0-300K INSTAGRAM REEL VIEWS How to get MORE views on your Instagram reels

If you're someone who's been following me over on Instagram, then you know that I've been doing the 30 days of reels challenge. Maybe you're someone who's just tiptoeing into reels and you're wondering, do I really need to start implementing a real strategy within my content strategy? Seeing Everybody doing this 30 days of reels challenge and wondering, does it even work? Will it get me more followers, views, reach, and all those things. And you might also be wondering things about Instagram reels, such as, do I have to dance on there? Do I always have to show my face? If you're wondering any of those things, then keep on watching, guys. And welcome back to my channel, where I help Bridal Beauty Pro create Instagram content that books more brides. Today's video, I'm going to be going over how I went from basically getting zero views. As you guys can see over here on my Instagram reels, when I just started out to now suddenly exploding my views on my reels to getting 300,000 plus views. I started implementing 30 days ago, a 30 days of reels challenge, where for 30 days straight, I posted a reel. Had a lot of you guys messaging me about this like you're crazy. That's a lot of content to post. I like to post reels, but I can't that much. So let's start out with the first question as to why would I even want to do this challenge? So I can explain to you guys how you can start getting more views on your content. So why I wanted to do the 30 days of reels challenge was because I saw a lot of other content creators on Instagram doing the same thing, and I just thought it was really cool. I'm also a big believer in learning through taking action. I truly believe that taking action really does breed confidence. I took on the challenge to post 30 reels for 30 days straight. I can learn specifically for my own account and my own followers and everything how the Instagram Instagram algorithm works within the reels. I can best film my reels. I can start creating a workflow for Instagram reels to start fitting into my content strategy that I already have and so that I can maximize my engagement on my content pieces. So before I jump into the data and the analytics that I was able to collect for from my 30 days of reels challenge, I just want to hit you guys with some Instagram reels facts. So last week, the creator and owner of Instagram actually posted this IGTV where he Discussed what Instagram is actually prioritized. That's the biggest hot topic right now, which is Instagram reels, which he actually did say is compete with their biggest competitor, which is TikTok. We all know Instagram reels are basically Instagram's version of TikTok. Short form video clips that are 15, 30 seconds and I think can go up to a minute now. So the creator of Instagram basically stated that they're going to be prioritizing reels as well as short form video. Another fact that we have to understand about Instagram reels is that have to understand that with a single photo piece of content, it is only on your feed for about 48 hours is a reel which gets on the feed for over 90 days. What exactly does this mean? With a single photo on your feed that you just upload and post, it is only shown within the feed for 48 hours top so that means people, when they hop on their feed and they're scrolling through, they're only going to see that feed post of your photo for up to 48 hours versus with a real piece of content lives on for 90 days. So you have an extra 88 days for that piece of content to reach more audiences, to reach your followers and get more views on that piece of content. Why is this so important? Because we put our heart and soul and a lot of energy into all the types of content pieces that we create, especially us as bridal beauty professionals. When we're doing a makeup look, when we're doing a hair look or we're taking a video or a photo, a lot of effort and energy that we're putting into that. So we want to maximize our engagement, we want to maximize our reach and make sure that that piece of content that we're posting is actually going to be seen. Those are the two differences between a post versus a real. Let's jump into the data and the analytics that I got over the 30 days. So as you can see over here, I was able to increase my reach. Reach increased to 515,000. That's 515,000 new audience people, new followers that have seen my reels. When I think of it that way, it's kind of crazy that 515,000 people saw my I was also able to gain over 1.7 million impressions on my reels and on my overall content in just 30 days. I gained 2,383 new followers. As you can see over here. And you're looking at the graph. My followers were going pretty steady and I was Gaining new followers here and there every single day. However, you can see those huge peaks when I started posting Instagram reels. Once I started posting Instagram reels over the 30 days, within the last about 14 is when I saw the biggest spike in follower count. I am also still seeing that big gain of followers every single day. Whereas prior to doing the 30 Days of Reels challenge, I was gaining about maybe five to ten followers a day. Whereas as now, I am