Palak Madhwani
- Mar 21, 2021
- 7 min read

Are you using Reels on Instagram to connect with your audience? Stories, Status - Facebook, WhatsApp

Updated: Mar 22, 2021

If you will roll back to 2020, apart from Covid19 there was one more thing which gained a lot of buzz and that was TikTok. TikTok provided a platform to a lot of innovative content creators to showcase their talent by creating short format videos.

It took some time for other social media giants like Instagram or YouTube to realize the impact which TikTok was creating across the world eating away the Daily Active Users from them.

You might be wondering whether this blog is about Instagram Reels of TikTok. Do not worry, we are going to talk about the subject matter only which has brought you here.

TikTok being owned by a Chinese company saw a backlash from various countries because of its data privacy flaws. The global politics against China resulted in banning of various Chinese apps not only from India but from a lot many other countries.

This was grabbed as an opportunity by Instagram which was followed by some other platforms like YouTube as well. Instagram introduced Reels somewhere around in August 2020.

Enough being said about the history of the inception of Reels. Let us now focus on how this feature can be encashed by businesses to connect with the audience.

Firstly, you must know that there are:

1 billion Monthly Active Users (MAU) on Instagram across the globe.
500 million Daily Active Users (DAU) on Instagram.

To know more statistics about Instagram and get awed then you can refer the source of above at this article.

This blog is going to be a little on "How To" and more on "What To".

To know a step by step process on How To Create an Instagram Reel, refer this link.

The USP of Instagram Reels from perspective of an end consumer is Entertainment. People consume the content for hours and hours. Some people may call it as an addiction as well.

Whatever be the case, as a business you get a superb space where the audience is engaged with their full focus. If you want to encash it, then you need to create engaging content which can catch the eyeballs of the audience as well as it is with the trend.

Corelate this with the Aristotle's Rhetorical Triangle. The three points of this triangle are:

Ethos (~Ethics/Speaker/Writer)
Pathos (~Emotion/Audience)
Logos (~Message/Logic)

Pathos

A business should ensure that it is having a clear idea of who the audience is. Not the entire 1 billion users of Instagram are part of your audience.

Don't run behind the number of followers or likes. Please note the algorithm of Instagram is such that it will show you the best performing Reels only. You will get intimidated if you will see the number of likes some of the Reels have while you are exploring yourself.

What you should see is, what is trending. Try to match your content with the trend and that will help you to build a very strong connect.

Ethos

When we are talking about endorsements or presentations, then definitely you will need an expert of the field as the speaker or presenter. But Reels is about common people. Try to be more realistic. No need of too fancy stuff. You will need to be consistent with your Reels and hence it will be best if you can find an easy and economical solution of creating Reels.

Logos

You will find a lot of people giving tips and tricks in the reels. Of course, an entertaining Reel will win with a very big margin against an educative Reel. But again as we have discussed earlier as well, we should not worry about the number of likes or comments. We should focus on creating a content which can either give entertainment or emotional touch or a value addition in terms of knowledge or information.

If you will explore Instagram Reels, then you will note that easy to record and execute videos have got a lot of likes and engagement.

Some of the examples are: (Look for more at the end of the blog)

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CL_uk1ojDkL/?igshid=7f83t15raop9 Here, you saw how an Influencer has been roped in to shoot various food items and the ambience of the restaurant. This is one of the best examples of showing content which the end consumer will be able to relate with.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CMBmduonGc5/?igshid=gpcyuvs6a9n1 Here, you see a time lapse of the process of readying the ice cream. Again, one of the very effective methods to grab the eyeballs. If you are into food business and can create such content for your business, you will find people coming to you showing this video and ordering the items.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CL6a3BuFWnr/?igshid=1jxc5748e71aj Here, again it is of ice cream. But if you will observe they have simply taken the end product in the frame with a smiling customer. You have daily such opportunities to grab such bytes in your business.

If you are into B2B business or into services or a consultant, you may feel sceptical on how to use this space. But this space is made for one and all. If you have real people as your customers, then be it in any business you must use this space.

Some suggestions could be, you can make Reels showing your systems and processes. Or you can focus on creating educative content consistently. How to use your products, packaging process, delivery, gathering of stock, success story and so on. Think of it as you are talking with your loved one after returning to home and sharing about your successes and achievements throughout the day. This space is for positive content and you will definitely attract a very strong response from the audience if you are consistent.

The music which you find in Instagram Reels is owned by the original creator. If the creator is a public account and has shared the audio publicly, then you can use it without worrying about the copyright. You may find musical content from Bollywood or even Hollywood and similar music producers. In that case as well, it is on Instagram Reels to ensure copyright protection. Having said this, you cannot use the videos created with Instagram Reels and the copyrighted music on any other platforms.

This is the screenshot of Instagram Reels. There are various components here.

A camera icon on the top right corner This will open the camera of your phone within the "Create Reels" mode inside Instagram. You can create your own Reels from here.
Like / Comment / Share / More These are self explanatory. From here, one can like, comment, share and from more options one can select to copy link or show a disinterest.
Username of the Creator + Follow/Following button
Caption
Name of the audio and credits to the original creator If you want to use the same then click on it and it will open up a new window where all the Reels with that audio will be displayed in grid. On the top, you will find the mention of the original creator of the audio.

There are a lot of effects provided in "Create your Own" space of Instagram Reels. I have tried to select some them and show it here for your reference. You can use those which you like for the best output of your video and audio combination.

There are various other buttons here apart from the effects.

Adding Audio As you can see in the screenshot, there are lot of options to choose from when it comes to audio. You can select a trending song or audio. Or you can select it as per your business communication. If you want to keep your own voice, then you can skip this part.
15 Sec / 30 Sec With this button, you can select whether you want to go for a 15 sec reel or a 30 sec reel
1x If you want to make a reel where it requires to sync lips with a dialogue or a song, then you may need to slow it down a little while recording it. This button helps you to do that. A slower speed audio, will give you more space to time your lips in sync with the audio. When you will release the output, you will see that you have been a lot more efficient in the lip-sync as compared to the case when done without using this option.
Effects Already discussed above.
Brightness This is used to increase or decrease the brightness
Timer Often creators create their reels alone or they keep their phone on a support or a tripod and enact. For this case, the functionality of a timer is very useful. They can set a timer, click on record themselves, and reach the correct space to enact.

After you have created your Reel, you can post it on your News Feed with a catchy caption. Don't forget to put some relevant #tags. To get the best #tags, you can use tools like: Ingramer.

You can share your Reels on your Instagram / Facebook Story as well as Status on WhatsApp. The story part of Instagram is the elder brother/sister of Instagram Reels. It also has a lot of interesting effects, stickers, smileys and tools to make it very engaging.

We have talked in length about using Business WhatsApp, Catalogue, Cart and Status in our blogs. You can read them at:

Just like Instagram introduced Reels, YouTube introduced Shorts. More or less, they have a lot of similarities. But yes, it is also a very strong and effective medium and can bring excellent engagement.

So, this was all about Instagram Reels, Story and Status. Please like, comment, subscribe and follow us on Social Media for such interesting tricks of using social media in your business communication. #KaroManKi

Do share your suggestions and feedback to me on my LinkedIn account.

Courtesy:

Instagram Reels

upGrad's course on Business Communication

unSplash

Wix Library

Instagram account of Palak Madhwani for the screenshots

I asked my 1st well wisher to read the blog and give his feedback. He told me, "Yaar Palak... You have given examples of the reels of only food items..."

Taking the feedback constructively, I am sharing some examples relatable to other fields as well.

If you want to know who my 1st well wisher is, then scroll up the web page and you will find his name above the title of the blog.