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Build Your Tribe | Grow Your Business with Social Media
5 EASY Instagram Reels to go Viral in 2025 - 832
00:26:45
In today’s episode, Brock Johnson shares 5 easy Instagram Reels ideas that are designed to go viral in 2025. He’ll break down simple yet effective ways to create viral content that grabs attention, increases views, and helps you grow your...
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- [00:00]
Ryan Reynolds
Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying. No judgments.
- [00:14]
Brock Johnson
But that's weird.
- [00:15]
Ryan Reynolds
Okay, one judgment anyway. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment.
- [00:22]
Brock Johnson
Of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full terms@mintmobile.com is it even still possible to go viral on Instagram? As someone who has gotten more than 10 million views on Instagram in the last 30 days, let me be the first to tell you, yes, it absolutely still is possible. But it is definitely more challenging now than ever before. And that's exactly why in today's episode, I'm going to be sharing with you five viral Instagram reel ideas that are easy to make. For each of these ideas, I'm going to give you a few examples as well so that hopefully you can figure out a way to make these ideas fit for your niche and industry. But before we even get into those ideas, I think it's important to start with some tips. Some things to do and not do in order to help the odds or the chances of yourself going viral. And I say odds or chances because at the end of the day, yes, going viral kind of is like winning the lottery. And if you wanted to increase your odds of winning the lottery, you would buy more lottery tickets, right? Well, the same is true on Instagram. The same is true on social media. If you want to increase the odds of going viral, you should post more often. Now, when I say post more often, I don't mean just throwing random spaghetti against the wall and seeing what sticks. I mean posting more of what is strategically proven to go viral. Posting more of the kinds of content that time and time again gets the most views, the most likes, the most comments, and the most shares. I'm also a big proponent of increasing your frequenc because studies have shown that the more you post, the more you grow. To say it another way, if you post more frequently, on average, your number of followers will increase faster than if you post less often. And most importantly of all, I'm a firm believer that the way to create high quality content, which is ultimately all of our goals, we want to make good posts high quality reels so they get more views and that those views turn into followers or customers. The way that is Done is through practice. To say it another way, quantity breeds quality. Quality comes from quantity. Yes, the more you post, the more you grow. But more importantly, the more you post, the more you learn, the more at bats or practices you have, the more attempts you have at improving your skill set, at improving your knowledge, your editing capabilities and your overall content, which in the long run will pay off in more consistent and sustainable views. Now, with that being said, three quick tips to help you go viral. Number one, look outside of your niche. I got to recently have a conversation with the head of Instagram for business. Not Adam Mozeri, the head of Instagram, but the head of Instagram for business. And one of the hot takes that he shared with me is that you shouldn't look at your competition or do competitor analysis. And I totally agreed. Because here's the thing. If you're looking at what other people who are in your same industry or who are in your same field are doing, and you are just recreating what's working for them, and it's already been done in your space, and at best you're going to be a copy. At best, you are going to be second place behind that person who made the original piece of content. So my recommendation for you is to look in other verticals, other industries, look even on other platforms like TikTok or Facebook or YouTube shorts to get inspiration for your Instagram reels. If you see something is trending, something is becoming popular, or you just see a single video that really grabs your attention and you notice that it has millions of views, try to recreate that video, but apply it to your own niche. Success leaves clues. So when you find a great video, one that grabs your attention or is going viral, I want you to study it. I want you to analyze. What was it that made you stop your scroll? What was it that made you want to engage? What was it that made you want to click on this video in the first place? When you start to pay attention to those things, you move yourself from a place of unconscious, mindless consumption, just scrolling endlessly the the doom scroll, as they call it, into a place of conscious consumption. And I believe that if you want to be an excellent content creator, if you want to be the kind of business owner who's making social media posts that actually drive results, then you need to constantly be in a place of conscious consumption where you are analyzing the videos that you're watching rather than just passively consuming them. This is something that I do all the time. For example, this post that says it took Mr. Beast 100 videos to hit 1K subscribers on YouTube. It took me Robbins three to 400 posts to hit 1K followers on Instagram. And it took Brock Johnson nine years to have his first viral reel. That was born out of inspiration from another industry. I believe it was some basketball account that I followed that talked about how many misses Kobe Bryant had in his career and how many games Michael Jordan had lost in his career. And it was using that to illustrate his that even the people who we look up to have failures, they have mistakes, they have losses, so to speak, or