We just posted reels for a week and here are the results…

Let’s not beat around the bush here… when it comes to social media, everyone is looking for the best way to make their content reach more people in the hopes that it gets likes and followers. But that’s nothing to be ashamed of. 

It’s well known that social media is a great platform to grow your business or personal brand. When you start thinking about social media as a source of business development, you need to ask the questions that make sense such as:

• What content is going to get me the most followers per post?
• What content format is going to reach the most people organically?
• What content format is the best to tell my story?

About Reels & Instagram’s Algorithm

Social media platforms are built on algorithms. And it is these algorithms that constantly change to suit newer formats of content and user behaviour. The ultimate goal of this is to capture users’ attention and retain them using content. 

Therefore, whatever the newest feature built into the platform is, that will be considered as the best suited form of content to capture user attention, and thus logically, the best type of content to create. 

Right now, Reels are all the rage. 

This preference is visibly clear as you’ll start seeing content performance boosts due to this. Long story short, Instagram will reward you for using their latest content format, and they reward you with user attention. 

So naturally, one of those questions is: “Do Instagram Reels Get More Views?” or “Do Instagram Reels Get More Followers?”. Well, the Qwerty Team only posted reels for a week to answer that question, and here are the results.

Results

• Starting off by looking at the insights overview, we simply compared the key metrics from the 1st of January to the 8th of January against the previous week. 

• In the previous week, we posted 1 regular static post every day for 7 days. 

• During the trial week we posted 1 or 2 reels per day for 7 days.

• Overall we found that the reach increased by over an astonishing 30,000%!

• That 30k% increase equates to 31,030 accounts reached, of which only 87 were followers. The rest were all fresh audiences. 

• Our content during the week of ONLY posting Reels reached 71,860% more accounts that weren’t following us, compared to the week before.

• These incredible reach statistics indicate that Reels are great for exposing your brand to new people.

Our engagement statistics skyrocketed with total interactions, increasing it from 12 Per Week to 1,895 Per Week. Although our Reels only garnered 2 more comments than the static content from the previous week, the number of shares and saves soared from 89 to 325, respectively. 

Instagram values actions, such as saves and shares, because if you can create content that not only captures the attention of one person, but compels them to share it with someone else, it can then capture their attention too. This highlights that this content is clearly valuable to the algorithm’s goal of having more people spend more time on the app.

So by now we’ve answered the questions of whether or not Reels gets you more viewers (yes) and if Reels gets you more likes (yes, and more!) - let’s look at the big question, do Instagram Reels get you more followers?

In short: yes. However not as many as you might think compared to the reach and engagement rates.  In all honesty, we had been struggling with growing our page through static posts alone, and given the stats you’ve seen, that’s no surprise.  There’s an argument that because we’re a business account, the algorithm doesn’t push the content as far, organically, so that it urges you to pay for it. But nowadays who isn’t using Instagram for business? Let’s be real! I digress…  But in the span of a week we had gained 20 new followers and lost 2 followers for a net gain of 18 followers. That’s a growth in account size of 4.3% in a week. Purely just from posting the same content ideas but in a different content format. That’s a win in my books! So yes, Instagram Reels do get you more followers.

Before we round off this experiment there are a few things to note.

If you’re not blown away by the number of followers gained then consider this:

• Social media is about building brand awareness, not only gaining followers. Therefore the 31k new accounts reached over the last 7 days is extremely valuable as those are eyes that have now seen our business that otherwise wouldn’t have.
  
  
• The content that we posted for the last 7 days was experimental. Therefore, we didn’t fully know what content would work, and what wouldn’t work going into this. That said, we believe there’s room for improvement in terms of results.
  
  
• The content was actually very easy and fun to make! Posting on social media can sometimes seem like a task to stay on top of. Especially when you’re not getting great results, which can really dampen the mood… But seeing a flurry of engagement for posting short, silly content that we really enjoyed making was an absolute blast!

So in conclusion, Instagram Reels absolutely do get you more views and followers compared to static posts. That being said, you shouldn’t stop your static posts all together as they are well suited to your current follower base and as of writing this, your static posts are what shows up when a new viewer visits your profile. So it’s important to have some good looking content on your page waiting for them. 

If you’d like to learn more about how to grow your business through social media then be sure to get in contact with one of our digital marketing experts by booking a consultation HERE