INSTAGRAM REELS VS TIKTOK | MY FIRST THOUGHTS

REELS has been released and I wanted to share my initial thoughts with you and how I am looking to incorporate it into my business. Firstly what is REELS? It's a 3-15 seconds app that is housed within your Instagram App. 

How to find it

Open your stories, you'll notice the interface has been simplified and now you have 3 options, REELS, Live and Stories. 

Wait is this just TIKTOK but in Instagram? 

This is a very basic implementation of TIKTOK. It doesn't have the same editing features as TIK TOK and you don't have the luxury of creating content longer than 15 seconds. (TIKTOK has 1 minute capacity). 

For those that are thinking that Instagram is just ripping off TIKTOK you have to think that it's a company trying to serve the needs of its end users. It's trying to bring you the best features and give you optionality. 

Remember when stories came out and it felt so scary? But now stories are everything. 

Is REELS right for me? 

Yes. As a business owner I'm constantly looking for new ways to generate, publish and distribute my content. I don't want to be the last person to use REELS. Conversely I do feel a bit old for TIKTOK and the singing and dancing routine isn't really my area. 

How can I best use REELS for my business? 

Whereas before, putting videos and music together and publishing them to your Instagram feed proved hazardous. The licensing laws meant that a lot of videos would get muted, kind of defeating the point. 

There is a big library now in the REELS app and so publishing music videos has become more inviting. You can also use a host of editing features that will naturally sync what you're doing to the music. 

Check out the REELS video I did for Marc Darcy suits. It's my first one and when I want to demonstrate a few different outfits in one video, I can seamlessly click my fingers, the video will pull it in time with the music and voila. Although it should still be said that this is a barebones version of TIKTOK, they have much better editing features. 

Is it easy to use? 

YES! That's the best bit. Anything new is scary but the editing tools are very intuitive. You can layer the videos with text and a multitude of fonts. 

Top tip for REELS? 

When you're in the edit mode scroll all the way to the right and you'll find a huge library of effects. Start playing with those. Also maybe use another instagram account that you don't care about as much and experiment. When it comes time to publishing REELS on your main profile it won't look as slap dash. 

Also try and be creative and not cringeworthy. It's a fine line I know. 

Things to improve

You can only upload videos and not images. This is a bit of a faff because if you notice in my REELS video I spliced in some images/freeze frames. If you want that stop motion kinda thing you'll need to edit it in Final cut then upload it to REELS. Hopefully they'll improve their editing features as the platform evolves. 

Comment from YouTube: Instagram really needs to unbury “Posts You’ve Liked”. Right now it’s : Profile Icon On Bottom Bar > Hamburger > Settings > Account > Posts You’ve Liked. Too many steps.

The Results? 

My opinions and first thoughts are this could be something. My first REELS video doubled the engagement of my IGTV stories. Maybe its new and it's rating it higher in the algorithm. Also news out today on the Social Minds podcast is that TIKTOK will be going completely transparent with their algorithms. Will Instagram follow suit? That does put a lot of pressure back in Instagram's court.