The usage of Instagram skyrocketed after the launch of a new feature called “Reels”. Like TikTok, the feature allows users to create a 15-60 seconds video and share it with followers.
68% of users love watching videos with a duration of under one minute. Owing to the increasing popularity of short video content, more and more businesses are leveraging the benefit of Instagram Reels.
Reels have become an important part of content strategy as they get 22% more engagement than regular video content. 51% of marketers are willing to invest more in short video content, according to a Hubspot report.
While Instagram has always been a valuable business platform, Reels have created new opportunities. In fact, very recently, Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, announced that the platform is shifting to a more video-friendly app, making Reels the most prominent feature of the app. Yet not all businesses are using Instagram Reels. Some of them don’t know where to even begin.
Well, we’ve created a complete guide on how to get started with Instagram Reels and grow your business. Keep reading!
Different Ways To Use Reels To Grow Your Business
Your audience enjoys watching short videos. It’s because of lower attention span and digestible content. Instagram Reels give businesses a platform to create such hard-hitting, relatable content that gets to the point.
Let’s look at a few ways in which B2B businesses can use Instagram Reels to grow:
Follow a trend
Trends change throughout time. But it’s also important to leverage these trends to stay relevant and appeal to your target audience. You may find the most popular content format by looking at the Reels under the Discover tab. It might be a challenge, an audio clip, a remixed video, or a hashtag.
Join the trend if you believe it will resonate with your audience and create content around it. This is the easiest and quickest way to reach a wide audience and get more views.
Educate about your product (with entertainment)
Most users on Instagram watch Reels for fun. They don’t have any objective in mind. Hence, creating entertaining Reels is very important for brand awareness and to get more engagement. However, you can mix entertainment and education to create Reels for your audience.
Talk about your product/service, highlight its benefits and how it is valuable for your audience. Few examples of how you can do this is –
- On your Instagram story, use the Q&A sticker to solicit questions from your followers about your product/service. You can turn some specific questions into an Instagram reel if you think they would be helpful in making a larger audience understand your product/service better.
- In your comment section, your audience may occasionally ask you many questions. You can turn the replies to the most common comments into a Reel.
- Use a trending audio and reel formats to talk about your product/service. This will make your content fun and engaging. Take a look at this Hubspot video where a product manager responds to one of the most often asked questions.You can create something similar too!
Promote New Product Features
Are you planning to launch a new product or introduce new features to existing ones? How about you create an Instagram reel and introduce it to your audience? You can first introduce the product through a small teaser and share a glimpse of what is coming.
This will build excitement among customers. Later you can create another reel talking about the product’s features and benefits. Reels are a great way to introduce new products to your audience without having them feel targeted.
For instance, In this video, Keap, an all-in-one sales and marketing automation platform, introduces its new feature for businesses. This 60-second reel is a step-by-step guide on how to use the feature.
You can even create something similar for your new product or feature!
Introduce Ongoing Offers/Promotions/Events
Introducing offers and promotions is not enough. It’s also important to market those offers and promotions so more and more customers come to know about them. It’s where you can leverage the benefit of Instagram Reels.
You can create a short, catchy video introducing available offers and promotions. Start your reel with a catchy headline and end it with a CTA (Call-to-action) encouraging customers to grab the offer.
Bonus tip: Collaborate with influencers in your niche to make reels promoting your new offers, promotions or events to tap into a wider audience that might not know of you. These influencers in your niche help you reach an audience that is very relevant to you, increase brand awareness and conversions!
Post Behind-the-scene videos
You can make Reels that give viewers a peek into the behind the scenes of your company. It is a great way to give your company a human touch and keep your audience engaged. You can introduce your employees to the audience, show them a tour of your office space and even showcase the daily lives of employees who you work with! Occasionally, you can share content around fun activities in your office, team outings or vacations.
Take for example, WeWork. To offer us a glimpse into what it’s like to work at WeWork, the company created an Instagram Reel that showcases the work environment of the office space.
Using Reels to post behind-the-scene videos introduces viewers to the other side of the business, which no other form of content does. This is more likely to build trust for your business. This trust can further convert viewers into your customers.
Repurpose your content
Repurposing content makes it much simpler to scale content, which is its biggest benefit. Additionally, there is no need to create each article, video, and infographic from scratch.
Simply search for content that is performing well on other marketing channels. For this you can dig deep into your website, blogs, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter accounts. Later you can repurpose that content into an Instagram reel. That’s it!
