It’s no secret that since November 2020, Instagram added another type of content for all of us to create and consume. Many people did not get access to this feature for nearly a year to my knowledge. But I believe most users have access to both consuming and creating reels at the time of this recording.

For the past month and a half, I did a little experiment with creating only original content on reels. And that was because although it’s really fun to use trending audios and voiceovers, it’s very short-lived content. And I think I’ve talked about this before. But that means that I’m depending on somebody else’s audio more likely than not. So if that audio is removed then I lose that Reel. And it doesn’t make sense on other platforms like original content does. For me that looks like blog posts and Pinterest. Obviously if you are using TikTok and then taking that content and using it in a Reel, then that makes sense for dual use content. But that simply doesn’t apply to me. So for an extended period of time I created only original content, to see how it stood up against unoriginal content, and how it was received by my audience.

Today we are going to talk about trends, whether you should follow trends, creating original content and the benefits of that, as well as the benefits of creating with trends. But by the end of this episode I just hope that you have some efficacy behind the choices that you make in regards to creating real‘s content if that something that you feel you need to do for your business or something that you want to do.

What are Reels?

As of now reels are short form video content. They can be literally anything. I’ve even seen people lately posting a single photo as a graphic on reels. like a one second photo that then repeats over and over and over again because that counts as views or time spent viewing that particular reel. Now, I don’t think that is a good tactic from a business standpoint or a creator standpoint. Because as a consumer I don’t enjoy consuming that. So it’s not going to get liked and it’s not going to get shared. That’s my current perspective on this but maybe I just haven’t seen someone use the tactic in a way that makes sense in my opinion.

Timing

Again, at this point these videos can go up to 60 seconds. But I honestly don’t suggest that. And I want to bring your attention to a point that I repeat a lot when speaking on any aspect of business and marketing. And that is the fact that I encourage you to observe yourself as a consumer. How long are the reels that you typically watch in their entirety? Why do you watch those ones? Are there a lot of transitions? Is it entertaining? How did they grab your attention? These are all questions that you can ask yourself while you consume content in order to then use that data and apply it to your own creation process.

I still want you creating more often than you are consuming. But I do think that it benefits us to organically take and content on the app and see what trends are happening, as well as what is appealing to us as a consumer.

So strictly speaking from my own experience I tend to only watch Reels that are definitely under 30 seconds. More often than not under 15 seconds.

No matter how long the Reel is that you were creating be sure to keep transitions very quick. There should be no space before or after you starting or ending a sentence. So if it is an organic piece of content - An original piece of content, then be sure to cut your clips very very clearly and concisely so that they butt up to each other with no gaps.

So that kind of wraps up this idea of timing. And duration of content. Attempt to keep it short,