Master Instagram Reels in 2024

Hi there!

Whether you’re a freelancer or just a hobby content creator, having a large and engaged following on social media is always a great advantage. You never know what possibilities it can lead to in the future.

As of today, sharing Reels is the most effective way of reaching new people and growing your account.

In this newsletter, I’ll walk you through my content creation process that has enabled me to reach numbers like these with my nature photography:

Let’s jump straight into it! 🙌 

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To make things easier, let’s divide the content creation process into the following four parts:

• 1. Purposeful content

• 2. Uniqueness

• 3. Systems for content creation

• 4. Having the right mindset

  
  

1. Purposeful content

In order to gain more clarity about the type of content you aspire to create, you can start by asking yourself what its purpose should be. Content can generally be split up into the following three categories:

Educational content - content with valuable information that teaches the viewer something.

Inspirational content - content made with the purpose of inspiring others. Motivational quotes, personal growth etc.

Entertaining content - content made to entertain the viewers.

Once you’ve decided which one to go for, you can then ask yourself if you want your content to be:

Audience growing - content made to target a wide range of people in order to gain new followers.

Audience building - by incorporating your personality and values more, you can build a stronger connection to the people already following you. It’s always important to nurture your already existing followers.

There’s no need of becoming too fixated with these terms, but they can definitely be worth having in mind if you want to become more intentional with the content you share.

2. Uniqueness

There are so many creators out there who create beautiful content these days. The best thing you can do to yourself is making sure you bring something new to the table for people to enjoy.

It’s important to remember that you need to give people a reason to follow you. By being unique, you will increase your chances of catching the attention of the viewers.

The best way to create unique content is by utilizing your unfair advantages. An unfair advantage is something in your life that’s not that big of a deal to you, but that someone else would give everything for to either experience or have.

My biggest unfair advantage is that I live close to nature, while also being a morning person. This enables me to capture foggy rural scenes that not too many people get to experience.

While I also implement other aspects to my work, it’s the foggy nature photos and videos that lay the foundation for my identity on social media. It’s a choice I’ve made to better stand out among all of the other nature photographers out there.

By identifying your unfair advantages and making use of them, you’ve already started setting yourself apart from others.

3. Systems for content creation

If you want to succeed with Instagram Reels, you will at some point have to establish systems for your content creation process. It’s truly a game-changer, and here’s why:

In this case, the end goal is to gain as many views as possible on your videos.

The best way to gain more views is by posting often, ideally daily.

Technically, you could edit one video a day in order to post daily. This is however a very time-consuming method that will drain you in the long run.

I used to edit one video a day for years, but it always made me feel stressed and worried about what to share the following day.

This is the first part of the content creation process that you definitely should consider systemizing, by doing batch producing.

Batch producing means that you edit several videos at once. I usually select one day in the week and edit 5-7 Reels, which I then save as drafts in the Instagram app.

This is very helpful since it:

• Enables you to dedicate more time to other aspects of your life.

• Prevents you from burning out since you don’t always need to be thinking about what to create next.

• Makes it easier to maintain motivation to create.

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Another aspect that’s worth systemizing is the editing process. Here’s how mine works:

I edit my Reels using the CapCut on my phone and laptop.

In the CapCut app, I have saved projects with different combinations of clips, colour grades and font selections.

Whenever I’m creating a new Reel, I duplicate one of the projects and change its videos and texts in order to fit the Reel I have in mind. This way, I don’t need to spend time on figuring out the colour grade and font every time I’m editing a video.

This is another excellent way of saving time.

I’ve personally decided to keep my editing workflow very simple. You don’t need to be the best video editor to get good views. A simple and systemized creation process works perfectly as well.

So, how do you actually create the content?

To create Reels, you first need some form of material to work with. Try filming as often as possible. Nature clips, behind-the-scenes of you working, more staged shots out in the field, drone and camera clips - everything is great!

The more material you have, the easier you’ll have creating videos.

Here are the methods I use to come up with my Reel ideas:

1. Follow active creators within your field

   → This is a great way of finding audios and concepts that currently are trending.

   → When you engage with accounts similar to yours, the algorithm will push more content of this type on your explore page.

   → Make sure to follow creators from different parts of the world to get a good variation of inspiration.

   
   

2. Use the Reels tab

   → Regularly scroll through Reels with the intention of looking for inspiration. As soon as you find something you enjoy, save it for future use.

   
   

3. Remake Reels

   → When you’ve found a Reel of your taste, you can remake it using the same hook, audio and framework.

   
   

4. Mixing

   → You can also take an idea from one well-performing Reel and use the audio from another one. This way, you are remaking the idea while adding a new audio.

   → By mixing different elements that are proven to work, your Reel is also more likely to perform well.

   
   

5. Own ideas

   → When you’re regularly watching and analyzing Reels, you will start coming up with your own original ideas. Make sure you bring these to life as well!

   
   

How to sync your videos to the music

One of the best ways to level up the overall impression of your Reels is by syncing the videos to the beat of the audio. Here’s my way of doing it:

1. Screen record a Reel containing the audio you’d like to use on your phone.

   
   

2. Open the screen recording in the CapCut app.

   
   

3. Extract the audio and select the beat-sync feature.

   
   

Extract audio

Select "beats"

Auto-generate usually works well

4. Add your photos/videos and sync them to the audio using the added beats.

   
   

5. Delete the video of the screen recording from the timeline before exporting the video.

   
   

6. When sharing the video on Instagram, add the audio from the app (don’t post the Reel as an “original audio”).

   
   

When adding the audio in the Instagram app, your video will have a better chance of gaining visibility from the audio, especially if it’s trending.

I shoot and export most of my videos in 4K 30 FPS, with the high quality upload setting enabled in the Instagram app. Having a strong internet connection is ideal.

4. Having the right mindset

The final piece of the puzzle is having the right mindset. You can’t expect things to go well if you aren’t fully invested mentally.

Here are a few mindset shifts that have had a positive impact for me:

• Try putting yourself in a position where you truly enjoy the process of creating. In my case, batch producing has given me more time to recharge my creative spirit between my editing sessions.

  
  

• View each Reel as a free opportunity to improve + a chance to go viral.

  
  

• Focus less on the actual numbers and more on making the Reels go live. You can’t control how many views you’ll receive, but you can control how many Reels you share.

  
  

Some final words

The art of content creation is by no means easy, otherwise everyone else would be doing it. However, by dedicating time to improving at your craft, you can drastically increase your chances of reaching your goals.

At the end of the day, it’s all about being persistent and having the will to keep pushing.

I began posting on Instagram in 2016, but it wasn’t until 2022 that my account really started growing. It took me six years of sharing content before I saw significant results.

A quote that illustrates this very well is:

“In order to achieve things others don’t, you need to do things others don’t.”

Make content creation a priority of yours, and stay persistent at what you are doing. You can achieve so much, you just need to believe in yourself and trust the process.

Keep creating my friends!

/Kevin