Are your reels views stagnant?

Everyone has been cranking out videos, or telling you to crank out videos, since 2020, right? I know I was one of them.

It used to be that you could post a reel with a trending audio and automatically get tons of views. For some reason, in the past several months, I have heard the same complaint, over and over.

“I’m posting reels and hardly getting any views at all!”

You’re not the only one getting jerked around, I promise. If you’ve felt frustrated by this, keep reading.

After months of research, I’ve come up with a few experiments I’d like you to try to get more engagement on your account. If you’re getting the reach and engagement you want from reels, congratulations. (But also tell us what you’re doing!)

-Dig into your analytics.

Give yourself a report once a month. (I’m putting it in my calendar right now.) Look at all the content you posted, between reels, carousels, stories, everything, and see what content got you the most engagement.

Do you see any trends?

In the content that got the most engagement, was there a trend with the topic of the video? The way it was scripted? The length? Did you use transitions, talk to the camera, or just put text over some lifestyle B-roll. Write down any trends you find. From there, pick one experiment to test for this month.

For me, in TikTok, my emotional content gets more views. I typically share video and content hacks with some lifestyle built in (trying to do 3 per day to crack the code on that platform). When I looked at my analytics, the videos of me explaining parenting a spicy child and why getting sterilized was the biggest act of self love, far out-performed the videos about content tips.

What kind of content does your audience already like? The numbers will tell you.

-Reevaluate your hooks and scripting.

We have 2 seconds to stop the scroll. Are you mapping out your videos with a hook, some detail, and a Call-to-action?

If you need a list of hooks, you can check out the guide I sent when you first signed up for these emails. Or do your own research on hooks.

Sometimes we get stuck and try to create to keep up with demand instead of sitting down and creating content with a strategy. It happens to the best of us.

Start your video with the most important part of the story first, then the backstory, then the CTA. Or tell us, in the first sentence, in as few words as possible, what we will get out of the reel. Or call out your target audience in the first sentence so they know that reel is for them.

-Keywords over hashtags.

In 2020, the advice was to put as many hashtags in the captions as possible, which is 30. Hashtag strategy gets complicated really fast and you have to always be checking your hashtags to make sure they don’t become overused, or check if there are better ones that are more on-target for your message.

Now, social media platforms are indexing all aspects of our content; the words we say on video, which end up in our captions, the on-screen text, the words we write out in the description. Social media platforms are evolving to mimic search engines. SEO isn’t just for your website anymore.

This is another reason why some planning and basic scripting is so important. Get those keywords in there!

What words does your audience type in when they search for you? What is it that you do?

If you can plant these words into your videos and descriptions, it will go just as far as hashtags (or so the experts say).

I’d also recommend using the “Topics” field when you’re about to post reels

-Experiment with Carousels (posting several photos at once to be viewed like a slideshow).

Any social media platform prioritizes content that keeps viewers on the platform for as long as possible. While that can often be reels, carousel posts get lots of engagement as people scroll through.

For a while, I was posting one reel per day to Instagram because I was focused on growing my account. I posted one carousel, which was a series of graphics, explaining in detail the same topic I had just done a reel about. While the reel got more views, the carousel got more engagement (which is more valuable than views, but that’s a different blog post). Views are like pennies, likes are nickels, comments are quarters and saves and DM’s are $5 (in my opinion).

I grew my account just as much from 2 reels and 1 carousel post per week than scrambling to create 5 reels per week.

Social media is fluid and ever-changing, as you very well know by now. What works one day, may not work the next day. We try new things, notice what works, and reevaluate our strategy regularly.

Next time you’re killing time on Instagram, instead of just scrolling, take the role of an active observer. Now that you know some of the variables that go into the social media equation, you’ll notice what others do to get your attention and keep it.

Let me know what you try and how it worked for you! Email me, or tag me or send me a message on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook or LinkedIn! (I got my IG account back after being hacked!)