Easily Create Instagram Reels (Crash Course) With Marielle And Claire From Instagram Growth Club

Turned off and overwhelmed by Instagram after all the updates? Don’t feel like you got what it takes to create reels? Well, reels don’t have to be fancy to grow your business. Learn how to easily make reels that increase your sales in this episode from social media coaches Marielle Baylis and Claire from Studio 5 Social.

“I think is good to remember, as business owners, that people are naturally quite nosy and we like to see what's going on behind the scenes. We like to know what's going on in other people's lives. And we will dedicate time to watch that and it connects us too.” (20:25) 

3 ways to start creating effective Instagram Reels (tune in for more tips):

1. Yes, reels can give you more reach. No, that’s not always a good thing. 

“you'll reach all these great people and they might love it and they might start following you, but they also might not be your target customer or your target audience, and that can get a bit risky”. 

2. Make connection content that shows your audience who you are as a business owner. It’s the personality side of your business. This can be bloopers, questions, and behind-the-scenes content.

3. Repurpose your best image/carousel posts into reels. If something works well for you as a grid post, it will likely work well for you as a reel as well.  

4. Make your reels consumable within 20 seconds, yes - even if you’re teaching something. Reels that perform best are ones where people can implement something quickly. 

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Closing date: 31 January 2023

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Transcript

Easily Create Instagram Reels (Crash Course) With Marielle And Claire From Instagram Growth Club

Rosie Parsons  0:00  
Today we welcome social media experts Marielle Bayless, and Claire from Studio Five Social. We'll be talking about how to use Instagram when it can feel so overwhelming. I know. I'm focusing especially on making reels. It's lovely to have you both with us. Thank you very much for joining us today. Do you want to both? Tell us about what you do both individually and then what you do together?

Marielle Baylis  0:26  
Sure. I'll go first. I'm Marielle. Bayliss, I own Marielle Bayliss Social, I work in social media management and paid ads, as well as your Facebook and Instagram ads. And I primarily work with  fashion EECOM and lifestyle brands, on all kinds of aspects of social for anything from full social media to strategies, to paid advertising, and one to one training. 

Rosie Parsons  0:53  
Ah brilliant. How about you, Claire?

Claire Studio 5 Social  0:56  
Hi, I'm Claire, I am the owner of Studio Five social, I am a social media manager and trainer specialising in service based businesses. What does that mean? That means I support business owners, really to get their unique service out there on Instagram, and help them do that through one to one training sessions. I have an accountability three week programme. I do account audits. And I also help business owners write their strategies, and then more importantly, go on to how to implement them.

Rosie Parsons  1:36  
Oh, awesome. And then what do you do together?

Marielle Baylis  1:42  
We've just started to work on our more one to many training offerings. So we've just done a reels masterclass called Find Your Reels Confidence, where we help people get over the fear of reels, because I think a lot of people find them quite tricky, so we try and combat that, in that masterclass. And then off the back of that we've now run a three week course video based course called the Instagram Growth Club, which is for any business owners that are new to Instagram who want to hit the ground running with the right strategies. But it's also for people who are business owners that have been on Instagram for a while and have fallen out of love with it and have lost their way a bit and feel like all the updates have taken them over. So it's actually about grounding again, starting from scratch, relearning getting up to speed and, and you know, and growing and increasing sales again, because I think people, I think we've got to the point where people have lost a bit of mojo, and it's about getting that mojo back.

Claire Studio 5 Social  2:48  
I think with Instagram, there's so many changes, the last 24 months really has just been so many new features being rolled out. And it can, before that it was overwhelming, because it was time and how much time do you invest? And all of that, and now it's like, well, how much time do I invest in? Which features do I need to be using, and I don't know whether I'm using the right one, and it's just, it's just becomes a bit of a mess, really. So find your you know, the Instagram growth club is all about sort of picking all of that. And as Marielle says, to get that mojo back and and really show the value that Instagram brings to a business if it's used effectively.

Rosie Parsons  3:27  
Well, yeah, that's always gonna be my first question really, like, what value does Instagram bring? Like, what difference has it made in your businesses? Why is it so important to other people's growth?