still gaining about 50 to 100 new followers per day. Next, let's look at the views that I was able to get on my reels because I had about five reels that went viral. For me, any reels that are over a hundred thousand views is a viral reel. As you can see over here, These are the five reels that I had all reach over 100,000 views. I had two reels that actually reached over 200,000 views. This reel right here was actually only the second video where I posted my own face within a reel. Super nervous to post it because it was a little more sarcastic, which is a little bit more my personality. I wasn't really sure how it would be received. I just did it as kind of a spur of the moment, wing in it kind of thing. And I just posted this reel, and this reel actually got over 320,000 views. This reel right here is really what kind of started encouraging me to want to show up more on reels and actually want to start doing this challenge in the first place. So let's walk through some of the data of my viral reels that actually got over a hundred thousand views. When I'm going through these reels, it's funny because as I was posting these specific ones, I wasn't really thinking that these ones would get a lot of views. The ones that I actually thought would get a lot of views did not get a lot of views. But when we look through the data and through the analytics, and when I pick out the specific elements of these reels, they all kind of have some similar things in common. So the best practices that I learned from these specific reels from reviewing my data and my insight within these reels is that reels that get a lot of views for me specifically are usually under 10 seconds. They usually have my face in it with a combination of a client's face or a client hairstyle. So usually have a client comment or a client conversation component to it. As you can see, I'll usually put like Bridal Inquiry or Bride say. Those types of reels are the kind for Me that I saw the most virality. I specifically think that it was because it is something relatable to my audience that I already have. So it gained a lot of momentum and a lot of traction. A lot more views quicker. So real quick, something I want to say about the data that I was able to collect throughout my 30 days of reels challenge. That everyone's data is going to be specific to you and to your audience. The types of content that I create will be totally different than types of content that you might want to create. Because after reviewing the data, this is the type of things that resonate most with my followers that I have. It might be totally different with the followers and the audience that you have. And the next piece of data that I was able to collect within the 30 days of reels challenge that is outside of reels, but I still think it was kind of important was my story views. My story views on average would usually reach about 500 to sometimes 800 views. As now that I've gotten more followers as well as more engagement on my post, my story views are now reaching up to 1200. I just thought was pretty interesting. Something else that was just like an added bonus. After collecting this data and these analytics and doing this challenge, I learned quite a lot about Instagram reels. So I'll go over with you guys the top things that I learned throughout this challenge. The first thing that I learned from this challenge was it helped me gain confidence to be on camera. Also help me gain confidence in my filming abilities for reels, Whether it was filming myself or filming a client when I'm on location doing a wedding or filming a client when I'm doing a trial. By taking this challenge and for 30 days straight, needing to have real content really pushed my comfort zone to really figure out the best ways to film my content transitions that I wanted to try. It just really boosted my confidence to want to take that action to do it because I had the challenge in place. So if you're someone who is not comfortable in front of the camera or you're not comfortable filming your clients or anything like that, I highly suggest that you just take a challenge like. Like this. Kind of push yourself out of your comfort zone. Because if it's something that doesn't come naturally to you when you're doing a challenge and you're con and you're consistently taking that action of filming your clients or filming yourself, whatever it is, it's going to become secondhand nature to you. Just like when you're doing a client's makeup or you're doing clients hair. In the beginning it was a little scary, but like, oh, I don't know. But now it's like second nature to you because you do it all the time. The second thing that it taught me was that you don't have to show your face on your reels. Also don't need to dance on your reels. If you look at my reels that I posted within the past 30 days, I think maybe I did like a little dance like this and that was about it. I'm not a dancer, that's just not my thing. So I didn't post any reels doing any dance movements. So if you're someone who feels that you need to dance to in order to start posting reels, you don't need to do that. Oh, I did notice my reels started getting more views and more reach and more engagement