For example, you might have created a YouTube video a while ago that got you many views. You can pick the main highlights or message from the video and convert it into a 60-second Instagram Reel.
You can likewise repurpose blogs on your website into Instagram Reels as well. All you have to do is use your blog as a script for the flow of your Reel, whether you’re speaking your points or using text (or both).
Share Testimonials
95% of customers read online reviews before buying a product. Testimonials are the best marketing tactic for persuading customers to purchase your product or service. Customers are more likely to trust other customers.
Reels make it simple to leverage the power of testimonials for your business. You can ask your best customers about contributing a video testimonial about your brand and product and later convert them into Instagram Reels.
There are two ways you can use customer testimonials for your Instagram Reels. The first option is to overlay a video showcasing the product with a statement from the testimonial.
The second option is to create a case study in which you describe how your product solved a customer’s problem.
Sharing testimonials help to build trust among your audience as they come to know what your existing customers have to say. This might encourage them to try your product or service, increasing sales. Isn’t this a great strategy?
For example, take a look at this Canva video where one of their customers describes how he used the Canva features to grow his side project into a successful business. The video, which has over 50K views, illustrates how Canva can help you turn your company idea into a reality, which is simply amazing.
Establish Thought Leadership
You don’t necessarily have to post content related to your product or service every time. By sharing some exciting and informative content related to your business or niche, you can also add value to your customers.
You can share your industry knowledge by creating a series of How-To videos that your potential customers may need or want. Similar to that, you may create informative videos to share some tips with your customers that they would find useful. By doing this, you can build your authority and attract more customers.
The best example is Grammarly, where they not only talk about their product and services but also share tips and tricks around productive WFH day, how to express gratitude, journaling tips, and much more.
Hacks to make all the ways above Instagram Reels ideas work
The competition has grown as more companies use Instagram Reels for marketing.
It’s challenging to stand out. But the hacks listed below will help you increase your views and go viral.
Social Listening
You should not just pay attention to trends around your brand but look for trends in the industry. By doing so, you make better marketing decisions and stay relevant.
With social listening, you can discover industry trends and the latest happenings. It also helps you understand your audience better. You discover customer sentiment around your brand.
Specific industries like beauty and fashion see trends changing quickly. Social listening can help you understand better how your competitors are staying on top of those trends. You can identify what they’re doing right and incorporate it as well. Social Listening is a great way to find what appeals to your audience.
Storytelling
Using stories in marketing is effective. When audiences hear stories, they relate to them personally and perceive them to be meaningful. The entire point of storytelling is to allow your ideal customers to imagine themselves participating in the conversation. Solving their pain points and addressing their concerns helps build a strong connection.
One excellent example of this is Kickstarter. It is the current storytelling champion. The B2B crowdfunding website offers its members a platform for telling their brands’ stories through engaging campaigns which sparks interest from the general public. In the end, this attracts investors and fosters the development of original ideas.
Transitions
Using transitions in your Reels can help you keep your audience engaged. It piques people’s interest and keeps them guessing about “what’s going to happen next”. You can use transitions in a lot of creative ways.
For example, you can create before and after product/service content using transitions or use transitions to tell a story.
There are multiple ways in which you can use transitions like Finger Snap Transition, Headbutt Transition, and Perspective Transition.
Click here to read more about transitions and how they work.
Social Monitoring
You can’t simply post and disappear to keep things running. It’s important to find out what people are saying about your brand. You need to track hashtags; keyword mentions relevant to your brand to stay on the top of your industry or brand.
Monitoring what people are saying helps you stay relevant and engaging and prevents you from making key blunders.
Start Conversations
You must spark conversation with your audience. This will boost engagement and make your audience feel that you value them. You can join the exciting conversation, ask proactive questions in the captions, or encourage people to drop comments.
Get better at Instagram Reels with social media listening
You should monitor consumer trends and sentiments, measure your performance, and keep tab on your competitors if you want to stay at the top of Instagram Reels. We know how difficult it is to keep track of everything. Keeping up with social media trends is particularly challenging since they quickly change. Additionally, there are millions of things happening in the social media space, and it’s tough to stay on top of all of them. But what if we told you that you can do all of this with a single tool?
Yes, Radarr, a potent social listening tool provides you with real-time, hassle-free actionable insights about the audience’s behavior, interests, and market trends at a few clicks
You also get a consolidated dashboard for insightful data with robust social listening capabilities. With this dashboard you can see real-time visualizations of content and campaign performance analytics to improve it. What are you waiting for?
Book a free demo to learn more about Radarr today!