Marielle Baylis  3:37  
I mean, I found Instagram incredibly important to my business, primarily because it's what I do. So it's important for me to be there. But in the past, I mean, I've been doing social football 10 plus years, and in the past, I've always historically won clients word of mouth. And I bumped along doing that for quite a while. And then my youngest child was starting school, and I suddenly was like, I really need to up my game here. I'm going to start my own account and actually get out there. And that was about two three years ago. And what I've found since I've done that is the number of leads the quality of leads is just so much better because I'm speaking to the the exact right people that I want to work with. I'm almost telling people who I want to work with, and they're finding me and I probably say like 90% of my work comes from my Instagram account. To be honest, it is important.

Rosie Parsons  4:35  
So how often are you posting on Instagram? Then would you say? 

Marielle Baylis  4:39  
I post about three times a week possibly four? 

Rosie Parsons  4:43  
I was worried you were gonna say three times a day then!

Marielle Baylis  4:47  
Yeah, I know! But when for when, funnily enough when I took when people asked me that, and I answered that question. They're like, Oh, my God, but you're there all the time. And I'm like, but I'm not! I might be on stories every day maybe, but actually, I'm not there as much as everyone thinks, and but it still works!

Rosie Parsons  5:07  
Yeah. Yeah,

Claire Studio 5 Social  5:09  
I find the same. I mean, I've been using Instagram for my business maybe two and a half years now. And I find that the wonderfulness of it all is that you get to be speaking directly, whether that's through a DM or whether it's through a comment on a post or a reel to your potential customers. And that's a really unique opportunity. My background is sales. And, you know, you could go months trying to reach a decision maker and try various sorts of schemes and tricks to get that person to sort of be there. And Instagram just gives you that incredible platform to speak to these... They might not be your clients at the moment. But you know, certainly that journey, the funnel has started and you have that opportunity to really speak directly with them and understand what they need. And you know, it's it's brilliant. It really is brilliant for that. And it's free. It's free marketing. I think that's yeah, yeah, your time is important as a business owner, but aside from that, it's a free, it's a free way to market your business.

Rosie Parsons  6:16  
Brilliant. So we're talking about reels in your reels workshop and things like why are reels particularly important?

Claire Studio 5 Social  6:23  
Reels when they were launched, the big the big thing that reels gave you as a business on Instagram has the opportunity to reach so many more eyes, you know, having more eyes on you and your content, and therefore your business because Instagram needed reels to be a success, you know, they launched them pretty much, I don't think there's any been any doubt in direct competition to the sort of TikTok platform, you know, it's head to head time. And so they're investing a lot in them, and they have to work. So the benefit of that, as a creator or an account holder on Instagram, when they were launched, if you created a reel it was going to be pushed out as much as it could be. And pretty much there was this giddy three months or really scary three months, if you didn't like reels where basically most of the content that was, you know, you made a reel and you realise Oh, my God, like, wow, my like reach has gone through the roof, because you've got the algorithm helping you. And to a certain extent, that still remains, you know that the difference between, say, a grid post, and a reel is that the reel will reach more people. You will get more eyes on that content there is yet. But with my sort of training hat on here is, that's great. But if you're reeling about anything, and you don't necessarily follow a strategy, which I'll come on to, you'll reach all these great people, and they might love it, and they might start following you. But they also might not be your target customer, or your target audience. And that that can get a bit risky. So a lot of people that I speak to now have this great time of growth, but they're like, but I don't really have a very engaged audience, or nobody really seems to be liking my content now. And I think the other thing that happened with reels was we were all in lockdown with all this great time and not an awful lot going on. So we were like making reels about anything, really. And it's not necessarily in line with what your business is about.

Rosie Parsons  8:30  
Okay, so that was interesting what you were saying about having a strategy that and so if like, people were pushing out reels, and then sort of, yeah, they're not getting much interaction and things and like, where are people going wrong with that?

