What are Instagram reels and how to use them for expanding your business?

The latest trend that has taken social media by storm is instagram reels. Nowadays every business has an instagram page. Instagram is a video sharing social networking site that is used almost by everyone. Small businesses start their business using instagram reels as it can reach a lot of people in a very short period of time. Many people also use IGTV’s, posts, stories etc to stay on top of the trends. Last year instagram introduced us to this new feature called reels. What are Instagram reels? Instagram Reels is a brand new Instagram feature for users to create a 15-30 second video clips, add music and share them to stories, Explore Feed, and the new Reels tab on a user's profile. In other words, Reels are short, entertaining videos on Instagram where you can express your creativity and bring your brand to life and light.

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How to make a reel on Instagram?

1. To create your first Instagram reel, start by opening the Instagram Stories at the top left corner by clicking the camera and selecting the reels option at the bottom.

2. The next step is to select any music of your choice and set your timer and countdown. You can also start recording by clicking the hands-free option, once you start recording, you’ll see a 3-2-1 countdown, before the recording.

3. Once you are done recording the reel, you can add any filter you want, just like the Instagram stories. You can also add stickers and texts.

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4. Finally, you can choose to speed up or slow down any part of the video or audio you selected. This can help you stay on a beat. You can also add videos from your gallery to the existing reel that you made.

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5. Once finalised you can go ahead with posting the reel either on your Instagram stories or Instagram reel option that will show up on your Instagram page next to your posts.

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How to make your reels go viral?

Every business wants their reels to go viral so that they could eventually increase their number of sales. But how to do that? Below are few smart tricks to make your reels go viral:

1. Add an attractive cover: Adding a captivating cover to your Instagram reels will give an idea to the audience what the reel is about.

2. Use hashtags: Adding hashtags to your Instagram reels caption can help people find you through the hashtag you post. For example; you are a small business selling polymer clay earrings, add a hashtag #polymerclayearrings. Pretty cool right?

3. Use trending music: This is one of the easiest ways to make your reel go viral.

4. Provide value through education: People love learning through Reels. They are short and easily digestible, so people save them to come back and refer later. Those savings add up, and Instagram sees your Reels as more valuable and continues showing them to others who are interested in similar things.

5. Add text to your reels: Adding text over your Reels is also another way to provide value to your audience. For example if you are using an inspirational sound, you can use text overlays of what the voice in the clip is saying.