7 Battle-Tested Ways to Get More Views on Instagram Reels (Beginner Friendly)

Want to learn how to get more views on Instagram reels?  Well, you came to the right place.

Now I could bore you with a long intro listing all my achievements to move you and establish trust in your mind, but instead we are going to jump straight in the fire. 

1. Learn Search Engine Optimization To Rank For Keywords

First off you have to understand two things Search Engine Optimization(SEO) & Keywords.

SEO is the utilization of technical and content practices to boost your ranking on search engines like Google, YouTube, and yes even Instagram. SEO is made up of a multitude of factors and influences but the most important by far is keywords.

As an online marketer (which you are) keywords have to become your best friend. Keywords are words and phrases that your audience uses to search for anything, anywhere.

For Example – In the search query “ Why Does Chrisean Rock Keep Getting Face Tattoos” – the desired keywords would be ‘Chrisean Rock Face Tattoo’. So including those words in your captions, videos, and meta tags can drastically improve the visibility of your post.

Optimizing your social media account to rank for keywords is tremendously important as it will increase your brand visibility and your overall authority in your topic.

So now that you have a basic level of understanding of SEO and Keywords let me show you how to optimize your social media account.

Follow These 5 Techniques To  Search Engine Optimize Your Reel

• Optimize Your Account To Be Shown In Explore and Reel Feature

Before you can optimize your reel you have to optimize your account. Create or modify your account so that it can be searchable to your audience. If you are a comedian or an entertaining content creator focus on building the brand behind your name. “Brandon Williams Comedian”

However, If you are a product or service-based business owner using social media to market your business focus on optimizing your business name and location in your account. “Miami Luxury Hairstylist”

• Use 3-5 Keywords in your Captions 

Use a healthy balance of around 3-5 keywords in your captions. Do not overstuff your keywords in your captions because then the algorithm could mark you for keyword stuffing which could prevent your reel from growing impressions.

• Add Related Topics Before Posting

Before posting your content utilize the related topic feature to hone into your target audience. Tags like “Sports, Education & Food” help Google understand where and most importantly who to push your content to.

• Add Location If Important

This is a feature that is slept on by most business owners, especially service-based business owners. Instagram uses the location feature to push related content to people in the same area as you. It also helps if a potential client searches for “Hairstylist in Miami” your post will show on their feed since you are optimized for that keyword.

• When Your Pin Blows Up, Pin it 

When you have a pin that blows up and attracts great impressions pin it. Pinning your post on your page will help Instagram understand that this is one of your most important posts and it will push it out to more nonfollowers which will increase your reach. 

Now that you learned how to optimize your social media let me show something even more important.

Recommended Reading: Is Keyword Research Still Relevant in 2024

2. Your Viewers Dont Care About You, Create Valuable Content

Let’s face the fact when your audience first comes into contact with you they don’t give a flying fadoodle about you, they’re not supposed to. It is your job to invoke that emotion and give them a reason to follow you.

Today you are going to learn how to invoke emotion using valuable content – AKA Information Marketing.

Valuable content is any form of content that educates, informs, or leads someone to take calculated actionable steps.

Educating your audience in your Instagram reels positions you as an expert on the topic and builds your brand authority and credibility. Two very important factors when it comes to ranking content on any search engine including Instagram.

Valuable content is more likely to be shared as it is relatable and adds value to the lives of the people watching it.

5 Key Steps To Make Your Content Valuable

• Solve A Problem Your Audience Has

One of the best ways to make your content valuable is to solve a problem that someone or a majority of your audience has. Give them software, tricks, and techniques to get past or minimize the damage the problem is having and they are going to be sure to remember you.

• Give Your Audience Clear Actionable Steps To Move Foward

Give your audience clear and calculated actionable steps to progress in any endeavors they’re in. Maybe your audience doesn’t have any problems that you can think of, instead educate them on ways to move forward faster rather than fixing an issue they are dealing with. 

