Instagram Reels Ideas You Can Use for Explosive Growth and Higher Engagement
Upon its launch in 2020, Instagram's Reels feature was widely perceived as a hasty attempt to compete with the exploding popularity of TikTok. This initial skepticism was understandable. The platform's own description positioned it as a tool for making short, multi-segment videos enhanced with music and effects, which could be shared with one's followers or discovered by all users in a dedicated Explore section.
Reels invites you to create fun videos to share with your friends or anyone on Instagram. Record and edit 15-second multi-clip videos with audio, effects, and new creative tools. You can share reels with your followers on Feed, and, if you have a public account, make them available to the wider Instagram community through a new space in Explore.
However, Reels quickly evolved into a far more significant and powerful format.
So, we’re gonna cover the importance of Instagram Reels, tips, and best practices before delving into easy and unique Instagram Reels ideas just in case you’re ever stuck. Our present to you for one of those “What should I post or make a reel about?” days.
If you're looking to jump straight into practical examples, we have compiled a collection of 23 distinctive Reels from different sectors. This curated set offers a variety of styles and objectives to spark creativity both content creators and businesses.
Making Instagram Reels That Captivate an Audience
Producing compelling Instagram Reels involves more than just spontaneous recording. To truly engage viewers, a blend of creative content and strategic planning is essential. Here are some foundational tips:
Maintain a Consistent Posting Rhythm
Audiences appreciate reliability. To ensure you always have content ready, develop a content calendar to pre-plan your Reels. Establishing a regular posting schedule — be it daily, a few times a week, or weekly — is crucial for building and retaining an audience. Using a scheduling tool can streamline this process, guaranteeing you never miss a planned upload.
Select Music to Set the Tone
The audio you choose is a critical ingredient for your Reels, much like it is on TikTok. As you plan your video, think carefully about the soundtrack. Using trending songs or audio clips can make your content feel current and connect with a wider audience.
Make Your Content Accessible with Captions
Many viewers watch videos in silence, whether they're in a public place or have hearing difficulties. By adding on-screen captions, you make sure your message reaches everyone. Just be sure to keep the lower part of the screen clear of important graphics, as this is where the text will appear.
If you are a B2B or B2C brand, you’ll want to make your captions more accessible to international audiences.
You may not be trying to sell products or services to the international market. But about 88% of all Instagram users are outside the U.S. That means most of your fans may not be native English speakers. So, be sure to capture and blend general global trends in your IG Reel captions along with your target market’s inspirations.
The international audience may not buy a product from you. But their likes, follows, and comments can be powerful social proof to your actual target audience.
The credibility those engagement signals can give you will go a long way in increasing not just your overall engagement rate but also your conversion rate.
Jon Torres, Digital Marketing Consultant & founder of jontorres.com.
Improve Discovery with Hashtags
Using appropriate hashtags is a simple way to help new audiences find your Reels. They act as signals that help Instagram understand your content's topic and show it to users who are interested in that niche.
Grow Your Reach Through Collaboration
A key part of social media success is building connections. Tagging other creators or partnering with brands on collaborative posts can introduce your profile to their followers, helping you build a stronger presence on the platform.
Share Your Reel to Your Main Feed
Don't just publish your Reel to the dedicated Reels section. Also, post it directly to your main Instagram grid. This gives your followers another place to find it and can help boost its overall visibility in the app's algorithm.
Creative Transition Effects
Explore the various transition tools available, like warp, voice, and scan effects. Using these can be a simple way to make your Reels more dynamic and visually engaging, helping your content capture viewers' attention.
Simplify Workflow with a Collaboration Tool
Producing video content can feel like a lot of work, but the right tools can make the process much smoother. Since social media success often involves teamwork, using a dedicated platform like Planable can be a game-changer.
It allows your entire team and even clients to work together seamlessly. You can provide feedback and approve versions directly within the tool, keeping all communication tied to the specific Reel you're working on. This eliminates the chaos of scattered emails and multiple tabs.