Claire Studio 5 Social  8:42  
My feeling and observation of the reel strategy is, you need to still go back to your target audience. So what I break it into four things with the strategy, you want to number one, show people, you know, who you are as a business owner, so that that's all the good stuff that comes into behind the scenes. So that connection content. So it's the content that you know, you're letting people know exactly who you are. Maybe the story of your business, definitely behind the scenes stuff, as I mentioned, frequently asked questions, bloopers, anything that's real, and you know, that people can relate to and are then going to think, oh, wow, actually, that's really relatable. I'm, I'm connecting with the person, it's the personality side of the business. The second bit of a reels strategy is definitely, you know, part of your strategy might be to grow. And in which case, that might just be why you're creating maybe more reels than than you would in six months time or six months ago is you might think, well, actually, I do need to grow my following because I've got something coming up that I want more people to see. But you know, I do think that is a valid reason. The other thing that I think is is you know why? Why would you create that will and I think ultimately Most businesses should be using the platform to drive sales. So what what is it that's going to help me drive sales, it's going to be content that shows people that you are the expert, or you are somebody to trust. And that comes from things like social proof. Testimonials are great for that. Success Stories befores. and afters case study, and they can very quickly and cleverly be put into a reel format a video is, and that's another thing. I think that people just, if they think of them as videos rather than the word "reel", it can help sometimes. 

Marielle Baylis  10:43  
I think people got really comfortable people got really comfortable with Instagram, as it was, yeah, got like to square picture, people like to square video. And then I think as soon as reels, got introduced, there was so many different things like music, and text that comes on and off of the screen. And all of these different things. And there were some, you know, the people, when it first came along, there were loads of people that had been on TikTok prior to they were really savvy to it. And then I think, all we saw were these incredibly glossy, incredibly, well put together and edited videos. Now I think that scared the average user off everyone was like, Whoa, yeah. I'm not sure I can do that. And actually, I'm not that and actually what you know, now we've come full circle, it's like, everyone's found their groove. And everyone's you know, starting to realise that they can do reels, but they can do them in their own way. They do not need to be dancing, they do not need to be doing all these things that you can make it you can form a strategy that works for you. Yeah, and just going back to strategy as well, I think one of the best things that people can do to when you're starting, is go back through your insights and see, look at your top posts that you've had in the past as static images, and just see how write down a few ways that you could repurpose them in a video format? And that's, that's probably your best starting place, I'd say.

Rosie Parsons  12:12  
Yeah. Yeah. As you were when you guys were talking about sort of making videos that are client testimonials and stuff. I mean, I wouldn't have a clue sort of where to start with that. What, how would you make that into a video,

Claire Studio 5 Social  12:23  
I think it quite simply, I find some of the most effective ones is if you've got a really relevant backdrop or not even that relevant just not an eye catching video footage, let's say for example of the beach or the waves - something that's quite engaging, that pulls you in, yeah, and then you just have simply your testimonials, you can set the text to come in, like a typewriter. So that's causing movement, which, in, in the world of Instagram now is classed as a real because it's effectively a video. Or in some where, like Canva, or any of these other sort of design apps, you can have them just if you've got, let's say for Marielle and I with with with our training, we collate maybe three or four testimonials, and then they can feed in and feed out of a screen, put some music behind it. And that is a, you know, it's ticking a lot of the reel boxes, it's short, it's punchy, there's some music, and and you're only asking people to watch it, maybe 10 seconds. And it's done. And that is really quite often as Marielle said, if a testimonial works well for you on a on a grid post is going to work well for you as a reel as well. And that sort of some of the best topics. I think for reels. I mean, I'm coming from a more service based business, then the businesses I tend to help but anything that you can teach, I really liked the phrase, if you can be a generous expert, whereby you're very much sharing what you know, that's going to be of value and it goes back to your target audience if you know what your target audience struggle with or have as a pain point. And you can create a tutorial as a reel that, you know, they are so valuable. And you know, they will they will therefore get a lot of engagement.

Marielle Baylis  14:15  
One of the simplest ways of doing a testimonial in with reels is literally just asking someone to give you a video testimonial. So one of your clients could just video it a very short, quick testimonial, send it to you and you can post it on your own platform. And any kind of testimonial is really powerful but a video one would actually if you can get your client to sit there and speak to you and tell you the value that you've they've gained. That's that's like golden reels. 

Rosie Parsons  14:45  
Yeah. So it's really interesting, like how often should we be doing reels compared to static posts and stuff and what should be a good ratio?

