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Build Your Tribe | Grow Your Business with Social Media
Complete Guide To Growing On Instagram With Trial Reels - 858
00:19:27
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Trial reels are a cheat code. They are arguably the best feature that any social networking app has ever given us to grow our following, reach more people, and go viral with little to no risk on our end. And so, in today's episode, I'm going to share with you a complete breakdown on how to grow on Instagram using trial reels. First and foremost, we need to lay the foundation of what are trial reels? How do you use them, why did Instagram create them, and how should you use them? Which is actually different than why Instagram created them. Now, for those of you who don't know what they are, they were created in December of 2024 as a way to post reels that would only be shown to non followers. They would not be shown to anyone who already follows you. And the reason that Instagram created such a feature is so that you could test, so that you could trial different ideas, different hooks, different content that you were too nervous or shy or scared to post to your normal feed, which would be seen by your normal followers. Basically, they wanted to create a low pressure environment where strangers could see your content so you didn't have to worry about the cringe embarrassment of someone, you know seeing your reels. Now, that was Instagram's intention. But very quickly us marketers figured out, hey, this is a free unlimited attempt to reach new people. This is a kind of reel that is guaranteed to help me grow my audience because it's only going to be reaching new followers. It's kind of like free advertising. And so very early on, myself and many other Instagram experts began telling and teaching y' all to post as many trial reels as possible. If they're giving us the opportunity to reach new people, well then we might as well spam the heck out of our trial reels and reach as many new people as we can. Because I and many others saw the writing on the wall, which is that if we are all posting dozens of trial reels and, and reaching dozens of new people every day, well then eventually Instagram's gonna make some changes. And so over the course of 2025, Instagram has made some changes. One of the first major changes that Instagram made is they created a cap or a limit on how many trial reels you could post per day. When trial reels were first released, there was no cap. You could post as many as you wanted. But now in Q4 of 2025, there are limits in place. Unfortunately, Instagram hasn't told us what those limits are. And, and even worse, the limit Varies on each account. Some accounts can still post an unlimited amount of trial reels. Congratulations, you're one of the lucky ones. Some accounts on the opposite end of the spectrum, however, are limited to only five trial reels per day. And if they post more than five trial reels per day, they're cut off for the next 30 days. I know that sounds crazy, and yes, they can still post to their feed, they can still post stories, but if they post more than five trial reels in a 24 hour period, they then, without any preemptive warning, Instagram will block them from posting trial reels again for the next 30 days. Maybe most unfortunate of all is that there's no way to know what your limit is until you reach it or even exceed it, thus breaking the limit and thus getting yourself blocked from future trial reels. So, spoiler alert, before we even get into best practices of how to use trial reels to grow on Instagram, if you don't know what your limit is, if you haven't ever gotten a strike before, then I would recommend posting no more than five trial reels per day. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Because before we talk about best practices, I need to let you know about the other change that has been made to trial reels over the course of this year, which is that they no longer allow duplicate trial reels. Or to say it more precisely, they allow duplicate trial reels. You could post the same exact reel as a trial reel 50 times if you wanted to, but only the first one will get views. What that means is that essentially the algorithm is able to detect if it is the exact same video posted more than once, and if it is the second, third, fourth, whatever time that I have posted the exact same trial reel, then that subsequent repeat will not get views or it will not get as many views. Typically, we see it capped at just a few hundred or maybe a few thousand views max, but its potential to go viral is significantly limited. So with all of that being said, I have four tips for you to use trial reels to grow on Instagram. Because even despite these limitations, and they are still one of the most powerful tools for reaching a new audience and thus growing your following and engagement on Instagram. Rule number one is what I mentioned just a few minutes ago, which is that you should post just below your daily limit. If you don't know what your daily limit is, then it's best to post four to five trial reels per day. And I do recommend getting just below that limit. I don't want you to just post one or two if possible, I want you to try to post just below right up to the very knife's edge and of whatever your account's limit is. Because again, this feature is one of the best features for reaching new people and so we might as well get the most juice