even quite literally. And so I took that inspiration from a basketball account and applied it to my niche of growing on social media. Another example is this reel right here that says, me jealous of you, please. I get as many views in a month as you do in four weeks. First of all, it's kind of funny because a month is four weeks. So basically you're saying these things are equal to. It's kind of like making yourself look silly. But the inspiration from this was actually taken from someone who was in the finance niche. They were in like the wealth motivation niche. And they basically said, me jealous of you, please. I make as much money in a month as you do in four weeks. So again, I'm taking things from other industries and I'm applying them to my own industry or niche, thus making it an original idea in my space. But it's an idea that's already proven to do well in another space. And these are kind of just free bonus ideas. We haven't even gotten into my five main viral ideas for today, but if you want to remake either of those two reels or remake any of the reels, please, by all means, be my guest, do so. But again, tip number one for going viral is to look outside of your niche. Tip number two for going viral on Instagram also relates to this idea that success leaves clues. And it is to use a strategy that I call upcycling. Upcycling essentially means reposting or recreating your own posts every 60 to 90 days. Basically once two to three months has gone by or more, look back at what content has performed well for you, and however you define doing well is totally up to you. In the Insta ClubHub, we like to use a term called VFM, which stands for viral. For me. Essentially, you're looking for content that outperforms your average, rather than content that reaches 10 million people and considering it a failure if it doesn't reach 10 million people. Instead, figure out what your general average is how many views do you usually get? And then see if there's a specific video that far outperforms that. That would be vfm. But essentially the strategy of upcycling is just taking your VFM content that's at least two or three months old and either directly reposting it, so taking it and just posting it a second time. Same audio, same caption, same everything. If it worked a few months ago, it's probably going to work well now. Or taking that post from a few months ago and tweaking it, maybe modifying it, maybe updating it, changing the caption or the audio a little bit. Maybe there's something that's outdated now, or maybe there's a new version of the trend that you want to do, just basically taking the same idea and posting it a second time. This is what I do for 75% of my content. I often get asked brock, how are you able to make so many posts? How are you able to create so much content? And the reality is, I'm not making new posts, I'm not making new content. I'm just constantly upcycling posts from the past now. Some tips to go along with this tip. You should be saving all of your content into your camera roll or even better, some sort of cloud storage like Dropbox or Google Drive so that when you do want to repost your content in the future, you already have it saved. But if you haven't been doing that, a make sure you're doing that from now on. And B if you do have a reel that, let's say you posted it three months ago and you want to post it again, you're going to have to save it to your device first. And the best way that I have found to do that is by using a website called Save Clip app. Yes, it is a website. I know it's confusing because it ends in dot app, but S, A, V, E, C, L, I, P Save Clip is the app that I use and generally recommend. And no, this is not sponsored. It's a free website. A free tool that allows you to basically paste in the link to any reel and then download it to your device so that you can post it a second time. The final thing that I'll say about this tip before we move on to my third tip for going viral is people often ask, well, Brock, what about the people who saw it the first time? First of all, remember that about 90%, if not more of your followers didn't see it the first time. Most people didn't even see it. Even if it went viral, even if it did reach 10 million people, most of your followers probably didn't see it the first time. And number two, the ones who did see it, most of them do not remember. We on average see about 10,000 posts a day according to a few recent studies. And so no, if someone's seeing 10,000 posts a day and you made this post three months ago, they probably don't remember it now. Of course, there is a small section of your audience who not only saw the post, but remembers the post. And those people likely remember the post because it was that good. It was like your favorite episode of your favorite TV show. You wouldn't mind if the rerun was on tv. You wouldn't mind watching it a second time because it was that good. It's the reason that so many of us are always re watching our favorite movies. If it's that good, we wouldn't mind seeing it again. So upcycle your content every 60 to 90 days and you would be surprised how many times a post does well the first time pretty well the second time, it does well the third time, and the fourth time I post it, it goes mega viral. You just are never sure. There are so many different factors that might be at play. So if you have a post that is outperforming the rest, make sure that you're reusing that post, or at least that idea every couple months. And then my third tip to help you go viral is to focus on creating share worthy content. Share worthy content, of course, is the kind of post that is worthy of being shared. The kind of thing that when someone sees it, they want to send it to a friend, they want to send it to their colleague, they want to send it to their group chat, they want to share it to their stories. Posts that get shares on average get more views than posts that get