Claire Studio 5 Social  14:53  
I mean, I think with all content creation, it's it's got to work for the person creating it, you know, the If we're looking specifically at Instagram, or any of the social platforms, really the algorithm will reward consistency. So it's not really advisable to set unrealistic content goals, you know, you're much better off being consistently posting three times a week, and do that week in week out then sort of having spikes and troughs, which inevitably happen, if you over commit to content. So I think I, do you agree Marielle? I would say from a reels perspective, one reel a week really is a strategy, if we're looking at using them to reach your target audience alongside stories and some grid content is enough.

Marielle Baylis  15:48  
Yeah, I mean, I always look at it like, I call it Instagram tapas. So a little bit of, you know, a reel, having a little bit of everything, I think is a really good place to start having what if you can do one reel every week or two weeks, but I think static posts and carousels and stories and guides, a lot of people forget about guides, I love a good guide!

Rosie Parsons  16:15  
Ooh what's a guide?

Marielle Baylis  16:17  
So a guide you is a content format that not many people use. But you can make three types of guides, you can make one for places, you can make a product, one for product, and you can make one out of posts. So if you're a service based business like Claire and I, you can make a guide made up of all your past posts that you've made already, and you just collate them into a little helpful collection. So I have some on Instagram shopping and Instagram tips and tricks, and they're all old. They're all posts that I've previously made. You can add to them, you can take them out, and they're so helpful. But product one is, especially at the moment coming up to Christmas, anyone can make a product based guide on and put a collection of things that they love. But they but in the process, they're promoting other businesses and their products that they love. So, you know, they're a nice little content piece to make.

Rosie Parsons  17:15  
Yeah, that sounds great. I'm thinking I should probably do that with all my jazzy outfits and jewellery and stuff I find and share all of those!

Marielle Baylis  17:24  
Yeah, you can do that. You know that anyone can make a guide, and anyone can include all the products from shops that you love and follow. But yeah, I'm a big believer in Instagram tap past, like a little bit of everything. I think it's that age old thing. And like, everything in moderation, I think, you know, if reels are really working for you, and you love making them, then by all means, do all reels. But if you are one of these people that loves a square grid post, or they're not actually square anymore, or they I don't know, sort of rectangle. Don't quote me on that. Yeah, there's the format. Everything's changing. i Yeah, I'm a great believer in a little bit of everything, I think, especially when you're starting out. And then if you love rails, and you want to integrate more than brilliant, but I definitely would say, just start start small and grow. Yeah,

Claire Studio 5 Social  18:16  
I think a little of everything is sensible. Because also your audience will use Instagram differently. I mean, obviously, we're social media managers. So we we do it all. But, you know, I always find it fascinating that when I speak to people that some of my audience, they only ever hang out in stories. So if I'm not posting stories, they're not going to, they're not going to know what I'm up to. Whereas others are just in the reels feed now, so if I didn't sort of have a reel going out, again, I would probably miss a little bit of my audience, relying just on my grid, because not everybody, unfortunately, hangs out in the feed as much these days.

Rosie Parsons  18:57  
So that's interesting. So how often are you on stories? And what kind of thing are you doing on stories?

Claire Studio 5 Social  19:02  
So I try I try and be in my stories every day. And actually, I prefer I personally prefer stories because they're quick and they I don't have to worry about captions I don't have to worry about is that size, right? I don't I think a story should be just a quick picture or short clip of something that again, will either educate, entertain or spire inspire your audience. You can use loads of stickers, they're fantastic. And I know they gotta be done in five minutes. If you're spending more than five minutes on a story, it's the wrong story to be to be posting. But I try and I try and do two to three a day. I mean, I don't always but if I've not had time to post on the feed or do a reel then yeah, I would give some some love to my stories.

Marielle Baylis  19:56  
But yeah, I think 1 to 3 is optimum at the moment. I Think when if someone's posted like 10, or 15, the tendency is people will get bored and they'll swear through. Yeah, yeah. But I do. I think the beauty of stories is that they are, they're raw, they're, you know, you don't have to, they don't have to be polished, they can be very quick and flippant, almost. Yeah. And I think I watched them like television. And, you know, I think what we, again, what I think is good to remember as a business owner is that people are naturally quite nosy. And we like to see what's going on behind the scenes. And we like to know what's going on in other people's lives. And we will dedicate time to watch that. And it connects us to so it connects us. You know, if someone's had a bad day, someone else who's had a bad day will relate to it, you know, someone's achieved something amazing. People like to support that. So I think, you know, stories, I think, are really good. They're a really good connecting to, I think, also for selling, but I think selling their brilliant actu ally. But in order to do that back of house connection, story are really perfect for them. 