An example for a hairstylist would be giving your audience 7 tips to naturally grow their hair 10x faster.

• Be Yourself

Express your personality don’t be a cookie cutter and regurgitate information you have heard from those around you. Add your own twist and turn to your content, it’ll help you stand out and build your brand in the long run.

• Use A Conversational Tone

Your content is not the place to flex your stupendous vocabulary. Speak normally. Your knowledge and insight on the topic will be evident from your ideas. Speak in a way that a 5th grader can understand it. Your goal should be to make your concepts sound simple enough that a beginner can understand and take immediate action.

• Make Your Content Visual

Use graphics, and make it visual. No one wants to read or listen to a spew of words thrown at them. Making it easy on the eye, this allows their brain to process and embed the ideas in them oftentimes making your claims and concepts more credible.

Creating valuable content is a surefire way to get more views on Instagram reels, however, if you don’t grab their attention chances are they not staying to hear what you have to say.  

Recommended Reading: What is Information Marketing: The Easy Guide To Information Marketing

3. Use These Deadly Hooks To Stop Boring Your Audience To Death

This is possibly one of the most important topics that will help you gain more views on your Instagram reels. The first 3 seconds or the (HOOK) of your content is crucial to keeping attention and drawing your audience in to engage with your content.

If Instagram detects the majority of your viewers do not watch your content all the way through it will send negative metrics to the Instagram algorithm that signals to stop sharing your post.

Metrics such as a “High Bounceback Rate, or a “Low Watch Rate”

According to a ‘November 2023’ study by Golden Steps ABA the average human attention span is 8.25 seconds. Almost a whole second shorter than a goldfish.

You have to hook in your audience so you can later reel them in and gain a follower, or even a viewer which in turn grows your business or brand. 

Now there are a lot of hook strategies out there to implement in your content, but my favorite, and the one I’m going to focus on today is the Negative Hook Strategy.

The Negative Hook Strategy

Many content creators use the negative hook strategy but no one does it better than Devin Jatho.

The Negative Hook Strategy is a strategy where someone uses a negative word or phrase to act as a pattern interrupt in their viewer’s brain and then provide valuable content to engage and educate their viewer.

Example “Stop Wasting Your F*cking Time And Try These Tips To Grow Your Business” (Make Sure To Bleep Profanity)

The reason why this works so well is because it simply surprises your viewers. No one expects you to say something so off the wall out of nowhere this then intrigues them and invokes their curiosity making them want to hear what you have to say that is oh so important.

This is only 1 out of 100’s of strategy to captivate your audience in the first few seconds of initial contact.

Here are 5 Other Strategies To Use To Improve Your First 3 Seconds of Your Reels

1. Show  A Statistic
2. Ask An Interesting Question
3. Make a Funny Joke
4. Say An Interesting Fact
5. Invoke emotion ( The fear of losing is a great starter)

Grabbing the attention of your viewers is key use these 6 hook strategies to maximize the first 3 seconds of any content you post.

Recommended Reading: 100 Hooks For Content

4. The 5-8 Second Sweet Spot (The Desired Length For Every Reel)

When creating a reel majority of the time you want to stay in between what’s called the 5-8 second sweet spot. You may think that the reason you should make your reel close to 5-8 seconds may be because of the decreasing attention span that your viewers have and technically you’ll be right.

However, there is a more important reason WATCH TIME.

Watch time is the metric that measures how long & how many times your content has been watched. This is a fundamental metric as Instagram themselves has let it be known they rank content in relation to the overall watch time and watch rate that Instagram reel has.

Creating a reel 5-8 seconds long allows your reel to run in the background multiple times as someone is engaging with your content. Whether they’re reading your caption, reading the image in the reel or just processing the reel your watch time is steadily increasing the momentum of your reel.

So Can I Make 2 Second Reels To Boost Watch Time?

You can, but I wouldn’t. You don’t want to have your reel be too short for those who are seeing your content on someone’s story. 

With a very short reel like a ‘2-second reel,’ your content will be off the screen before your potential audience has a chance to interact with it at all.