an equal amount of likes, comments or saves. To say it another way, shares are the best form of engagement on Instagram. If you want more views now, the purpose of today's episode is going viral and giving you ideas for doing that. And I'm going to do that in just a second. But if you want more ideas as to what is shareworthy content and how do you come up with shareworthy content. I'll link up down in the show notes so that you can check out a past episode of Build you'd Tribe that we have done about share worthy content. Now. Okay, three things that I need you to not worry about because they don't really impact your chances of going viral. And then I will give you the five viral real ideas. The first thing to absolutely not worry about is branding. Oftentimes us small business owners get caught up in our brand fonts and colors and voice and we overcomplicate or or overthink our reels. We over edit them and try to curate them, making them absolutely perfect. So my tip for you is to just press post. Think about the most viral reels that you see. They're usually not heavy on the branding because the more branding and editing and polishing and refining that you do, the more your reels will feel like an advertisement that's overproduced rather than a sensational short form video that is likely to go viral. The second thing that you should not worry about is hashtags. Hashtags are something that I cannot talk about enough, and they are something that Adam Mozeri, the head of Instagram, in our interview that we did a few weeks ago on this podcast, which by the way, if you haven't listened to that already, highly recommend doing it. What he said is no, they do not reliably increase your reach. The purpose of hashtags is not to help you get more views, so don't worry about hashtags. And then the third and final thing that you should not worry about is the specific time that you're posting. Yes, certain times may be better than others, but generally speaking, there's not a single best time to post on Instagram and I would rather have you post at the wrong time than not post at all. Ultimately, if your content is that good, if it is worthy of going viral, it will get pushed out to the right people at the right time. So don't stress so much over the exact time of posting. Alrighty. With all of that being said, you clicked on this to get five viral Instagram reel ideas, so let's get into those five ideas. Now. Number one is what I call the hook swap strategy, also known as transitional hooks. Before I explain to you what exactly this is, it's important to understand that the hook is the most important part of your video. Those first three or four seconds are crucial if you want someone to watch the rest of your video. Oftentimes we spend so much time, energy and effort improving second three through whenever your video ends, and we kind of just leave the hook as an afterthought. But the reality is, ain't nobody watching second four through whatever if second one through three isn't super engaging. So I recommend spending the majority of your time, energy and effort on improving your hooks down in the show notes below, I'll make sure to link up our free 25 viral hook ideas. You can download those and easily add them into your reels. But this specific viral reel idea is to use, like I said, transitional hooks. Transitional hooks are short videos that are super captivating. Maybe it's a gorilla doing a twirl. Maybe it's someone fouling a baseball and the ball is coming right at the camera. Maybe it's a tennis serve that's about to hit the camera. Maybe it's someone performing some crazy stunt. Essentially, the first three seconds of the video are just meant to grab people's attention, hook them in and then you seamlessly transition into the second part of the video. So the first few seconds are not you and then it transitions into you. Now some tips for these transitional hooks is number one, can use a website, transitional hooks.com and it just has a massive library of these short little clips. You can download them and then add them to your videos. Or what I like to do is just as I'm scrolling through social media, remember, success leaves clues. And if I see one of these transitional hooks out in the real world, I will just download that person's video again using Save Clip app. And then I'll trim off their second part of the video so that I just have the hook. And then I'll add on my own second part of the video. And then my second tip for these transitional hooks is to use what's called a match cut. A match cut is a term from film and TV that essentially means something that is taking place in the first scene is going to match. Like it's going to be the same shape as in the second scene. For example, if in the first scene, the transitional hook, there's a gorilla who is spinning, the second scene should begin with you also spinning kind of at like the same distance away from the camera. If in the first clip there's a video of someone slipping on a banana peel and landing on the ground, the second clip should begin with you either landing on the ground or at least laying on the ground so there's a visual match there. The match cut is the most important key element for making sure that your transitional hooks are effective and engaging and also so that they seamlessly transition from the engaging hook into whatever your second part of the video is. Now, of course you don't have to just use these viral transition hooks in these pre made videos. You can also create your own. Although I will say that this is more challenging than finding a video that's already proven to go viral. But one awesome example was done by this musician called Citizen the Artist. And they did this super cool reel where essentially they made the first few seconds of the video look like it was like this behind the scenes in real life caught on camera moment. They have like the Snapchat text on the screen. The guy