Claire Studio 5 Social  21:07  
They're good, and only your audience will see them. So you are connected. You know, if you've got Yeah, you've got a warm audience effectively, because they are already following you. And I think that's quite nice. That's, that's great for community - building up that community that that people always talk about when it comes to socials. They want to be there.

Rosie Parsons  21:28  
Yeah, and Claire you were mentioning about being a generous expert. And so how do you draw the line between like giving everything away? Like, maybe you've got an online course or something? And then you're like, Okay, well, I need to give tips on this. But actually, my online course is going to be covering all of that. So if I then give away all my tips, why would they buy the course?

Claire Studio 5 Social  21:47  
It's really, it's really tricky. And I am, yeah, I'm quite bad. I try, I am constantly trying to rein myself back in from over delivering, and only by sharing what I think the best advice I can give is, sort of think of it as tip sprinkles in that you need to, you need to be that generous expert. Because if you can share some of your knowledge and and actually a really good point there that I always sort of sticks in my mind is because you know it, you are the expert, because you because it's something you do every day, you can quite often forget how much value that will have to somebody else that doesn't do it every day. And so that's, you know, trying to offer offer more and give more away. But actually, you don't need to, you just need to share what you know, in little sprinkles that leave people thinking, Oh, wow, that was that was such a useful tip that I'm going to keep an eye out for the next time because and people will then become used to you sharing that knowledge. And more importantly, that being really valuable. They use. So keep it to one each time. I mean, I'm talking to myself, as well. The one thing and then hold the rest back for the next piece of content, then that's that's a good formula. 

Marielle Baylis  23:12  
Obviously you don't want to overwhelm people, you know, people do you know, overwhelm is one of the biggest cut offs, isn't it? Think by don't, you know, by just really fine tuning it and keeping it neat and tidy. And just one thing can really give gravitas I think.

Rosie Parsons  23:31  
Yeah. Yeah. That's a really good tip. Brilliant. And what do you see common issues with people having when they come to you, when they're starting to think about improving their reels and stuff? What's the main problems people are having?

Marielle Baylis  23:44  
Well, like we just mentioned, overwhelm like that is probably the biggest thing that I think people come to us with is, there's too many updates, there's just so many moving parts that they feel like they've been left behind, or these new things come up, and they don't know how to use it. And it's all too much. So they need to take a step back and have somebody here, show them and help them. And I think what Claire and I do in some of our courses is we strip it right back and we show people  the bits that they need to know to start, I think for an example is when you open, for instance, reels when you open the interface, there's a lot of buttons, there's a lot of icons, and a lot of them don't mean a lot to the average user. If people have been on TikTok and things for a while then they will be auffait with it. But I think as someone who's looking at it for the first time, it's quite scary. Yeah, definitely. I think one thing that Claire and I do is that we actually just go right, these are the ones that are the important ones to start with. Forget about all the rest. We can learn about those later. But these are the ones that you need to know these are the need to knows about. And so we start there and we build up from there. I think new updates and just a basic overwhelm of all the buttons, all the new stickers, what does everything do? And actually, I think when we're training, some of the most valuable things that people get from our courses are sometimes the things that we overlook, - we think that their day to day things that everyone knows, and actually, not everyone knows them. And actually, when we teach them how to do that really easy thing, that's quite life changing for them. And actually, it gives them such a big boost. They're like, Oh, my God, I can do this now. And  I think, those are the things that I think people search us out for.

Claire Studio 5 Social  25:48  
It's moments that they're like, Oh, this isn't like... yeah! "oh, it's just this!" and it's like, yeah, that is that is exactly how I think a lot of people feel - you know, overwhelmed. Definitely. And stemming from overwhelm is, quite often people will come to Marielle and go, Oh, my God. Like, I've tried to make a reel it's taken me five hours. That's too long - I haven't got five hours! We're like, Oh, my God. What are you doing? Unless you're paid to do that, nobody should have five hours. And we will show you that it doesn't need to be five hours. So yeah, I think Marielle's hit it on the head - it's overwhelm. That comes from so many people with reels.

