Golden recommendations from REAL creators to push the limits on your Instagram game and help you increase your followers!
Let’s make it super clear at the very beginning- Making reels is TOUGH work! To the uninitiated, Reels are the short video format introduced by Meta via their platform Instagram which has taken the world completely by storm since 2020. In fact according to Influencer hub’s article, Instagram is #1 in terms of engagement. Yes, you read that right- number one vs. all other short-form video apps.
We at Team Kreo asked around our community and curated the best insights to find you some extremely ACTIONABLE steps that were sourced STRAIGHT from actual creators themselves to help improve your reels, ready? it’s go time:
1. Quantity is king (at least, currently)- Unfortunately (or fortunately?!) with the number of creators that are out there are the moment trying to make it work, the Instagram algorithm seems to be prioritizing a large quantity of reels vs. higher quality reels; This does not in any way mean that any of us can ignore quality completely, but just ensuring that you have a wide enough variety of content for a person visiting your profile to see, pushes a creator over the edge when it comes to a chance at virality.
2. Aesthetically pleasing videos do well (including optimizing on screen placement of links text)- Smooth transitions, readable text, high resolution video, good lighting, crisp and clear sound (if relevant) all seem to be things that the algorithm definitely prefers- try to use high quality equipment — or even the same equipment smartly if you can!
3. Time of day- Typically 7–10 am is best on weekday mornings and 5.30 pm — 10pm works on weekday evenings. On weekends, typically expect the optimal time in the morning to be shifted up a bit to 9.00 am to 12 pm and evenings are a bit earlier — 4 pm onwards till about 9 / 10 pm. Posting consistently during this time of the day should go a long way towards improving your viewership.
4. Duration: With humanity as a whole having shorter attention spans these days, this one was definitely not a shocker- shorter content typically 15 / 10 seconds or even 30 seconds long tends to do better than longer form content on Reels. This however does not mean that you cannot add value to pack a punch. The idea is to pack as much dense content as possible into bite sized bits of information that are easy to digest for the viewer.
5. Keeping an eye on what is trending: Putting in the right music track when its trending (e.g. very recently it was “My money don’t jiggle jiggle” and EVERYONE was making reels to that one!) or making sure you upload a rain related post/ song when its raining is something that has been known to get traction for a lot of people. Trending audio can be tracked by looking for the arrow symbol next to it ↗️
a. Keep tracking new trends in your specific geography or region. Go to your explore page and make a note of trends by browsing a few reels and try to make your reels mirror concepts that are currently trending — this should work most of the time 🤸🏽
b. While Instagram shows you content based on engagement, it also shows you other generally ‘trending’ content and not just what you interact with. It is important to remember not to be afraid to experiment and see what works for you, even if something is not your niche at first glance!
6. Train the algorithm: Consistently post at the same time, on the same days, every single week so that the algorithm gets used to you posting then. This level of consistency has been known to increase most users’ engagement and we implore all creators (especially new ones) to try this out!
7. Make your content share-able: People share content if a reel triggers one of the following in your viewers-
a. Recognizable: I know this!
b. Relatable: I get this + This is for me!
c. Repeatable: I could do this!
8. Make your content save-able: People save reels ONLY if it is informative/ adding some kind of long term value. Unlike sharing, entertainment related ‘saving’ is rare and only occurs if something is OUTWORLDLY hilarious. People tend to save reels only if they are easily recreated — like a reel or a tutorial of some sort that can be copied or applied to their physical life.
9. Cross-post when you can: Use ALL of Instagram’s available platforms and methods: Stories, Reels, Posts, Carousels, IGTV (now called the long video format); Do the occasional live session as well- it never hurts to be even closer/ more accessible to your fans!
10. Random ‘X’ Factor: Sometimes Instagram’s algorithm is super random and even the most consistent and high quality posts may not work as well as you thought they would, despite trying all the tricks mentioned above- it is important to remember not to lose hope!
Remember Vaseline as a brand took 163 years to go Viral, so don’t you give up already!
Thanks for reading all the way to the end of our first creator ‘crowdsourced’ post- we are CONFIDENT that this is the first of many! As always, please continue to pour in the love and feel free to write in to us at Kreo any time (something@kreotech.xyz). we are always happy to be geeking out on other creators reels, work or anything really!
Writer: Niraj
Creator-contributors: Sindhura, Samarth, @deepsgopro, Ishan.