The Real Deal with Creating Instagram Reels
Time, tech and ideas. Could this be why you’re not creating Instagram Reels? If so, you’re not alone. On today’s show, I provide some Instagram Coaching to Moyra Gorski, who’s looking for clarity on creating Instagram Reels that fits her business and brand.
We dive into how she can simplify the Reels process, how to make a plan, content pillars for Instagram Reels, engagement tips and a daily checklist to hold her accountable.
You can connect with Moyra @greengorski
Still stuck with Instagram Reels? Grab my Instagram Reels training today!
In this episode you will learn:
- how Instagram Reels affects your visibility and the Instagram algorithm
- how to simply the creation process
- how to plan Instagram Reels
- the 3 main Instagram Reel Content Pillars you should be using
- how CTA’s impact your engagement
- daily checklist to maximize your visibility
Full Transcription at the bottom of this blog post.
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Full Transcription:
Today. I have a great show for you because you get to be a fly on the wall. As this episode is a hot seat coaching call with my friend Moyra, and we dive into Instagram Reels. That’s right, like Moyra, a lot of entrepreneurs, especially mompreneurs are super frustrated with Instagram reels, especially when it comes to the timing. You know, how much time it takes, the tech, and of course the content ideas. So in this coaching call, we simplify the process for Moyra. We go through how to plan Instagram reels. We get real heavy into content. I break down content into three content pillars for her. We get into how to engage with Instagram reels. And then of course I give Moyra a daily checklist for Instagram reels. So make sure that you grab a pen and paper because this hot seat coaching call is filled with great information.
I know you’re going to be taking notes. You’re going to walk away with so many ideas on Instagram reels, so enjoy.
So you want to dive in to reels today. What’s your biggest frustration with reels?
Well, reels are entertaining. But I want to be on social media so that people not only get entertained, I suppose like that they follow me, but that, I mean, I want them to follow me and take me seriously. So I feel like sometimes the reels are just so silly that you’re like, okay, well, and I’m not. And granted, I could lighten up a little bit more in my life. So perhaps that silliness is good, but I want people to be attracted to me as a strong, authentic entrepreneur, powerful woman who pushes past your fear and all of those things. So that’s who I want to attract. And I feel like sometimes I look at these reels and I’m like, okay, well, because I watch my teammates, all my teammates, which are who most of them are younger than me and some of them have a theater background, so they’re doing some awesome things and I was like, and then, but then, so it’s great and fun to watch, but then I also know that they’re getting way more engagement and they’re getting their goals and things like that.
Partly because of that. And so that’s, my frustration is how do I figure it out that I portray myself like a little bit of fun. Right. Um, but that I get my message across of who I’m looking for, who, you know, just that, you know, the avatar that I’m looking for. So, and then, you know, I can do like a real, like I press the button and like I put a song on it and that’s it. But then these other ones would, there’s like, okay, they put the powder in the blender and then they put the milk in the blender and the next, like, how do you put them all together? Kind of thing. And then, then I think the third thing is like, okay, I have a business to run and like a lifestyle lead. And I don’t want to get sucked into this time that it, it takes so much time to figure out these, to figure out the reels, let alone, put them together, make sure the music’s on there. And then where am I pointing to? And all that stuff. It’s just so forget it. I’ll go back to Facebook. Well,
I, you know what Maura two things is, you’re not alone. I know that there’s a lot of women entrepreneurs that see the potential in reels, but they just really don’t know where to start. And they are, they’re overwhelmed with time. They’re overwhelmed with tech and they’re overwhelmed with ideas, right? Cause we get sucked into watching it. And that’s kind of a big thing that I noticed on Instagram is we are sucked in to watching what other people are doing. And then we immediately get in our heads and go, well, I need to start doing that. And so we that’s when we need to take a step back and go, well, wait a minute. What’s my intentions for being on Instagram. Right? And who’s my ideal audience like who do I really want to make an impact on Instagram? So when you go back to your intentions and who you want to make an impact, that’s going to help drive your content for Instagram reels.
