Making Reels & Working The Algorithm
Two weeks ago I had a phone call with a Meta Instagram Professional,
she told me I could teach her how to use instagram and I have been seriously riding off of that high for the last two weeks. Hi, my name is Brianca. You may know me from hovering over your market display with my face in my phone, recording your amazing creations for MSLA Makers Co social media.
I have successfully grown my personal business, Bellis Botanicals, social media to a following of several hundred thousand followers between instagram, Tiktok and Facebook.
This month I was invited to talk with an instagram meta professional and she confirmed I knew what I was doing. Thank goodness. So, I officially feel like I can provide the help to other makers using social media to benefit their business.
I wan’t to show you that is doesn’t need to be as intimidating as it seems. Yes, their are so many things that go into creating a great social media account for your business, but I am going to cover two of the main things today: Reels and the algorithm.
Lets get into it…
I will be referring to Instagram for all this information but most of the same practices will apply to other social media.
Reels are where its at if you want to grow. Reels will help your grow, posts and stories will keep your followers engaging with your content.
You should be posting 2-5 times a week with a mix of reels and images. Start slow, don’t burn yourself out right at the start.
The best types of reels are usually either educational, funny, or aesthetically pleasing. My first videos were filmed in the darkest of dark corners with questionable effects and shaky footage. If you manage to master videography in a few weeks please reach out to me, we need to talk because something is wrong with you. What I am saying is, don’t stop because it doesn’t look good at first. Here are the main things your reels/videos should have:
Good Lighting
Either a ring light, natural light, several lamps around your workspace or plant lights on either side. Just make sure its well lit and pleasing to look at through the camera.
Stable & Good Quality Image
Most of our smart phones have the ability to shoot higher quality videos. You should have yours set to shoot at 1080 HD and 30 FPS (Frames per second) or higher (4k at 60fps being the highest setting). This should be in your settings > camera>record video for Iphones. On android it should be under settings when you open your camera but I don’t speak android so apologies if its not.
Different Angles and Clips
You need different angles with whatever you are recording, wether its a process video for your artwork, a day in your life or your cat getting zoomies around your house. You need to get different angles to keep it interesting… unless its the cat.
This can be done with a tripod or propping your phone up in something as simple as a mug or an old candle stacked on top of books. Record one clip from above, the next close up and to the side, etc.
Edit To Hold Short Attention Spans
Capcut is free and has so many features but all you need to learn is how to cut up your clips for a satisfying video. This will be the same on most editing software.
Upload all your video clips into the editing software in the order you want it playing.
Tap on the clip you are editing, drag the line until it is where you want it to start or end. Tap “split” and then tap on the excess clip you want to delete and tap “delete”. Continue this until you have a video that will hold attention and runs smoothly. ~0.5-2 seconds per clip to capture the moment or step, but not lose attention.
Once done, export at 1080 HD 30 FPS
Okay, you have your video done. Now whats the best practices when posting it??
Add Trending Audio
Its even better if you take that audio and edit your videos to the beat. This can be done by either screen recording to capture the audio you like and then importing it into your editing software and extracting the audio. Or you can copy the link and use one of those ad filled sites to download it. (lookup: “Download instagram audio” in Google)
Just make sure to still use that audio in instagram when you post. When you have it lined up, reduce the volume on your video so its just that audio or vice versa.
Write a caption that talks about the video and connects with the people watching it.
If you are adding video text do it in the instagram app, it works similar to hashtags.
Use hashtags!
There is some rumor that they aren’t useful anymore but that is not true. Fight me. <3
Choose a nice cover image
Click on the “preview” before posting. Here you can upload an image or choose a frame in the video.
NICE. Its uploaded. Now how do you get people to start watching your content?
My account started to blow up in spring of 2023 and here is why: by the time people started finding my account I had enough content for them to binge watch. This shows the algorithm that my videos are good enough to pull people to my profile and keep people on my profile = algorithm likes this.
How did I get my content to the people that would like it though?
Well, and this is my favorite, I watched and interacted with similar accounts and content. Yup. You need to scroll through fun videos and posts that you like and interact with them. Its hard work but someone has to do it!
Because of this I mainly interact (comment, like, follow) with accounts and posts similar to mine. In most of our cases this should be a mix of ~80% art creation videos and ~20% relatable small business posts. This is how instagram learns who will like you.
Repeat after me, “The instagram algorithm is our friend that we manipulate for our own gain.”
- Brianca
