Lesson 3: Get creative with Reels
Reels are amazing way to grow your community, your business or sell your products. Through Reels, you are able to reach thousands or millions of other people, so be creative, use an authentic and educational content, that is in line with what your audience needs.
I want to share with you a few ideas as an inspiration for your next Reels. Below you can also see, that the Reel doesn’t need to be made out of videos. I created many Reels as from my old images.
*click on the image to see the Reel
#1 A short gif from the scene you created
Take the advantage of having your scene, and be creative. Use the Continuous shooting mode on your camera and create a short gif. It’s fun, easy and quick. A reel that can be done within a few minutes.
#2 Building the scene
If you take many images during your photo shoot, you can put them together into a video. It’s super fan to see how the scene is build.
My focus is photography, but if you focus on creating recipes, you can capture the preparation of the recipe – from the beginning till the end 😊
#3 Promoting the challenge you organise
If you organise any challenge or competition, create a Reel with your images that can be an inspiration for the participants. This will help you also with promoting your challenge among new people who don’t know you yet.
The same is for promoting a giveaway, or any other activity you run on your account or blog.
#4 Promoting your freebies and newsletters
Promote promote promote, especially free things you offer! Reels are amazing for growing your Instagram and your mailing list too! When I created this reel about the free lighting guide, I received about 70 new subscribers in about 1 day.
Create a few different reels, promoting the same freebie and keep sharing it regularly.
I am sure you have many amazing things that you can promote via Reels 🥰
#5 Inspire people by showing yourself and your progress
We spoke about your Avatar. In most of the cases, your Avatar is you in the past. You did the transformation your audience is dreaming about, show them it’s possible. Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there and the progress you made. Be proud of what you achieved.
This reel I created, was the 3rd most successful Reel I have ever made 🙂
When creating such reels, keep your Avatar always in mind and think about what can you create that will make your audience excited and inspired.
#6 Show your skills
Is it cooking? Creating beautiful cakes? Editing amazing images? Put them together into a video that will show your amazing skills.
#7 Educational Reel
Create a Reel that will help others to learn something new, something that will help them solve their problems.
When creating educational content, always keep in mind what your audience needs.
#8 How-to Reel
No time to write blog posts? I feel you! 😅 If you don’t have time to write a complete blog post, start with creating Reels. You can share some How-To process, steps or anything else you would actually share in the blog post.
This is actually a good way to test your blog post topics before you write them 🙂 you can see from the engagement if the topic might be of interest.
But, you can do it the other way around. Create a blog post and create such a reel that could share a key points of your blog post.
#9 Behind the Scenes
Show the behind the scenes of your business, project, recipe or anything else you create. This such a content connects a lot with people, it is a good way how to build the awareness and curiosity about your upcoming projects or products.
Do you have any project you are working on? Developing some special recipe? Photoshoot for your blog or client? You don’t need much, set the camera and film yourself while you work on your project.
#10 Promotion of your products / services
We can’t forget about promoting your products or services! Click on the Reel I created for promoting the course we have inside our Members’ Club.
Let’ sum up:
- be creative, there is such a variety of topics or categories you can use for creating your reels. Don’t be stuck with one type of content only, variety will make your account more interesting
- My top tip: Instories app, for creating some special effects into your videos. You basically create a few short videos, then you put them together while creating Reel. Check this Reel (the Golden Triangle), this one (again Golden Triangle) or this one (about Lighting Guide) – that I created in this app.
- Ideas for your Reels comes from the categories you chose in your Instagram/marketing strategy. Keep your Reel in line with what your audience needs.
- Be creative, find a way how to make your Reel different from others, and avoid creating reels as everybody does. The platform starts being over-saturated with the same and same Reels, being unique can bring you lots of advantage.
- My another top tip: ask someone to help you create many videos of yourself – while working, cooking, styling, photographing, editing… Create a bank of videos that you can use for Reels during the following months. You will cut different parts of the same video, nobody will know that originally it was one video only 😉
- Create one Reel, share it many times! You don’t need to come up with a new and new topic every time! Re-use the Reels from the past, there are many people who haven’t seen your previous Reel, or they don’t remember it already. Or, use the same topic and change the images you used, re-shoot the videos, or just cut the same video in a different way. Work smart, not hard 😉
- Create a variety of Reels, so you know what your audience prefers. Thanks to the insights, you know what Reel performed better what what Reel has a lower performance. This tells you what type of Reels you should focus on.
- and last but not least, you don’t need to be in front of the camera. There are many way how you can create amazing Reels without dancing, talking or showing your face if you don’t want.