So I’m glad that you do see the potential in reels because why people are doing reels, why they’re so popular is the visibility. And here’s why, because when you create a reel and your audience is already interacting it by viewing it, liking it, the algorithm then will take your reel and they will push it to the explore tab. So now you are getting the visibility by people who are not following you. So that’s really why people are using reels is because your visibility can grow a lot faster with reels compared to your static posts, compared to your stories compared to your IGTVs. So that’s why reels has really exploded. So my advice on how to start with reels, and this is for anybody who is just overwhelmed with the tech in the time is this is what I did at the beginning. I started doing just two things.
I was using my voice and I was showing my face because you to begin to build connections, you want to begin to build the know like, and trust, build your authority, right? Build your brand. And the best way to do that is to use your voice and to show your face. So whether your Instagram reels is set at 15 seconds or 30 seconds, just take what, you know, what you’re passionate about. And you’re going to teach that by showing your face and using your voice. That’s it, it’s coming up with little, you know, tutorials or processes or whatever your audience is coming to you with questions. You’re going to answer those frustrations or questions, writing your reels. So that’s number one is just start that way. Don’t worry about music. Don’t worry about timing, right? Because that’ll come in time when you actually start getting used to doing these reels and then you’re getting really comfortable. And that’s when the creativity kind of comes out and you’re going to be like, okay, what can I do now? Because that’s how I started. I just showed up with my face and my voice. And I’ve grown my reels, you know, over the last several months. But that is how I started.
So you’re saying that just to use your voice and show your face, I mean, just don’t even worry about that stuff. Like press record and say, Hey, struggling with a morning routine. This is what I do. This is why I choose this. And that’s it. That’s it. That’ll fancy stuff.
Don’t worry about that. All you want to do is just start creating reels. You want to start getting comfortable. And the best way to get comfortable with reels is showing your face and using your voice because those are the two most crucial things to build your brand and build your authority online. So people are going to start seeing you. And then when you come out later with other kinds of reels, the entertainment reels, the lip sinking, they already know you Moira. They’ve already seen your face and heard your voice. So it’s easy to mix those in later. So that’s the first thing is just start with those two things. And then here’s three other things that I think are really, really important when it comes to reels is a lot of times I see that people will open up Instagram, they’re posting, they’re using their stories, right?
They might be creating carousels and then they start watching reels and they’re like, I need to do a reel. Okay. What can I do? And they’re like in that moment, anxiety kicks in and they feel forced to do a real, I don’t think you should ever feel forced. So when you’re planning your social media content, however you plan that if you plan it by the month, if you plan it by the week, make reels a part of your plan. So whatever your content is for the week for Instagram, take that content and repurpose it into one or two reels, just make it a part of your planning. So what I do is when I plan my social media content for the week for Instagram, I’ll look at the content that I’ve already planned for. My carousel posts, my Instagram stories, my static posts. I will pull out good things that I can teach my audience.
And I will just jot down a couple of bullet points of ideas or maybe some bullet points of what I’d like to say in my real it’s on a posted note. And I plan it. I’m going to say, all right, this one I’m doing on Wednesday. And this one I’m doing on Friday, I already have it planned out. I already know what I’m going to say. I already know the content for it. And then when I go to create it, I mean, coming up with the ideas and what you’re going to say is the hardest part. So I do that on my planning day. And then on the days that I want to do my reels either I batch them outside of Instagram because there was a couple apps that you can actually batch your reels and just save it to your CA to your phone. And then you can open up Instagram reels and you can actually upload a video to it. You could do that if you want it to. So that is an option. And then, um,
Go hobby something I should get to eventually. But again, just doing this simple, like starting would be the best thing instead of, cause I tend to be somebody that’s like, oh, well maybe I’ll just, I could do that. I can batch them and do all that. And then I get all again, I get wrapped up in the details of it and I get off course and then I don’t do it at all. So I know. Yeah. I mean, that’s, I know myself after 57 years, like that’s what like, oh, that really sounds great. And then it’s just too overwhelming and like overwhelming or I, I get stopped with the text, so I just don’t do it at all. So
For myself, I do social media planning and batching on Fridays. So on Fridays I decide the following week, what are my real is going to be about? And I have that many. So I typically do three right now because that fits my schedule. So I have three post-it notes on my desk marked Monday, Wednesday, Friday reels. And I bullet point the content. What am I mainly going to say? And what’s my call to action. And then on Monday, I’m refreshed. And I know I have it in my calendar. I need to do a real today. And it’s there for me there. I’m not overwhelmed. I’m not anxious. I have the content I hit record and I do it. And that’s it. And then when it comes to content, here’s the biggest thing is, cause I know a lot of people watch the funny entertaining ones and they are they’re fun.