shoelaces caught in the car door, and then as the car drives away, it kind of drags him along with it. And there is a match cut where as he's falling to the ground, suddenly there's a cut and we're looking right at him being drug on the ground while he's singing his song. So it's a great way to hook people in and then get them to listen to the rest of the video. My second viral Instagram reel idea for you also relates to the hook. And this one is to create your own tension building hook. And really this hook is something that's going to prolong through the video by building suspense. And I have three specific examples for you. Number one is going to require you to get about a hundred feet of rope and just stick with me for a second. You're going to cut maybe a 6 to 10 foot segment of the rope and tie it around your neck or tie it around your body, and then tie the rest of the rope, the remaining nine, 90ft or so, to the back of a car. Now, I'm going to warn you that this one could actually literally be a little bit difficult. So I do not advise you to try this reel. But I do want to give it to you as an example. If you are going to try this, it is at your own risk. So please take every safety precaution necessary. But essentially, like I said, you tie the small segment of the rope around your body or around your neck, or maybe even around a chair that you're going to be sitting in. And then you tie the longer segment of the rope to the back of the car. You have yourself standing right at the back of the car or sitting right at the back of the car. And then you have the car drive away. As the car's driving away, the coiled up rope will quickly unravel and people who are watching are going to think, oh my gosh, is this rope gonna yank the person back? Are you going to be drugged behind the car? And so it builds suspense and tension. Of course, the ropes are separated so you don't actually get yanked. But it does keep people watching for the entirety of the video because they are nervous that something is going to happen. I've Done a version of this myself. I've seen musicians do this. I've seen people in pretty much every vertical do this. And it's such a powerful way to hold people's attention. But just make sure that you're safe if you are going to do this. The second tension building hook also could be kind of dangerous. But I want you to take every precaution if you are going to do this again. Legally, I am not recommending that you try this hook. If you are going to do it, it is at your own risk. But the second example of this tension building hook is to film yourself standing in the middle of the road talking about whatever it is you want to talk about, sharing some tips, telling a story, whatever, just do your normal talking head reel standing in the middle of the road. That's the first thing you need to record. Then record a second video of cars driving by on the road. Essentially what you're going to do is in editing, in cap cut, green screen and cut out yourself in the first clip and put it on top of the second clip. Then when you play the two clips together, it's going to look like the car is going to hit you, it's going to hit you, it's going to hit you. And then at the last second, there's kind of this weird moment where people can suddenly realize that you're green screened onto the video and the bus or the car or whatever isn't actually going to hit you Again. Take every precaution and safety measure necessary if you are going to try this hook strategy and do it at your own risk. I've also seen someone do this at a train station and I thought it was really cool to see the way they did this on the train tracks. And again, it made for a super engaging tension building hook and it went viral. The third tension building hook is the least dangerous of the three. But again, do it at your own risk. And it's what's called the hit by a box hook. Essentially, in your first clip you're going to be walking into the scene or maybe walking through the scene and someone who's closer to the camera is going to throw a ball or a box or they're going to throw something at your head. Then you're going to cut right before it hits you in the head and it's going to cut to a closeup of you talking to the camera. Usually the first sentence after this cut, the first sentence in the second clip is something like, you were waiting for the box to hit me, weren't you or you thought that box was going to hit me. And then you can go into your talking head reel your story again, what you actually wanted the reel to be about. Now, I will say there have been some people recently who have been putting their own spin on this trend where it cuts to the second clip where they start to say, you thought that box was going to hit me. And then the box does hit them, and then they keep getting pelted with boxes throughout the video. It can be funny. It can be something that's like an anti trend, which we're going to talk about in just a little bit. But again, all three of these viral reel ideas involve building tension or suspense throughout the reel that's going to keep people watching past those first few seconds. All right, viral reel idea number three is to recreate a trend. But stick with me for just a second, because recreating a trend is like the most basic, simple way to go viral ever. Yes. If you can capitalize on a trend early, on a trend that's rising in popularity before it's become oversaturated, which, by the way, once the big brands start using the trend, that's usually when it's become oversaturated. But if you can use it early, if you can use it when it's still rising in popularity, you can have success. Of course, what's trending is always changing. And so if I were to give you an example right now of what's trending at the time I'm recording this, it would probably be outdated. But here's the tip that I am going to give you. When something is trending, when something is starting to