possible from the squeeze. But of course the question that is likely going through your head right now, and maybe has been going through your head for the last few minutes, is how? How are we supposed to post that many trial reels per day? There are probably a lot of people who When I said five trial reels per day is the limit, you thought who the heck is posting more than five per day? Well, ya boi tried once to post 100 in a day. Long story short, it failed. I did an entire episode breaking down. What happened when I tried to post 100 in a day. In fact, that was how we initially discovered that there even was a cap in the first place. Because no one knew that there was a limitation. I found that limitation. But back to the most important question. How are you supposed to even post five trial reels per day on top of your normal feed post? Here's how. Number one Reupload reels that you have posted to your feed in the past. Trial reels that are duplicate. As in I posted this trial reel today and I posted the exact same one tomorrow. Those will be limited in terms of views. But if I post a reel today and then I post the exact same content as a trial reel tomorrow, the trial reel will not be limited in terms of its views. And the one that I posted to my feed the day before will also not be limited. Basically, there are different algorithms that look at your normal feed posts versus your trial reels. So my best practice is to take all of your past reels and repost them as trial reels. Now when trial reels first came out, the best practice that I recommended was not taking all of your past reels, but only your best reels from the past. Maybe the ones that got the most views or the ones that got the most followers, and re uploading those as trial reels. Not once, but dozens of times. Now, because of the new limitations, I recommend taking all of your past reels and uploading them just a single time as a trial reel. Hopefully you've been posting consistently on Instagram for the last few months and you have dozens, if not hundreds, maybe even thousands of reels that you have previously posted that now can be re uploaded as trial reels. You would be surprised how often I have a reel that just kind of does okay or maybe even below average on my normal feed. But then when I re upload it as a trial reel four months later, it suddenly does well, gets a lot of views, maybe even goes viral. So don't judge your content just because it didn't perform as great on your feed. Take every reel that you have previously posted and as long as it's still relevant, as long as it's still somewhat timely, post it as a trial reel. The second way that you're going to be able to post more trial reels without increasing your energy or effort is from now on, whenever you create a reel in Instagram and you save it to your Instagram drafts, I want you to tap on those three dots and then duplicate it. Basically it'll make an exact copy of with all the same edits, the same caption and everything. And even before you post it to your feed, I want you to post the duplicated version to your trial reels. Basically, it's the same idea that we were just talking about with re uploading your reels from the past, but now we're talking about reels that you are going to post in the future. So before you even post them, post them as a trial reel. The next strategy for being able to increase your output of trial reels is by making slight modifications. Let's say I took a trending audio in Instagram and I recorded myself lip syncing that viral soundbite and I saved it to my drafts and I was gonna post it tomorrow morning. Well, of course before I do that, I'm gonna duplicate it and post it as a trial reel. But even before you post it as a trial reel, I would recommend duplicating it multiple times so you have like three or four different copies of the exact same reel and then make slight modifications. Now in stream hasn't made it exactly clear on how much has to be modified. According to some inside intel that I have gained, they primarily are looking at the actual video content and primarily for the first six or seven seconds. So maybe you're going to take that viral sound bite and you're going to rerecord it in another setting or a different video or a different take. Maybe you're going to edit the text on screen and try out some different hooks or try out some different text. Maybe you're going to re edit the actual cutting of the video and the pacing, but for the first six or seven seconds just so that it's a different, slightly modified version of the same Content, but not an exact recreation. That should be another way that you can create more trial reels and also a way for you to test different languaging, different verbiage, different editing styles, different hooks on essentially the same video. Speaking of testing, that was why trial reels were created in the first place. They were created as a way to have a low pressure environment for you to experiment, have some fun, try a new style, try a new format, Just play around with Instagram and create content that maybe is different from what you normally do. It's maybe outside of your comfort zone, outside of your box. And so I want you to do that with trial reels. I want you to yap. I want you to make FaceTime content where you're just talking to your phone and there's not really a plan, there's not really a script, there's not really any editing. You just kind of have a subject you want to talk about and you're