And those funny entertaining ones are really the ones that seem to go viral because they’re on trend, right? And everyone’s doing it. It’s like a popularity contest almost with reels, very similar to tic-tac. So for reels, I have three content pillars and I make sure that I’m hitting these pillars throughout the week. My first pillar that I have is value driven reels. These are my, how to’s, your hacks, the X ways to blah, blah, blah. You can really hit the value driven content from the get-go by using your voice and showing your face. That’s a very easy pillar for reels that you can start immediately because you’re, you are full of content. Moira, you have full of wisdom, full of knowledge. You can just pick little bits and remember with reels, what you say in the 15 seconds, you can go deeper into your caption. All you have to say is read the caption for more at the end, that could be your call to action at the end of your reel, say, you want more read the caption boom. So let’s say you have like five steps to something you’re real can be the first two steps and then say for the rest of the steps, check out the caption. Oh,
I like that. Yeah. Yeah, because you want to get it all in there, but like, how do you, like, how do I get it all in there?
Right? So just do like the most juicy stuff in your reel because you want to hook your audience, right? Give them the most juicy details and then go deeper in the caption. And then the second pillar is your inspiration. Relate-ability because I want to relate to my audience. I want to be pulling the right people to me. So that is when I’m doing like behind the scenes, showing them my lifestyle or my business, or it might be like my little micro stories. So if I’m telling like great micro stories in my static posts, I can easily turn that into a real. And then the third content pillar is purely entertainment. And I know another concern you had was engagement. So reels gives you the visibility, but I think a lot of people forget that engagement is the other key piece. So if you want a lot of engagement on your reels, here’s a tip.
Not only include your call to action in your caption, you can also include your call to action with a text box, right on your video. When I do that, I get the most engagement. So for example, if I have a, I had a reel that was very inspirational. Like maybe you need to hear this today. You know, dah, dah, dah entrepreneur entrepreneurship is hard, blah, blah, blah, blah. I said, tag, a friend who needs to hear this. And I even had it as a text bubble on my video. And it was in my caption tag, a friend who needs to hear this. I got the most engagement on that one because the call to action was in my caption. I said it and they visually saw it on my video. Okay. So call to actions are really important in your reels and to get the most bang for your buck for reels, here’s a little checklist, use hashtags and use popular size hashtags like 200,000 or bigger because the most popular hashtags people are using those for the reels.
So people will go into the hashtag hubs, click on the reel and then they fall into the scroll of the reels. So definitely use hashtags on your reels, make sure you share it to your feed because you have that option when you share your reel, allow it to share to your feed, have that on because that helps your visibility, share it to your Instagram stories. Because now when people are watching your Instagram reels in your stories, you get the views for your Instagram rails. So share to your stories and then start with a hook, like asking a question or how to hook them and have your call to action. Okay. So that was hashtags share to your feed, share to your stories and then have the hook in the call to action. Okay.
Yeah. I wondered that. Um, cause a couple that I’ve done, I just put on my feed, but then I, I wondered if, yeah. If it should go up to the stories too, and then I’ve also seen, and maybe this is just to help the other person, like I’ve seen some of my teammates share there, other people on our team, their reels to their story, just like sometimes they do that with their posts, you know? So that just helps their visibility.