Marielle Baylis  26:33  
And I think it's just remembering it's just video. I think that's the real key to it as well. Yes, it's just a video. It's just put together in a slightly different way.

Rosie Parsons  26:42  
Yeah. What kind of reels have you found that I've got the best engagement? Are there certain ones that work better than others?

Claire Studio 5 Social  26:49  
I think. Yeah, I think I do think it's a moving landscape. Really, I think, unfortunately, for us, and, you know, what, what, what works now might not work in and I think that's another thing that comes with reels and it will always be the shorter the punchier, the better. You need to hook people, you need to have a hook from the word go. So what by hook, I mean, why is someone going to keep watching this, when there's all this content being served on, you know, stopping this, how are you going to stop the scroll. 

Rosie Parsons  27:23  
Have you got any examples of hooks?

Claire Studio 5 Social  27:27  
Something like you need to know this, you know, just sort of very upfront at the beginning, or you're going to love this or I've got something for you know, anything that's going to and again, thinking about your audience, you know, if I if I three do what I do, but if I did make chocolate, for example, you know, what I would hook someone in with would be very different to what I do, but again, it's if your audience loved chocolate, than just having this image of the most perfect delicious Squamish I need to eat it right now chocolate would do it, you know. So it's again, you know, the best rules are created by accounts that really know their customer, because they can then stop them in their tracks, but anything that's going to do that and then anything that's not going to keep them there too long. So you know, they need to be sort of that reel needs to be consumed. Definitely within 20 seconds maybe you might be lucky and get someone.

Rosie Parsons  28:24  
So you can do reels for longer now can't you? Would you think not to do that? 

Marielle Baylis  28:29  
I think they have their place I think if you're doing a tutorials where you're showing someone action, I use I use a longer reel for teaching how to do a specific task. I don't go much over 30 seconds. I don't think for those I try and do them quite quickly. But you know, the longer ones they do have the pace but they won't get as they won't get as much engagement because people have really got to want to be there and I've got the time and the inclination to stay there. But I think I mean things that reels that get the best engagement I think are things that are useful so they they're Tips, Tricks hacks that you know people can implement quickly and then oh my god, that's amazing. Okay, do that. Entertaining reels, you know if you can deliver something in an entertaining wail away with it with a twist or maybe a surprising ending, something like that. It's going to be quite engaging. I also think share anything that's shareable. So if it's a hack or something very easy, that you know, one of the best reels I think I've ever seen was a photographer who said do you want the hook was one thing you can do to take great photographs. And she literally just gets her camera, her phone and she she cleans the lens that was a very early on about but people shared it They shared it and they shared it because it was so clear and easy. Anyone could do it. You just need to remember.

Rosie Parsons  30:08  
That's great. What would be like the steps to planning out a good reel like, oh, they do plan out like your reels for the month? Like, how do you do it?

Marielle Baylis  30:18  
Well, planning ahead for reels is quite difficult, I would say because of well, firstly, because of trending audio. So, if you if you want to integrate trending audio into your reels, then a piece of audio that's trending now might not be trending in two weeks time.

Rosie Parsons  30:39  
And why would I want to do that? Like, can you tell me the benefits of having trending audio?

Marielle Baylis  30:43  
Yeah, in order to get the best reach if you catch a trending audio early, you've got the potential to be seen by more and reach more people. I think the potential of that is less now the more more people are making meals. So I think at the beginning, when rails were very, very new, less people were using them. And I think if you jumped on a trending reel, you could be seen by a lot of new, more people. I think that's happening less and less, I think it really depends on your, on your on the actual, again, there's so many moving parts. But I think using trending reel trending audio as part of your strategy is important. Be don't have don't feel like you have to every single piece of trending audio, I think again, it comes back to that strategy. And it has to be right for your brand and right for your business. Don't just use it because everyone else is using it. That's just completely wrong. Yeah, I think for me, the first for planning tips would be do research. So watch reels, save a bank of reels that you love. Also save audio that you love and sits with your brand and is aligned with you always take high quality imagery and make it well lit as a photographer, your that will be probably your top tips for taking a batch filming. So if you can batch film, back to back a couple of reels, quite quickly, not in a great deal of time spent a lot of time on it, but just you can, once you've done your research and you found ones you like, you can make them quite quickly, then you can just say, Oh, I'm gonna make that for today and do it in half an hour, 40 minutes or something. And then you've got Yeah, you know, if you're doing one a week, you've got a month's worth of reels, though, which is great. Yeah,