Recommended Reading: Instagram Ranking Explained

5. Jump on Popular Trends TO Maximize Impressions

Ride the wave of popular audio tracks and trending memes to break into the algorithm and steal impressions. This is how most early influencers rose to fame and built their brand.

So what is a HOT Trend on Instagram?

In simple terms, a hot trend is any type of content, or audio track that is popular or in high demand.

The reel could be popular for many reasons, the trend could be fun, the trend could be because of a popular celebrity or honestly, it could just be a random spurt. 

So there is no point in going down that rabbit hole however, what’s more important is how to spot these potential trends before they explode. 

So that what’s we are going to focus on.

Use these 3 tactics to spot potential trends before they explode

• See What TikTok Is Doing

Get on TikTok but not as a viewer, as an analyst. Find budding trends on TikTok that have either just taken off or have visible potential. High chances are if the content has not become solidified as a trend on TikTok many users on Instagram don’t know about it.

• Follow Creators with Authority In your niche

There is no need to reinvent the wheel, see what already works. If you want to get more views on your Instagram reels watch what your competitors are doing and implement their strategies in your content. Many times those with topical authority have already done countless hours of strategic game planning before posting a single piece of content

• Use Research Tools Like Google Trends To Check For Hot Upcoming Topics

Google Trends is a keyword research tool made by Google that helps entrepreneurs track the progress or overall longevity of a specific keyword. Basically, it tells you if the keyword is ascending or descending. Ascending keywords imply that a potential breakthrough is coming and the faster you are to post it the more time you have to rank in the algorithm.

Try these 3 tactics together and you will become a sniper at finding upcoming trends.

Recommended Reading: How To Find Trends For Instagram

6. Build Connections On Instagram To Expand Your Reach

Start becoming social on your social media. Instagram was made to connect with the world around us, yet somehow we have turned into a popularity contest.

Why you should build relationships with Creators in your niche.

Building relationships with those in your niche is almost as important as building a relationship with your audience. Often connections with like-minded influencers can help you grow your business just as much as your audience can. Building relations with influencers allows collaborations on their platforms which broadens your reach and increases the credibility& awareness of your content.

Why you should build relationships with your Audience.

 You also must connect with members of your audience. Building relationships with your audience is a crucial part of Instagram marketing. You must have a strong recurring audience to not only establish topical trust, and credibility but to also sell your future and current products.

Don’t treat every piece of content like the same.

Not every post is meant to go viral, posting personalized content builds more of a personalized connection with your audience and makes them feel like they know you behind the brand.

So if you want to get more views on your Instagram reels connect with as many people as you can.

Recommended Reading: The Art of Building Real Relationships with Virtual People

7. Become A Better Videographer

This is easier said than done but becoming a better videographer is a sure way to get more views on your Instagram reels.

Increasing the quality of your content makes your post appear more professional and thought out. Great videography increases the engagement of your reel and significantly boosts your overall watch time. 

When creating your reel implement images and videos into your content this will give your audience a deeper understanding of what you are saying and increase the probability of your content being liked, shared, and watched.

Use Captions To Improve The Quality of Your Content

Captions on short-form content are changing the game. There is a reason why every time you open any platform you see 

the reason for this is because captions significantly improve the user’s overall experience on your platform. Captions are so versatile because they cater to so many types of users out there like those who prefer to watch content in silence or those who are hard of hearing and want a clearer example of what you meant.

Recommended Reading: Why High-Quality Video Production Matters For Your Brand

Did You Learn How To Get More Views On Instagram Reels?

I hope you learned 7 unique ways to get more views on your Instagram reels. Use these tactical pieces of advice to create a strategic blend of search engine optimization, compelling content creation, and active engagement. Dive into the basics of SEO and the optimization of your social media accounts. Craft valuable content and utilize effective hooks, to maintain your viewer’s attention.

Still Confused? Read This: 20 Ways To Get More Views on Instagram Reels