I’ll be the first to admit, I’m not always an early adopter of the newest features on social media. In my case, I’m referring to my Instagram specifically, since that’s where I do most of my posting. To be even more specific, I’m referring to Instagram Reels which launched in August of 2020 (I think) and was the Instagram version of TikTok (which I’ve never gotten into). I didn’t really try my first Reels until February of 2021 and it wasn’t terribly interesting. See for yourself:
It takes a little figuring out and a little practice to make a decent Reel on IG. After I played with it a little more, I made another one that I thought was pretty good, but it still didn’t get the views I thought it might, even with me taking a full glass of water to the face, lol!
When you make an IG Reel it’s weird because you’re kinda putting yourself out there, right? This could be difficult for introverts (like me). You might end up looking cool or you could very well make a fool of yourself! The main thing is that you shouldn’t take yourself too seriously, and DEFINITELY don’t take IG Reels too seriously. Don’t get me wrong…if you want to make an awesome Reel and invest some time into making things sync up nice and tight, go for it! But so many Reels are silly and laughable anyway, who cares if people laugh at you. I made my hip hop rap debut on a Reel for the whole world to see and let me tell you….it was a banger! Yo yo yo…See for yourself:
You can also use your Reels to do parodies of other things. For example, every time I hear the Home Depot commercials on Pandora, I always make fun of the guy’s voice on those commercials. Soooooo, I decided to do my own version…with some Ryobi landscaping tool visuals…and the view count went soaring!! What do you think of my Instagram Reels Fake Home Depot Commercial?
One thing I’ve found with the Reels is that you have a very short window to get those views! People’s attention spans are so short anymore that you’ve got to keep them there for 3 seconds before it counts as a view. With my previous Reels I thought it was cool to see the views go up a few more views every time I refreshed it. You can understand my excitement when I made this Home Depot commercial Reel and I’d see it jump by several hundred views every few minutes! This went on for several hours before it started slowing down. Basically by hour 24 it had maxed out at a little over 15.3k views. Now, about 3 months later it’s only gotten about 300 more views. Crazy.
One other thing I like about Reels is the option to use copyrighted music in the videos. If you were to make a YouTube video and use a copyrighted song without a bunch of legal permissions your video would get flagged and you’d have to take the video down. With Reels, you have an almost limitless selection of music to choose from. I think it’s connected to iTunes (correct me if I’m wrong). But now you can choose your favorite song and sync your edit as creatively as you like! Even if your edit isn’t overly complex it’s still fun to pick the perfect song for whatever footage you’re putting it over. For example, on a recent trip to Lake Tahoe my wife and I rented kayaks, and even though paddling around the lake is fun and relaxing, I felt like it needed a little spicing up. That’s when I decided to throw down some amazing kayak routines worthy of any Olympic competition and I felt like the song “Hell Yeah” by Montgomery Gentry was QUITE appropriate:
Sometimes, the Stuff Seth Makes isn’t a physical object at all…maybe it’s a visual treat instead, like those Instagram Reels you just enjoyed, haha! There are a lot of opportunities for awesome Reels and you’re really only limited by your own creativity and imagination (and a bit of patience…try syncing one and you’ll see what I mean).
Thank you so much for stopping by. Hopefully you’ll come up with some good ideas for your own Instagram Reels and hopefully those Reels will bring some new followers to your account! Have fun and I hope you’ll consider following me on Instagram and subscribing to my YouTube channel!