Rosie Parsons  32:36  
that's good. Yeah,

Marielle Baylis  32:38  
I think always, the format is really, really important. So you have to be taking your photos or your photographs and imagery needs to be taken like in the same format as your stories. So it needs to be a nine by 16 reels that feature square imagery, have just got these black borders above and below him, it just looks really bad. So I think if you can change the settings in your, on your camera app to always take photographs and footage in nine by 16, you'll be saving yourself an awful lot of trouble in the future. So then you'll always have a bank of content that you can use in in a wheels, basically,

Claire Studio 5 Social  33:21  
You can change it afterwards, like a lot of my clients go and change it and then they're frustrated because they cut. So if you're if you're if you're not recording or doing it you're you risk that when you do go and then change the the sizing that you might cut out some of the content, you want to increase as well. So that's really important to have that.

Rosie Parsons  33:44  
But I suppose so what you're saying is we need to be filming like in portrait orientation. But that should be fine. As long as our phone isn't set to square or something like that. Yeah, the normal like filming on your phone should be fine. As long as you hold it portrait wise. Yeah. Brilliant. So you were saying sort of in terms of like setting aside time for creating reels, you're thinking if you do like, if you set aside 40 minutes, a week, in a week, then you can actually create month's worth of reels, like for one a week. So you could do four in 40 minutes.

Claire Studio 5 Social  34:17  
Yeah, that that I think is I tend to want to, for me, I tend to on a Friday, just half an hour that I think okay, well, that's in my week, I've been saving any audio that I think could work for some for an idea, or if I've seen any reels that I think oh, that's Yeah, that's interesting. I'll save them. And then on that, that hour in my on my Friday, will just be allocated to reels. So I'll then just sort of work out what I'm going to be doing. I do think it's quite a good idea, not sort of spent hours doing it, but just jot down some notes of any concepts that you think could work in terms of you know, if, if that week you've had the same question again, hearing a lot from from clients or customers, then that's probably a really good idea to make a reel about it just to answer that question, ya know, sometimes that content inspiration can come from just there and then just jot that down and you go, right. Okay, well, I must I must answer that question, because I'm getting asked it a lot. And I think that will be quite helpful.

Rosie Parsons  35:19  
Yeah. Great, great.

Marielle Baylis  35:21  
Yeah, I think reels very good for being for reactive, reactive marketing, like something can just crop up and, and out of nowhere, actually, like a trend of some sort. And if it really fits with your business, then and if it's really quick to make, because I personally really believe that reels should be quite quick to make. Yeah, I think I think the key is not to stress about them, not to overthink them, just to  get going and record them. But I think also, there's new, there's a new feature, which is the reels template now. So actually, as long as you've taken all of your footage and your imagery in in portrait mode, you might find that you see a really good reel that really suits your brand, which actually, you can just use the template to drop your own imagery, and it makes your own reel to that audio, which is all cut with the timestamp

Rosie Parsons  36:18  
for anybody that's for anyone that hasn't sort of dived into reels at all, and hasn't got a clue what you're talking about. What do you mean by is it like, just I know what you're talking about. But just thinking, I've got a few friends that won't say, could you explain about templates a bit more? What are they?

Marielle Baylis  36:32  
Yeah, so they've been a bit of a game changer, because I think, before reels templates came about, when in order to have there was some very fancy rules that came about where they were, they were quick moving music to beats and people would painstakingly time the photographs to the to the music, which was very, very clever. And the people that did it right at the beginning, hats off to them, because they're, you know, they did an amazing job. What reels templates allows us to do is actually whoever made that first it now allows us there's a little button where we can just tap that. And it just gives us a template where we can drag and drop our own images into the timestamps. So that are new to the music. Yeah. Yeah. So the images and video move to the music. But if you I don't know if you can see that there. But yeah.

Rosie Parsons  37:27  
Yeah. Oops,

Marielle Baylis  37:28  
that little white sticker there on there. Yeah. Yeah. template. And if you tap it on it, and then if you tap it, you literally just put your own photographs in those slots. 

