What is the secret sauce to making your Instagram Reels stand out?

As marketers, while researching for the most popular formats to create content on Instagram and Facebook, we don’t even need official stats to see that reels are the real deal! Why do we say that? Because you watch reels, we watch reels, everybody is scrolling through and consuming this short, fun, quirky and most importantly viral form of content and our appetites are only getting bigger! Instagram video makers have a wide arena of audience today to connect with.

But when we do take a look at the stats, something that stood out is that an average of 6 million reels are made every day, all vying for our attention, and that’s just in India! Well, sometimes with great popularity also comes great ……clutter?

How do we create reel content that stands out from the rest, communicates your story clearly while also riding on popular trends, and helps reel in (pun intended 3:)) the right audience? Let’s look at some simple ways to do that.

a) Speak the language of your target audience

Putting across your communication in the everyday language of your target audience is a great way to ensure instant connection. For example, saying ‘buyer persona’ instead of something like ‘the different types of buyers you will find out there’ is more likely to prod a marketer to watch your reel because your language proves to them that you understand their world and therefore can help them.

Spend time to research your audience well and speak to them as one of them.

b) Experiment your way to uniqueness

Trends on social media are fickle as feathers. It is almost impossible to predict what will trend next and the answer to the question “How do I go viral” is usually, my friend, blowing in the wind! 

But the one thing that always wins on social media is a unique voice. Experiment with all kinds of content like dance videos, tutorials with a funny twist, or even elaborate skits, but always ensure there is ‘you’ in the content. Who are you as a person, and what do you believe in? Find ways to keep bringing all these aspects out through your content.

c) Find your own balance between trends and originality

Somewhere at the intersection of volatile trends, popular Instagram hashtags and your own original content is that elusive sweet spot of balance. To find that sweet spot, the most underrated hack is consistency. Some of your content could be purely trend drive, some could be just a spark of creativity that came to you out of the blue, whatever process you follow, keep creating consistently and trying to balance out the two sides based on your end goals for your page. Your balance need not look like anyone else’s, it could even be as simple as one trending reel and one reel with your own domain’s technical content every week. See how it works and how many people it is reaching and start tweaking from there. Again, experimentation is key. Plus, need we say, social media welcomes crazy experimenters with wide-open arms anyway! So, you go!

d) Optimize time and energy to create content consistently

All content is not equal. Some reels could be easy to create while some may need really elaborate planning, it depends on a lot of things like the skillset of the creator, the complexity of the idea, etc. To keep your content flowing consistently and seamlessly on your page, optimize your efforts and plan ahead. Keep a stock of content while also creating ad-hoc content based on trending moments. 

Also, find tools that make your work easier and faster, like this Instagram video maker, or this blog to video convertor to leverage the power of technology and specifically AI in the case of these tools.

We went ahead and created an Instagram reel using Steve AI and it took us 4 minutes! Here are the simple steps of the process.

1) First, log into Steve AI and click Create on the dashboard.

2) Then, select the vertical video format in the Live Video section. This is most suitable for reels.

3) Next, select the category and title of your video idea to generate a sample script. If you want to make a video of your own script, you can click on ‘Write my own script’ too!

4) After this, your script page will appear. Here is it populated automatically with the sample script since we have chosen a title from the stock. If you have chosen to write your own script, a blank script page will appear and you can type in your script here. The AI divides each sentence into a separate scene.

You can also mention a keyword in the ‘What is your video about’ section to give context to the AI.

5) Select a design style template for your video.

6) Behold! Your video is autogenerated by the AI with suitable images and videos! And, the draft is ready on your Workspace for you to make any customizations. 

We reduced the length of a few scenes to make the full length of the video compatible with the standard length of reels.

You can also use the ‘Swap’ option to change visuals in specific scenes and choose from an extensive library of images and videos.

7) Click Publish when you are done with customizations.

And, Voila! Your video is ready to be downloaded and shared!

It is THAT simple! So, what are you waiting for? Brainstorm on a crazy good video idea and create it within minutes with your video-making assistant Steve!