most viewed story.
And now we get down to reels.
So which reels helped me get the most reach?
Well so far in this time period,
the reel on best times to post has helped me reach over
50,000 people, how to sell more, but do less.
That also did really well. Again, this is a one-take wonder.
All I did was time my finger point, that one is surprisingly popular. And again,
these are all really short reels. They're all around 10 seconds.
Here's another one.
Okay. This one's a little bit more advanced.
I had to learn this hand dance. It's not even really a dance,
but I decided to take this trend and do my own switcheroo. Right?
I don't get asked questions about manifestation and that's the point.
I stick to my niche. So let's look at one more.
Watch this if you're a perfectionist, oh, this one, I had fun making.
Now this one is a little more complex. It involves two characters of myself.
And if you'd like to learn how to do this in terms of
becoming two characters, I cover it in my TikTok hacks video right here.
Go ahead and watch that. And you'll learn how to do this very easily.
So there you have my top eight tips for growing on Instagram reels,
but this is really just scratching the surface.
If you're eager to embrace short-form video for your business, because honestly,
a ten second video that gets you a hundred followers, 10 leads,
one client, isn't it worth your 10 seconds?
I would love for you to join me in my free five day reels challenge called
the Reel of Fortune. It's five days.
I'm going to be your coach and I'm going to be helping you every single day on
the path to creating reels that actually bring in sales to your business.
So go ahead and head to the link right below this video sign up and I can't wait
to see you there. To ease and revenue. I'll see you in the next video.
My second tip to growing on Instagram reels. It's to...uh. You saw where
I was going with that. Okay. I don't know if I can
do it. Okay.