Instagram Reels has arrived, so you need to factor it into your marketing strategy. First up you might be like, say WHAT? Another thing? Hide me, I can’t cope.

The reason Instagram Reels is here is to give us that TikTok experience. A really short, creatively fun edit with added music / text etc to make your content more fun.

Think of marketing as a house. All the rooms stand for different marketing approaches. One room stands for Instagram and now this room has four windows: 1 – Grid, 2 – Stories, 3 – IGTV and 4 – Reels.

Each one of them is a different medium within the same platform. Stories is 15 second snippets that disappear, Reels has a limit of 15 seconds, Grid video is up to a minute, and IGTV has to be over a minute.

Yikes.

Early adopters have been swooping into the vacuum so there is no better time to take a look at it. It also appears in the explore page, so there’s a lot to go at here.

So here’s my top tips on adding Instagram Reels to your marketing strategy:

1. Strategy – before you add anything into your marketing world, you’d better step back and work out why it deserves to be there and what it will give to your consumer. If you look over your marketing strategy, it will remind you of exactly what your aims are, and you can work out if Reels are right for you. For example – if you’re a service and you want a new fun way to deliver testimonials, this may be a great way to do that. Or if you’re a travel blogger, Reels is the perfect way to give those trailers to your travels. You don’t have to start doing dance videos if you’re a surgeon (unless you want to!).
   
2. Research – once you’ve decided that Reels is for you, have a look around. People are creating great content out there so you might as well look at what is working. This is a platform that rewards creativity so go nuts. I’d also suggest looking at tutorials for HOW to use this Reels – like Later. Behind the scenes content with how to guides or secrets behind the scenes seem to be super popular, so give them a go.
   
3. Planning – planning is always the way to a stress-free life, so try looking at adding one a week to trial this. You can also use archive footage which is way easier than panicking about new material. I edited my first Reels in Inshot to make it a little easier as I get to grips with this new platform. Practice is really worthwhile for this but the results can be so fun.
   
4. Posting – once you have your new Reels, get posting and make sure you preview to the grid too. Add all your usual hashtags, add a question in your caption and make sure you engage as you normally would.
   
5. Sharing – make sure you share it to Stories too and tag anyone who might be in it or want to see it.
   
6. Reporting – check how you’re doing in your analytics and see how you are performing against your other content.
   
7. Tweak and repeat – Rome wasn’t built in a day, so trial and error is the key here. Be brave and you will be rewarded!

Still stuck? Try and do an About Me, 15 seconds about your company or behind the scenes snippet. It is a major lesson on being concise – good luck!