talking about it. I want you to give yourself permission to experiment, to fail, to try out new things, to be uncomfortable, to cringe, to post things that you look back on and you're like, what the heck was I thinking? I want you to give yourself permission to do that on trial reels because that's why they were created. And that will allow you to post more trial reels without stressing so much over the creation of each one. Two final strategies for you to increase your output of trial reels is number one, I recommend once per day posting a trial reel that is saying in the trial reel that it is a trial reel. I've seen a lot of creators have success with this recently where essentially they are taking a B roll video of themselves and they're just adding some text on the screen that is immediately saying this is a trial reel. Which means you don't follow me yet. I am trying to reach. And then they list the exact demographics and target audience of the people they're trying to reach. Maybe they briefly describe their account. They say, you know, if, if you want no BS rock climbing tips, I'm your gal, hit that follow button. It's a direct call out that, hey, this is a trial reel. If you're seeing this, it's because you don't follow me. Hi, here's me, here's what I do. Consider following me. It's a really great way to use trial reels because you know that this reel is not going to reach, AKA annoy your existing followers. Because if your existing followers saw that, they'd be like, why would I Engage with this. I already follow her. But if your new potential followers are seeing that, it's going to be a great way for them to discover you. So for at least one of your daily trial reels, make the content about the fact that this is a trial reel and ask people to follow you. And then the final way that you're going to be able to post more trial reels is another idea of what you could post as a trial reel, and that is on niche or niche relevant Instagram stories. Oftentimes on our Instagram stories we just kind of yap. We just kind of talk and post about things that maybe we wouldn't normally post to our feed. They're not as polished, they're not as well thought out, they're kind of off the cuff ideas, but they're still relevant to our industry, they're still relevant to our business and our account. And so we post those on our Instagram stories. What I want you to do now is I want you to post those as reels. Whether you have to find them in your Instagram archive or hopefully you have them saved to your camera roll, doesn't really make a difference. But essentially you've already done the work to create these Instagram stories, so. So just put them into one consecutive Instagram reel and post it as a trial reel. All of that was tip number one, which was posting just below your daily limit of trial reels whenever possible. So tip number two for using trial reels to grow on Instagram is don't ever upgrade your trial reels to the normal feed. Right before you post your trial reel, there's going to be a setting that you can turn on that will automatically upgrade your trial reel from a trial to to a normal on feed reel, thus making it visible to your followers after a set amount of time. Additionally, if you are looking at your trial reels and seeing how they're performing, you could choose to upgrade them and show them on your feed in the future if you wanted to. I recommend not doing this the majority of the time. The only real circumstance where I think it might be worth it to upgrade the trial reel and show it on your normal feed is if it's already going viral, it's already far outperforming your average content. Because unfortunately if I were to post a trial reel on Tuesday and then I upgrade it to my feed on Thursday, it does not get a refresh in the algorithm. On Thursday it does not show up in my followers feeds as if I posted it on Thursday, it shows up or probably it's not going to show up. But if it did show up, it would show up as if it was posted on Tuesday. It gets buried down on your profile. So if I've posted four other times between the trial reel on Tuesday and and upgrading it on Thursday, well then it would show up as the fifth most recent post in my feed and it would be significantly less likely to get any views. So even if it's going viral, I usually recommend just leaving it as a trial reel. Set it and forget it. Don't worry about upgrading it to the feed. Strategy number three for using trial reels to grow on Instagram is Use DM Automation. DM Automation is that thing where someone says comment the word blank and I'll send you blank. Comment the word guide and I'll send you the link to my free rock climbing guide. Posts that utilize DM automation are some of the most commented on, most engaged, most liked and most viewed content on all of Instagram. And especially if you're a brand or business owner, someone who's trying to get emails and signups and customers, then DM Automation is a non negotiable for you. And a lot of people are familiar with using it on their Instagram stories or their normal Instagram feed. But not many people are aware that you can actually use DM automation with your trial reels. Here's how. Step number one, just set up a new flow in ManyChat just like you normally would for creating any other comment to DM Automation. Then step two, when you are selecting which post you want the trigger to be applied to, I want you to select the pro feature which is next post or reel. By doing this, if