gain popularity and blow up, what I would recommend doing is create as many different versions of that trend as possible. Now, ideally, you would use trial reels to do this. The amazing thing about trial reels is that they will not spam or overwhelm your existing followers. So you could create 17 different versions of the same trend with just slightly different videos or slightly different captions, slightly different text on the screen, and see if one of them starts to pop off. Now, if you want to know what trial reels are, we did an entire video about them. I did a full tutorial on how to use trial reels and the benefits of them. But I'm a big fan of posting as many trial reels as you can. And so if something is trending, if something is popping off, if something is starting to blow up, you might as well post as many different trial reels as you can think of. That Are different versions of that trend. And if one of those starts to do well, you can upgrade it to a normal reel and soak up all the virality. Viral reel idea number four is what's called the hide and seek trend. This one was originally created by a real estate agent who did a super creative reel where instead of just giving you some boring old house tour, she told you that she was going to play hide and seek in the house. And then each different scene, you got to see each room of the house. You got to see the kitchen, the living room, the bedroom rooms, and she was hiding in different areas. And while she was hiding, she was talking to you on the mic so you could hear her voice, but you wouldn't see her. You would expect her to be hiding behind the kitchen island, and then she would be hiding behind some chair over on the other side. You'd expect her to be hiding underneath the bed, and she was actually in the closet. It was a really interesting and engaging reel. And I think a viral reel idea that you could do is, again, relates to the idea of success leaving clues. So take this viral real idea of playing hide and seek and apply it to your own industry. If you're a fitness coach, play hide and seek around the gym. What if there were people doing exercises and there was like a wide shot of a bunch of people doing different exercises in the gym, and then the camera zoomed in and you were one of those people and you were talking to the camera, or maybe you were going to hide and play hide and seek in different areas of the gym. If you own a retail space or like a brick and mortar business, you could hide in different areas of the business, and people would expect you to be hiding in one location, but really you're hiding in a different location. And what it's ultimately doing is getting people to look around the space and kind of shop with their eyes. If you're someone who works for themselves or you work from home, I think that this could be a super creative way to give us a little house tour or an office tour, or just to show us a little bit more about you behind the scenes and what it's like for you to work from home, because, again, we're getting to look around your space, and it's a very creative and engaging way. And it's kind of a gamification as well, because we're playing the game of hide and seek with you. All right, my fifth and final viral reel idea is what I call the anti trend. And the anti trend is essentially taking Whatever is blowing up, whatever is super popular, whatever you see, everyone else is using this audio, everyone else is making this style of video, and you're going to do the opposite or you're going to reference that video and you're going to talk about how you're not doing it. I'll give you three examples. Number one is one that I do almost every time something is going viral, which is giving an award, giving a prize or a trophy to whoever hasn't used that audio. Whenever there is a new super popular trend, I upcycle this video, which, spoiler alert, is actually recorded in the summer of 2024, and I just reuse it. I put some new text about whatever the new trend is, and almost every time this anti trend goes viral. Another example is from my friend Jeff, who you should definitely check out his Instagram. He's a great branding expert himself, and he took the popular anxiety trend that was taking the world by storm a few months ago, and he cut off the audio and said, hey, listen, we don't need to speak more anxiety around here. We don't need to profess anxiety. We've got enough anxiety. And I thought it was a really funny way of taking a viral popular trend that everyone is kind of paying attention to and turning it on its head. And then the third example that I have for you is from Colleen, who runs another awesome Instagram account, no Shame sales Game. And her anti trend was in response to a popular trend where people were saying, I met my younger self for coffee, and then they talked about the differences between their younger self and their current self. Maybe their current self showed up on time, but their younger self was 15 minutes late for coffee and walked in with a stain on their shirt. Whatever. And she did this anti trend where she said, if you're meeting your younger self for coffee, then you're probably having a psychotic break. So again, it's funny, it's lighthearted, it's poking fun at what everyone else is doing, what's super trendy and popular. And it can allow you to really stand out and differentiate yourself while still participating in the trend that everyone else is paying attention to. Now, if you want some more tips for sustainably boosting your views on your Instagram reels, we did an episode a few months ago on exactly that, sharing all of the strategies and best practices for sustainably, reliably getting more views on your reel. So I'll make sure to link that down in the show notes below. And as always, until next time, happy networking.
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Ryan Reynolds
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