I mean, I use I use them all the time. When I first got the feature. I was like, Oh, my God, this is a game changer, because I did use to make them from scratch. And it was it was a complete waste of time. To be honest. It wasn't very fulfilling. I don't think!

Rosie Parsons  38:04  
You need to sort of like be really musical to hear the beats and like make sure that the state of changes at the right time.

Claire Studio 5 Social  38:10  
Yeah. Really small fingers to be able to drag that. It was like ugh!

Marielle Baylis  38:16  
Yeah. Yeah, wasn't my most fulfilling job, I have to say, and I didn't do many of them, because it was very off putting.

Rosie Parsons  38:25  
Oh, well, it's been brilliant to chat to you guys. And do you want to talk about your next course. So we'll, we'll put this out. I'll hopefully put it out in December. So if you've got a course we've got one coming out in January?

Claire Studio 5 Social  38:37  
Yeah, I'd love to wait. So Marielle and I did a beta course for something called the Instagram growth Club, which is a three week course that we touched on earlier for business owners who are looking to up their Instagram game, whether that be that they're brand new, and they have a new business that they're wanting to market, or whether they have been using the platform for a while or a short term, and just feel that they're not really getting what they need from it. And that was that we did it as a beta course because we really wanted to have a group of people that could do the course and then give us some really clear direction and feedback as to what was great what was what they really took from it and if there was anything that they would like or would feel would be better done slightly differently. So we've done that and that was that was fabulous. And we thoroughly enjoyed it met some brilliant business owners and we're now ready to take that and launch our Instagram growth club number two, which is happening in January. So on the waitlist is, is there ready people are joining the waitlist, and we're going to be sort of letting people know when the doors open very, very soon.

Rosie Parsons  39:48  
Brilliant. Well, I will put all of that all those details in the show notes and so people can join the waitlist. That sounds great. Thank you. Yeah, fantastic. So should we be using hashtags on our reels and if they do make a difference, how can we find out which ones we should be using?

Marielle Baylis  40:04  
Yes, you absolutely should be using hashtags on your reels if you can always include them at the bottom of your caption. I think a while back, there was a trend for people to be adding them to their first comments, which actually, it won't help, it won't get you the optimum SEO. So basically, they want Instagram have told us now that they want hashtags to be in the caption. And that helps with your SEO. So it'll help your content be found better. You can use up to 30, but I think always experiment with numbers and see what works best for you. In order to find which ones work best. Always use the search bar in Instagram. So type in some keywords and keywords that people your audience will use to find you. So if so, for me, I would type in social media manager, managers, for instance. And if you wouldn't, you've tapped out into the search bar, you can tap tags, and then a whole list of related hashtags will appear.

Rosie Parsons  41:14  
Sneaky, I like it! 

Marielle Baylis  41:18  
So it will also tell you a number, they will have a number underneath. And that number tells you how many times that hashtag has been used. Oh, great. And what you don't, what you want to be doing is using niching right down and using slightly smaller hashtags, because if a hashtag is being used over a million times that then your content then gets lost because it's just too big a pond. So you want to be niching down a bit. So anything from 1000 to anything under a million really, but mix it up. And if you're a smaller account you slightly, you know, use  one to 500k You know, the majority of I'd say and yeah, he's used a mixture of small, medium and, and large, but don't go over 1 million would be my golden rules. Really.

Rosie Parsons  42:08  
Brilliant. That's a very helpful tip. Thank you. Well, yeah, it's lovely. It's been lovely to have you both with us today. And I'm really excited to share this episode with everybody. So thank you very much for all your valuable insight. It's been fantastic. 

Claire Studio 5 Social  42:26  
Thanks, Rosie. Thank you very much.

Rosie Parsons  42:30  
Hope you enjoyed our chat. I know I picked up loads of great tips there. Marielle and Claire have given us the chance to let one lucky person win a spot on their next Instagram growth club. So to win what you need to do is to subscribe to the podcast, leave a rating and share the podcast on your social media. When you've done that email a screenshot of your share to me at Rosie at Rosie Parsons photography.com with the subject line Instagram growth club. When you've done that email a screenshot of your share to me at rosie@rosieparsonsphotography.com with the subject line Instagram growth club competition by the 5th January 2023.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai