When it comes to growing your audience on Instagram, you can't go wrong with reels.
People LOVE to see something that moves.
In fact, videos on Instagram have an average 3 times more engagement than photos and videos on Facebook. But all of these numbers are meaningless when your video isn't converting for you.
We’ve analysed thousands of Instagram Reels from businesses, and here are TOP 5 COMMON MISTAKES that you may be making (which we don’t see people talking about).
People LOVE to see something that moves.
In fact, videos on Instagram have an average 3 times more engagement than photos and videos on Facebook. But all of these numbers are meaningless when your video isn't converting for you.
We’ve analysed thousands of Instagram Reels from businesses, and here are TOP 5 COMMON MISTAKES that you may be making (which we don’t see people talking about).
1. Not using the 9:16 ratio
When you don’t use the right format size for your reels, it can feel really amateur or ruin the user experience - which is no-no!
Uploading a landscape video
Uploading a 1080 x 1080 px video
This is what you should do instead:
Upload Instagram reels in a 1920 x 1080 px size.
Your video should fill the entire screen
2. Your screen on text is not optimised!
We see this happening ALL THE TIME. Providing accessibility is crucial in this digital age, so please take an extra few minutes to make sure you are not doing any of these things.
Text is cut off or close to being cut off
Color of the text is not visible
Subtitles are too low on the screen
Too much text on screen
This is what you should do instead:
Do not sacrifice usability of aesthetics, so you need to ensure that the Instagram Reel is visible and easy to read for your customers.
Check how the video looks in your main feed and in Instagram Reels, to ensure that captions are not half cut off.
You can download this template to ensure your reel’s text is optimised on Instagram.
3. Posting reels with a hard sell
Your Instagram page should not feel like a GIANT AD. When people are scrolling on reels, they are looking for creator content, not reels that feel like ads.
Focusing all of your reels on selling your product or service
Lack of focus on your customer
Your reels only feel like an advertisement
This is what you should do instead:
Create reels that build engagement and a community
Create an Instagram marketing strategy that incorporates content pillars which serve different purposes
If you need help understanding what your content pillars are or can potentially be, you can book a FREE 30 minute strategy session here with one of social media marketing specialists.
4. Only copying trends
Trends are a great way to show your customers your brand personality. When it’s overdone, these trends can feel very cheesy.
Over 50% of our reels are trends
Limited original content
This is what you should do instead:
Use the 80/20 rule, which means that 20% of your content can be around trends
Focus most of your time on creating valuable content that is meaningful for your customers.
5. Overuse of hashtags
Using more than 8 hashtags
Using irrelevant hashtags
Worrying too much about hashtags
No original hashtags
This is what you should do instead:
Use hashtags that are relevant to the topic of your reel
Use less than 8 hashtags
Avoid using generic hashtags like #trending