once I did start posting my face. I have a lot of reels that didn't have my face and that were just my clients, like these ones right here that still got over 10,000, some got 20,000, some got 5,000. Where it was just my clients of their hairstyle and maybe behind the scenes of the day. If you're someone who wants to start posting reels, don't feel obligated that you have to show your face first. Can simply start out small and start just repurposing maybe your story content. If you take videos of your clients or if you take videos of your makeup work or your hair work, you can just start repurposing that and making a reel out of it. How I started when I first started doing reels, when they first came out like last year, you can see these ones over here. These were the reels that I started out doing first and then once I started building more confidence and I really wanted to take on this challenge is when I started doing ones with my face. But even throughout the challenge, I didn't put my face in every single one. Another thing I learned when doing this 30 days of reels challenge, just because you don't get a certain amount of views as soon as you post your reel doesn't mean that it's trash. What I found after doing this challenge and posting so many reels was that when I first posted, I may only get a couple hundred views. But what I had to realize that again, reels circulate within the feed and the Explore page for up to 90 days. So even though I only may have gotten a couple hundred views within the first day or two, Those next couple weeks, I would see thousands upon thousands of views just stream roll in. It's different with a piece of content such as a photo. If you post it and you're only getting a couple likes and you're not even and you're not necessarily seeing that traction on the post, you only have those 48 hours for the real, you have 90 days. So even if you don't have the views or whatever the likes that you want to see when you first post it and you're like, oh, I did so much for this, but it's real. I really love it. Don't worry, don't delete it, don't freak out. Give it the full 90 days and I promise you'll start seeing more traction on your reels, even if it's weeks later. Something else that I learned that was actually the hardest part for me when doing this challenge and posting all these reels for me. Specifically, prior to doing this challenge, I already had a content hosting strategy in my place. I like to post a certain amount of pieces of content a week. I usually post at the same time every day for me and within my audience and my followers. And again, this is going to be different and specific to every single person. So don't necessarily go off of what I do. But I found posting for my audience and my followers, posting usually around 2 or 3pm is the best for me to get the most possible engagement and maximize those efforts. Again, this is different and specific to every single person. There is no perfect time to post on Instagram. So don't say, oh, I need to post at 3pm because that's what Marissa does. Different for everyone and within your audience involved. But with that said, my strategy in place. I normally don't post as much on the weekends because I am servicing weddings on Fridays. Saturdays, Sundays, I'm either on a wedding or I'm servicing trial clients in the studio. The hardest part for me with this challenge was posting on the weekend, specifically Saturdays. There was a couple Saturdays where I was literally on locations in the middle of the a park that had absolutely no cell service. I was posting at different times throughout the day and what I normally would. And I did see a drop of engagement on those specific days. Again, I did notice in the coming weeks those reels would still gain traction and still get up to a couple thousand views. But the first day that I posted it because it was like there was a few reels that I posted on Saturdays that were later in the day, maybe like 6pm or 7pm I didn't see as much engagement when I first posted it. So throughout these whole 30 days, that was the hardest thing for me was actually posting on the weekend where I'm because I'm busy, I'm with clients and I didn't have the time to go and hit the post. Next thing that this reel challenge taught me, that helps me create a workflow for my reels. So the current workflow that I started implementing and then I started doing now for my reels that makes it honestly super easy to get content, super easy to bash my content than even before. I have a five step process for my reels content workflow. The first step is research. The first thing you're going to want to do if you want to start implementing reels into your content strategy is to research, research, have yourself maybe an hour because honestly, you get sucked into these reels so much and just go onto Instagram reels, start scrolling through what's popping up on your feed. If there's any sound that maybe you're seeing over and over that might be a trend on and save that sound, save those videos for later, whatever ones you like to really see what is out there, what other people are doing, even if they're not within the beauty industry. Maybe it's a photographer, someone in a totally