For added control, a multi-level approval workflow ensures content is only published after it has been reviewed and signed off by the necessary team members. Furthermore, you can streamline your scheduling by using a visual content calendar to plan and organize your Reels campaigns for the months ahead with a simple drag-and-drop.
Now, for the fun part: Let's look at some practical Reels ideas to kickstart your creativity.
Instagram Reels Ideas for Beginners
1. Provide Value to Your Viewers
While Instagram Reels are known for lighthearted and entertaining clips, your audience also appreciates content that is useful or informative. You can leverage the platform's creative editing features to produce valuable videos, such as a how-to guide or a creative demonstration of a special skill.
2. Make Content Worth Saving
According to social media expert Valerie Lisitsyna, who has over 350,000 followers, a key goal for a successful Reel is to encourage users to save it. Focus on creating content that your audience will want to return to later.
I would recommend creating savable content. This reel from last year that went viral received over 1.2 million likes and 218,000 saves. When people hit the “save” button, it tells Instagram that people like your content and encourages the algorithm to show your posts to more people. The easiest way to do this is by posting content your audience finds useful such as tips, DIYs, or tutorials within your niche.
Valerie Lisitsyna, Social Media Marketing expert with more than 350,000 followers on Instagram
3. Share a Glimpse of Your Daily Routine
"Day in the life" content remains incredibly popular because people enjoy relatable, everyday moments. These snippets help humanize you, showing your followers that you share common, everyday experiences with them.
4. Feature Content from Your Followers
A powerful method for building community is to share User-Generated Content (UGC). This means posting videos created by your own audience. With modern editing tools, this content can be very high quality. Most importantly, it demonstrates that you value your community's contributions.
5. Highlight New Items or Tools
If your Instagram page focuses on a specific interest or hobby, you likely use specialized products. Creating a Reel that features a new or favorite item is an excellent and practical way to share your expertise with your followers.
6. Share Your Favorite Products
You likely have a few go-to items that you love. Your audience is probably curious about what you recommend, so consider creating a Reel to showcase your personal favorites.
7. Try a Dance Video
While I was joking earlier, dance trends remain a popular staple on Reels. This approach won't fit every brand or situation, but when it connects with your audience, it can be an incredibly effective way to boost engagement.
8. Create a "Haul" Video
"Haul" videos, where you show off your recent purchases, are a highly watchable type of content. Whether it's books, games, or collectibles, viewers often enjoy seeing what others have bought. This format is also one of the more straightforward types of content to produce, making it a great way to share your new finds with your audience.
9. Offer a Quick Tip
A simple, clever tip can be incredibly powerful. These are the kinds of videos that make viewers think, "Why didn't I know this before?" Reels are the perfect format for sharing these bite-sized pieces of wisdom in a clear and entertaining way.
10. Use a Time-Lapse
Time-lapse videos can show progress in a captivating way, from a quick craft project to a longer-term transformation. While your project doesn't need to be as long-term as a 20-year selfie series, this technique is a powerful tool to visually demonstrate a process from start to finish.
Instagram Reels Ideas for Businesses
1. Flashback Fridays
The "Flashback Friday" trend is a perfect match for Instagram Reels. You can use transition effects to smoothly jump back in time, showcasing an old photo or an earlier phase of a current project. If you don't have a specific throwback planned, simply revealing the beginning stages of your work is a great alternative.
2. Before and After
People are naturally drawn to stories of transformation and improvement. If you have visuals that show a clear "before" and "after," consider building a Reel around them. Presenting this progress in a creative way is highly engaging for viewers.
3. BTS (Behind the scenes)
There is one kind of Instagram reel that always gets a lot of attention and interaction in our profiles, so much that it has actually worked in different accounts with different target audiences!
This is as simple as sharing a bit, just a tiny bit of the behind-the-scenes of your working process. The key here is to tell a story related to the product or the customer behind that product. For example, I used to work with an Instagram account that belonged to a business that turned people’s ashes into jewelry. These are called cremation diamonds.
We would record the process of setting the lab on while sharing something beautiful about the person that passed and their relationship with the customer. Even though it might sound sad, for some reason people have loved these kinds of videos.
