Ways to Improve Your Instagram Reel Strategy in 2024

In many areas of life, we often find ourselves doing too much and ultimately realizing that “less is more,” valuing quality over quantity. This same mantra applies to your brand’s content creation, especially if yours puts out Instagram reel videos.

At a time when the fate of TikTok’s presence in the United States is at stake, it is a practical move to start transitioning over to the reels feed of Instagram if you have not yet already. Reels are a great way to garner brand awareness and traction with the circulatory nature of the network. However, there is a misconception that accounts should post everyday to remain relevant and utilize this feature to its utmost potential. Rather than posting every day, the sweet spot for IG reels is about 3–5 posts per week, in addition to stories and static posts.

In addition to keeping intentionality behind the cadence of your reels, here is a list of ways to improve your Instagram Reel strategy in 2024 to find greater success in your video content and grow your brand. 

Prioritize shorter reels and rapid movement.

It’s no secret that our attention span is collectively minimizing every day, thanks to this age of instant gratification and a world of information literally being at our fingertips. You should be formatting your videos to accommodate the fleeting nature of the average user’s time spent on a piece of content and using that short window of time to demand that user’s attention – ask yourself, why would they interrupt their rigorous scrolling to watch more than 2 seconds of this post?

Stay in tune with trending topics, templates, and sounds/audio. 

Instagram prioritizes content that is most relevant to users and will distinguish it as “top of funnel” content. Your content will become relevant in the eyes of Instagram if it has a voice in the widespread conversation, which could be as simple as using a trending audio or framework of reel. When this type of content becomes a priority, it is more likely to be distributed to more users on the app, including your target demographics, allowing your account to gain the most traction, followership, and awareness as a result. Keeping up with these trends also shows your audience that you are well-versed in the industry.

Use relevant hashtags.

This one is pretty self-explanatory but nonetheless incredibly important. Instagram reels allow users to use up to 30 hashtags, but it would be to your biggest benefit to use about 4-6 strong, SEO-rich ones. Instagram sometimes interprets posts with too many hashtags as “spam.” Using hashtags correctly is vital to improve your Instagram Reel strategy!

Include CTAs. 

Be sure to include a call-to-action or CTA in your reel, just like for a static photo post. A CTA can be as simple as guiding the user to the website link in your account bio or even just convincing them to save and/or share that post. Creating savable and shareable posts increases engagement and interactivity with your posts and allows for a chain effect of new eyes from different accounts to see your posts. If a user saves your reel, there is a high likelihood that they will look back on that post again and continue to increase that engagement metric.

Initiate the “Stop the Scroll” effect.

As we briefly touched on earlier, your reel needs to possess qualities that trigger users to stop scrolling. You can do this with a tasteful shock effect by utilizing hooks like “You WON’T believe this fact about XYZ” or “5 Things You Didn’t Know About XYZ” or even incorporating captivating visuals. However you do it, you want your content to be worthy of users stopping dead in their tracks while traveling through their feed full of hundreds of posts also demanding their attention. 

Write long captions, especially for shorter reels.

The caption of your reel is a great place to expand upon your message in the reel and give new visitors a glimpse into your brand. This caption can give a little account synopsis, a CTA or two, and other important information that will keep users lingering on your post for a while; this interaction will then increase your post’s engagement AND signal to Instagram that your content is top funnel content. However, it is best to use long captions for reels that do not have a lot of text on them or are incredibly short; you do not want to give users reading fatigue. Take advantage of this space to include SEO-rich captions, allowing your target demographics to find you.

It is important to note that it will be most beneficial not to use all of these methods at once but rather scatter them throughout your repertoire as you move forward, utilizing them for their respective relevance. Certain strategies will be more pertinent to specific themes and topics, while others may need to rely on other methods in this list. Contact us for more ways to improve your Instagram Reel strategy in 2024!