different industry than you. That's okay. You can easily just take what they're doing and implement your own niche, your own strategy into it. Next step, after you've done your research and you saved a few reels that you want to do, kind of have your topic ideas, your concepts ready to go that maybe a few hours aside on one day and do some reels content batch. At first I was able to only do about maybe three reels in a few hours for content batching. Now I'm able to do about 10 to 14, 14, able to do about 8 to 10 within one day. Like I said, action breeds confidence. The more action, the more consistently that I was bashing these reels, the easier and more naturally it came to me and it'll be the same for you. The third step for a reels content workflow is to batch edit. So once you have about maybe three to four reels, maybe it's within that same day, or maybe you're like, okay, I did enough work today. Next day, batch edit all those reels. So plug in your text, date your caption, date your cover photo. So batch edit all those reels that you have. The next step is to plan it. So if you guys saw my content batching, that I did. Right here. You'll know that I use the app called Planoly. And within Planoly I schedule and plan all of my content, including my reels. But what I'll actually do, because you can't upload a reel within Planoly, I will screenshot the COVID photo of my reel and then I will upload it over into Planoly so that way I can can schedule it and have my caption easily accessible within that app. That way, the last step within the workflow, posting the real it becomes super simple and easy and I just need to copy and paste my caption from Planoly, which already has my hashtags in it, and then I go over to Instagram reels, go over into my dress, paste my caption, and it's super simple and I'm ready to post. Now a quick little hack for reels. When you are getting ready to post something that you might not know that you're actually able to crop your cover photo. If you see over here, you can tap cover photo and you can actually move it around so that way your text is visible within your next thing that I learned from doing this reels challenge, after reviewing my data that I collected over the 30 days, able to better understand what my audience and my followers like to see from me. The best way to learn this firsthand is to do a bunch of different reels. Like for me, what I wanted to do was try out a couple different styles of reels that I saw other people doing and to see what worked best for me. So within those 30 days, I tried out a couple different strategies. I did voiceover reels, reels of just my clients, of just me that were kind of like funny and fun girls that incorporated me and my clients in one. And some that I saw were some trends within Instagram reels or within TikTok. And it was super crazy because again, like I said, the ones that I thought were going to go viral and get a lot of views actually didn't perform the best for me. So even though I saw them as an Instagram trend or I saw them performing really well for other people when I was doing my research didn't necessarily perform well for me or with within my audience and followers. Oh. After the 30 days and reviewing the data of what performed best for me, now I know what my audience likes see from me within reels. So now I know the types of reels that I'm going to double down and create and I do my next Instagram reels batching. So Some Instagram reels best practices for you to start trying is if you are someone who has never posted a reel or maybe you've only done one or two the Instagram reels workflow Start getting your steps in place, specifically the first one which is research a consumer of reels. See what other people are doing. See what's out there, see what's true trending. Save sounds, save videos so you can start getting concepts and topic ideas for your own. Another best practice for Instagram reels is if you are getting inspiration from someone else, you are doing the same thing. You definitely want to give them a shout out within the comment they inspired by, then tag them within the comments because I don't want to be copying someone else's reels word for word or anything like that. I've actually had people shout me out who have a way bigger audience than me or on TikTok, which I thought was really cool. So I and I've actually done a reel that was inspired by somebody else and I made sure to put it in my comment section. Inspired by and I tagged them in the post. It would be the same as if someone shared your makeup photo or your hair photo to a really big account. They didn't credit you as the creator of that makeup look or that hair look. So that's definitely a best practice. Next best practice to just get started. Like I said, action breeds confident. More consistent you are with filming it, the better you'll be at it. If you guys are interested in some tutorials on how I create most of my reels, then make sure you're subscribed that notification bell for next week's video I'm going to be covering reels for beginners and how film, edit and batch my reel. Never forget it's a great day to create something beautiful and I'll see you guys in the next video. Bye guys.