Sharon Van Donkelaar, Chief Marketing Officer @ Expandi
4. Reveal Your Creative Process
Many of your followers are genuinely curious about how you create what you do. In fact, the journey of making something can be just as compelling as the final product. Use Reels to offer entertaining, behind-the-scenes peeks into your workflow.
5. Demonstrate Your Product
Product demonstrations are meant to be brief and focused, which makes them an ideal fit for the short-form Reels format. You can quickly show your product in action, highlighting its key features and benefits in a direct way.
6. Collaborate with an Influencer
A powerful strategy to make your content feel more authentic and relatable is to partner with an influencer. This collaboration brings their expertise and unique style to your channel, while also introducing your brand to their established audience.
7. For Artists: Showcase Your Work
The art world is now more accessible than ever. Instagram Reels gives artists a powerful platform to display their finished pieces and their creative process. You can use effects and transitions to present your art in a dynamic and captivating way, building your own audience directly.
8. Respond to Common Questions
Creating a Reel to answer your most frequently asked questions shows your audience that you're listening. This format feels more personal and engaging than simply writing the answers in a blog post, demonstrating a genuine effort to connect with your customers.
9. Create Tutorials
While written guides still have their place, your followers will likely value it if you occasionally repurpose your educational content into short, easy-to-follow Reels. Breaking down a process or explaining a topic in this visual format can make it more accessible and enjoyable to learn.
10. Showcase Your Popular Items
If you sell products, a quick and effective Reel idea is to highlight your bestsellers. Whether you create handmade goods or unique items, giving your top-selling products a moment in the spotlight is a simple way to create engaging content that can also drive sales.
11. A Glimpse Into Your Workday
To build a stronger connection with your audience, consider sharing a "day in the life" video. This style of Reel offers a personal, behind-the-scenes look at a typical day in your business, helping followers feel more involved in your world.
12. Teach Your Audience
In a competitive market, one of the best ways to differentiate your business is by creating educational content. Sharing your knowledge through tutorials or informative videos provides real value to your audience and helps position you as a trusted expert in your industry.
13. Showcase Your Progress
If your business has a history, use it to your advantage. A "Before and After" Reel is a powerful way to visually demonstrate your journey and growth. This format allows you to celebrate your milestones and show your audience how much you've accomplished over time.
The Importance of Instagram Reels
You might be wondering why you should dedicate effort to producing Instagram Reels. The primary reason is their power to engage a modern audience that increasingly prefers short, easily digestible videos. This format allows you to present your brand in a dynamic way, potentially attracting viewers who weren't actively searching for you.
This expanded reach happens because public Reels are prominently featured in Instagram's Explore section, exposing your content to users beyond your current follower base. Furthermore, as a format that Instagram actively promotes, using Reels can give your content a visibility advantage.
Beyond the strategic benefits, many creators find that making Reels is an enjoyable and creative process.
However, achieving success requires more than just copying popular trends. To make an impact, it's helpful to have a basic understanding of the system that decides which Reels get shown to whom — commonly known as the algorithm.
While Instagram's algorithm is always being refined, its main goal is to predict what a user will enjoy. It does this by prioritizing Reels that it believes a person is most likely to:
Press the 'Like' button on.
Leave an appreciative comment on.
Watch all the way through.
A key factor that distinguishes it is that it also values the potential for a trend to start. It pays close attention to whether viewers are inspired to use the same audio clip to create their own Reel, a feature famously popularized by TikTok.
Now that we've covered the basic mechanics, let's look at some effective strategies for creating your Reels.
Instagram Reels: Technical Specifications
To ensure your Reels look their best, follow these technical guidelines:
Maximum Length: 90 seconds
File Format: Save your video as an MP4 or .mov file.
Aspect Ratio: For a full-screen, vertical view, use a 9:16 aspect ratio. This is the same dimensions as an Instagram Story.
In-Feed Display: When your Reel appears in the main feed, it will be shown in a 4:5 portrait format. To prepare for this, note that the top and bottom 15% of your original video will be automatically cropped out. Make sure no important visuals or text are placed in these areas.