the next post that you make is a trial reel, the automation will be automatically and instantly added to to that trial reel. So anyone who comments the keyword on that trial reel, even though they're not following you, they will instantly get the direct message with the guide, the thing, the link or whatever it is. Then from there step three is you could just post your trial reel. But a pro tip, you could use an additional feature within manychat which will actually check if the people are following you first. Here's basically the flow. You post the trial reel and at the end of your trial reel you say comment the word recipe for my new cake recipe. Okay, now you're getting a bunch of comments with the word recipe. These comments however are coming from people who do not follow you. They are engaged, they just watched your reel, they liked it and now they left a comment. But they don't follow you yet. When they comment that keyword, the first direct message that they receive from your account will not have the recipe. Instead, ManyChat can automatically detect that they are not following you and and it can prompt them saying in order to get the full recipe, please consider following or whatever you want it to specifically say. And then they will only receive that actual recipe that they originally wanted if they press follow. This is an absolute game changer for converting the people who are engaging with your trial reels into people who are actually going to become followers. I'll put my link and discount code so you can get a month of ManyChat for free down in the show notes below. Or you can go and check out an episode that I did a few weeks ago with a full in depth breakdown of how to use DM automation. What is it? Why is it so helpful? Why have I been talking about it for the last five years? Literally not just the last five years of today's episode, but I've been talking about this since 2020. So definitely go back and check out that episode if you want to learn a little bit more about manychat and DM automation. I envy you. And I'm not kidding. When I first got started in online business back in 2017, you needed like a dozen different softwares and online services and website subscriptions just to have this whole online business thing work. Because the reality is, just posting on social media does not equal having an online business. You need to get your followers off of social media, you need to build an email list, you need to have a website, you need to have funnels, you need to have email marketing. And like I said, when I was first getting started, it was a lot of work to even figure out what tools and softwares you needed later, let alone the cost of how expensive having all of these different monthly subscriptions was. In fact, just a few months ago I found that I had been paying for one of these subscriptions for the last like eight years and I wasn't even using it. But now I'm excited to introduce today's sponsor, High Level, which is really an all in one platform. It is truly a jack of all trades when it comes to building an online business. It has all of the different tools that you could ever need, but the cool thing is, is that it can grow with you. It's kind of like getting access to this big giant toolbox that has every tool you could ever need. But what's nice is you're not forced to learn, let alone use every single tool, let alone pay for every single tool. So High Level can really grow with you. If you're someone who's ready to start building your email list, who wants to start dipping their toe in automations, who wants to start building an actual business beyond just posting on Instagram, check out High Level today and I'll put the link down in the show notes below. And then my fourth and final tip for growing with trial reels is don't sweat the small stuff. And I know that's not the sexy tip. I know that's not like groundbreaking or revolutionary, but don't sweat how many views you are or are not getting. It's very likely that your first 5, 0. Your first 50 trial reels will not go viral. They're not going to reach a lot of people. And you're going to write a message angrily on my future podcast episode saying, brock, trial reels don't work. They're broken. They've never worked for me. I only got 10 views. And then I'll ask you, how many did you post? And you'll say, Well, I posted four only. I only posted 17. Keep posting them. You never know which one's going to go viral. I can't tell you how many times I've even had this thought myself of like, maybe trial reels are dead. Maybe it's changed. Maybe they've updated the algorithm and there's just no way to get views with your trial reels anymore. And then I'm just going to keep posting. I just keep posting them. I keep posting my four to five a day, and then all of a sudden, when I least expect it, boom. I get 400,000 views I on a single trial reel. So don't get bogged down by low performance or low engagement. On the bright side, no one knows, no one sees it. No one can see how many views your trial reels are getting. No one can see how much engagement your trial reels are getting. They're only getting seen by strangers anyway. So don't worry about it. Just keep posting. Just keep posting. Just keep posting your trial reels, okay? And before you go and post your trial reel, don't forget to hit the subscribe button and I will see you in next week's episode. As always, happy networking.
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