By Trevor H. October, 28, 2021 (UPDATED July 26, 2022)
When we first began posting on Instagram Reels, I kept my expectations low. Fast-forward four months and the progress made on Instagram has been nothing short of remarkable.
We posted on Instagram Reels for four months and here is what happened
Four months ago is around the time we started our business’ TikTok account. Vertical video was all the rage and we wanted to get in on it.
Since I was a kid, I remember shooting home videos with family and the urge to produce videos had returned. It was time to create content.
Creating videos about job opportunities, investing and money tips is what we do, and we assume that we bring value to our users. The proof of 50k followers on TikTok will reflect that.
So what if we told you that starting an Instagram account was somewhat of an accident. What if we said it was a place to store all of our content, a back-up. Would you believe us?
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Beginning our TikTok endeavor – Everyday that we created videos, we took off the watermark and repurposed our content on Instagram Reels. The amount of views we received on IG were nothing in comparison to the views we captured on TikTok. Thus, TikTok was our main focus based on the viewership.
However, after 2 months of uploading content onto IG, things began changing. There was a wave of attention and our follower count exploded to eight thousand within a couple weeks. This definitely caught the attention of our staff. It changed our perspective and our business plan.
TikTok videos happen really fast, within seconds and finished. People have a shortened attention span on the platform. On Instagram, we could slow it down and make videos longer. This was of great benefit to us as we catered to the user and the more info we could give, the better.
Receiving Instagram attention brought our company motivation, and it was time to go all-in on Reels.
After the two month mark, we began posting almost everyday. Our follower count didn’t increase drastically but we had engaged users, which was excellent. Users began connecting with our website.
Many people believe that connecting your TikTok account to your IG can help grow your accounts. We agree that it perhaps could. We believe in keeping the two accounts separate and focus our attention on driving users to our website.
At the end of the day, that is what we own. In all seriousness, we don’t own our TikTok and IG accounts. They are owned by TikTok and IG. It was of utmost importance to get users to our own website, our brand.
Moving forward with our Instagram Reels progress –
Into month 3 of creating content, we started writing better scripts. We analyzed where our viewers were from, what countries, and insisted on making content valuable to their demographics.
We began interacting more frequently with users through comments and DMs, which led to an increase in followers. At times it was difficult for our team to view comments and respond because users sometimes leave hurtful comments.
We are all humans at Make Dinero Baby. When people leave disrespectful comments, it can destroy our workday. It took some time for our staff to be able to ignore the viscous comments and interact with genuine users.
But despite all the haters, we did it, and our account continued to grow.
NEXT BLOG – INCREASE WEBSITE TRAFFIC
Focusing on video quality, sound, what time to post seemingly reflected Instagram’s ability to distribute our Reels to more users. We made the necessary investments in order to retain our user base and to capture what the IG algorithm requires.
- A smartphone with at least 8 megapixel, front facing camera sufficed
- Shooting next to a window for natural daylight
- Not rushing the video production process
- Adding music and subtitles
- Appropriate hashtags
- Editing
With regard to learning from the experiences of other content creators on IG, we strongly believe that it guided our team in the right direction. Free education is in abundance online. Learn from other content creators, learn from the best.
Putting our own stamp on how we create is what we are about. We learned from the masses but we make our own unique content.
Interesting fact
If you plan on repurposing your TikToks over to IG Reels, be careful. Our account was disabled twice, and we assume it was due to repurposing content. Instagram is like any app – They prefer original content. Once we began making our content on IG, without reusing our TikToks, our follower account continued to increase. It was the ultimate gamechanger.
It was apparent that if you play by the rules, the algorithm will reflect your success on IG.
Conclusion
When we first started our vertical video production, we focussed 95 percent of our time on TikTok and 5 percent on IG. Now, 4 months later, with 50.6k followers on TikTok, and 15.5k followers on IG, it’s 50-50.
What will we do next? Keep creating solid content for our users.
Special update It is July of 2022. We are still on IG and our growth has been amazing. We are grateful for the platform as it leads many users to our company website. We have 120k followers with 2 accounts on Instagram.
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