Do you want the good news or bad news about reels? {hint: its about reels and mistakes you’re making}.

Let’s go with the bad news first…Since Instagram reels debuted almost two years ago, they are more vital than ever, with Instagram throwing their full support {reach and engagement} behind them. Proving that these short-form videos are only increasing in popularity…

GOOD news? You found me! And I am giving you all the tips on how to create a short-form video for social media, and I make it VERY EASY.

In this post, I am going over the top 10 mistakes I see repeatedly in your reels. Now I know I’ve been doing this for a while, so you can believe that I have made A LOT of mistakes… so I created this video below to save you time and heartache so you can grow your business on Instagram!

10 Mistakes You are Making In Your Reels

You are not keeping the text within the dimensions – as you can see in this example, Instagram provides you with perimeters to keep the text in; all you need to do is STAY WITHIN THE BOX.

Overwhelming amount of text – do NOT clutter your reels with too much text. If you have a lot to say, then you need to put the main points in the reel and then refer people to the caption, or a link in your bio with more information.

Deleting reels – WHY WHY WHY are we still deleting reels? This has to be one of the biggest reels mistakes. If you end up with only 15 views in the first hour…do NOT DELETE YOUR REELS. The reason for this is that right now; reels have the LONGEST shelf life. Just because your reel “bombed” on the first day does not mean it won’t take off and go viral in 3 weeks….yes, I said that…reels can still go viral up to 3 weeks after you post them, so STOP deleting your reels

No CTA– There is no CTA in the actual reel itself; even if you have a CTA in the caption, you still need to add one to the reel. Most of my reels include “read more in the caption” because I give the main points in the reel that I expand upon, or I am giving a POV, and in the caption, I want to share a story, so always be sure that you include some call to action in your reels.

Trending audios – If you use trending audios, you want to be sure you are only using trending sounds with less than 2000 views, even less than that if you can. This means you are hoping on the trend early, and your reel will have a better chance of showing up on the audio page where people can watch it when the trend starts to take off. I talk about how to find, save, and use trending audio in this video over here…

The video is too long – reels just released 90-second reels…does this mean you shouldn’t use the full 90 seconds? Not necessarily, but you must be sure you keep people’s attention until the very end. This is why I recommend short videos for beginners – they are more accessible, and our attention span, on average, doesn’t last past 7 seconds. So when you start making reels, you want to stay below 15 seconds until you produce enough reels that you can go back and look at the analytics to see which ones are performing better AND then play around with long-form spins!

Low-quality videos – The Instagram algorithm can determine whether your video is high or low quality. If you show up with low light and incredibly blurry video, they will not show it to others, which will tank your reach. If you want to see all my secrets to shooting high-quality content on your iPhone, check out this video here…

No original content – instead of creating new reels with only trending audios, try to make original content reels where you are talking directly to the camera or doing a voice-over. Instagram is giving original content much higher priority these days, so it will be advantageous to incorporate it into your content calendar.

Hashtags – you are wasting too much time worrying about what hashtags to use…hashtags are on their way out. Instagram has become a search engine meaning that keywords are becoming EVERYTHING. Instead of constantly worrying about how many hashtags to use or which hashtags to use, start focusing on 3-5 keywords to weave into your content consistently

You are not creating reels in your niche – think about this for a second. Say, one day you make a reel about your dog, and it goes viral – like crazy, You start getting tons of followers to roll through and it’s AMAZING…until you realize that all the followers are there to see your dog…NOT become loyal customers. You want to ensure you are creating content around your niche to attract the right people to your page.

And there you have it, my friends – learn from my reels mistakes and be more successful on reels! If you feel like you still need even more help, or you are just at a loss for what to post, then you’ll want to check out my Content Membership, which is linked below – where you get weekly emails with DONE FOR YOU content. Wouldn’t it be nice to create a reel in under five minutes and then have a caption to go with it? YES…YES, IT WOULD.

And if you are still confused about the keywords I mentioned earlier – you can hop over to this video where I break down everything you need to know about them, and ill see you over there!