So if you’re giving like really juicy content, you can actually put that in your caption, say share it to your stories. If you think this has beneficial to your audience, okay. Are a lot of people will put, share and save for later. Right. And that’s the other thing too. I do this. If you are watching reels and you like what they’re doing and you’re like, oh, that’s hilarious. Or you’re immediately going, oh, I could do that. But I would do it this way. Hit the save button. Because when you go to your insights, your there’s a saved option. It’ll save all the reels that you like. And so you can go back and view them and go, oh, that’s what I wanted to do. Cause you’re going to forget. I think we have, you know, we’re not going to remember three days later, a reel we watched. Yeah. Right,
Right. But there was one yesterday that I saw it twice. I saw it. I heard the music twice or whatever twice. Um, it wasn’t music. It was something that it was like something about, you had to love yourself first or like, or know something about, I wish I’d saved it now that I know that. But um, but it’s like your like is just extra. My liking me is the most important thing, something like that. And I was like, that’s awesome. Like that’s what right. We need to love ourselves first and all that. And I was, and then I saw it and of course a few reels later, same thing, somebody else you’re like is just extra. You know what it is now I’m going to have to go by. But, um, but that’s good to know. I didn’t that I could save. Yes,
You can save them. And then you could also save their audio and then you will have a saved audio section in your insights. So when you go to create a real, you can actually go look at your saved audio. That’s how people are reproducing. These. They save the audio and then they do the lip singing or whatever. I’ve done that plenty of times. Okay. That’s where I get a lot of my juicy, juicy ideas. And then I have those content pillars in a spreadsheet on Google spreadsheet. I have those pillars and I brain dump. If something just comes to my brain, I opened my phone. Cause I have Google drive on my phone. I open it because I have a real brain dump Google sheet. And I will just type in there real quick. My thought process of what’s in mind. Well, my,
My coach would love you saying that to me. Cause she knows. Could you just make a Google sheet of that? And like, I don’t know. That’s a little too organized.
Yeah. I love Google sheets. Let me tell you, I live on Google sheets and I have the Google drive on my phone. So anything I create in Google is right here. Right. Cause how often are we at our computer and the light bulb moments go off. Never it’s when you’re in the car, when you’re eating dinner. I mean, I can’t have my phone in the shower with me, but other times I’m like,
Right, right. Yeah. Are out for, yeah. You’re out for a walk or that’s the thing. I go out for a Walker and I listen to a podcast. And then I think of, I mean, I mean, so many times I’m listening to podcasts and I opened my notes section and I make, you know, I take notes based on what I’m hearing on that podcast, because I want to make sure that I remember that. So it could be the same. It could be the same thing. Yeah.
Cool. So was this helpful?
Really helpful. Yeah. Yeah. It really is. It gave me a little bit more cause I’ve, you know, of course I’ve watched you and I’ve been in your group and watch things. But again, until I just, the way that I am until I really feel like that’s something I want to do. Cause I kept saying, I’m not doing reels. Like my girls can do it. Right. But on my team, like, you know, Samantha, Sam who used to do, you know, they went to a performance, you know, school who just she’s so awesome. I just love to watch her, like she can do it, she can do it. Lisa can do it. Krista can do it. But now I’m like, okay, well maybe I can do it. And, but again, that needs some clarity around it. And so this is helpful for me. Cause I feel like, okay, now, now I can conquer this. And um, feel like, again that there’s some value to that because again, if I’m going to, we, we all busy. Right. And usually Facebook is my jam. That’s really where I’m comfortable with and all of that. Um, but I feel like this is, and I love what you said. Like just plan it out, you know, just plan it out because of course anytime we plan anything, it just, it takes less time. That’s what I find. If I plan, it takes less time than I think it’s
Really going to take. Just like I said, from the beginning, just simplify the process, just start small with your face and your beautiful voice and you’ll be just fine.
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