← Build Your Tribe | Grow Your Business with Social Media
Build Your Tribe | Grow Your Business with Social Media
NEW Instagram Feature - Trial Reels - 813
00:17:16
Want to unlock Instagram’s latest secret weapon for content creators? In this episode, Brock Johnson introduces Instagram's brand-new Trial Reels feature—a game-changing tool for testing content performance before posting. Brock dives into how...
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Ctmobile.com this brand new Instagram feature that was just announced is going to be a game changer for business owners and content creators on Instagram. This is a feature that you might have noticed on your own account because Instagram has been testing it for a few months and it is called Trial Reels. Essentially, this feature will allow you to test out your content and see how it's going to perform before posting it to the rest of your audience. In this episode, I'm going to tell you a little bit more about what this feature is, how you can use it, and how to get the best results from trial reels. In case we've never met before, hello, my my name is Brock Johnson. It's my job to help you grow and make money on Instagram. Here on the Build you'd try podcast, we are committed to putting out a new episode every single Thursday on the latest trends, strategies and techniques for growing and making money on social media. Part of that is of course, keeping up with the new features and the new updates on the different platforms. And this one is one of the biggest changes to Instagram that we've had at least in recent memory. And the super cool thing about this feature is that it was clearly intended to help out content creators and business owners. This isn't the tool that the average person is going to use or probably even know about. So this was a feature that was really for us, for us who are trying to make money on Instagram, who are trying to grow our audience and build our tribe in order to test out our content and see how it's going to perform before posting it to the rest of your audience. Like I said, this feature has been in testing for quite a few months and so if you've noticed it on your account before, that's awesome. That means that you are part of Instagram's test groups and basically they were allowing you to have access to to see if there were any bugs or glitches that came up. But if you did have access to it and you have used it, I do want to quickly say I wouldn't put too much stock into the results or the outcomes that were generated from using it in the past because it was before the official rollout or the official announcement. Speaking of the official announcement and rollout, December 10th at 9:00am Pacific Standard Time was when Instagram officially announced and began rolling out this feature. Just because they're rolling out the feature doesn't mean that everyone magically has access. Unfortunately, Instagram can't flip a switch and and give all 2 billion people access to the same features at the same time. Not to get too lost in the sauce, but basically there's a lot of code and software and imagine all of the hundreds, if not thousands of different devices that people are using, from all of the different iPhones to the Samsungs, Androids, iPads, computers, desktops. There's so many different operating systems that are using Instagram. And so basically Instagram's software engineers have to make sure that it works on every single platform. And even then there's all these different countries and all these different apps versions. And so my long story short is just be patient. You're not going to magically instantly get access to it. Just keep checking your Instagram to see when you do have access to it. When you do get this feature, it will show up on the final page where you add your caption before posting a reel. So once you've created your reel, you've added all of the music, you've added the text, you've written your caption, whatnot. You will see a little toggle switch up at the top right below your caption that says trial reel. And you might even see a little blue icon that says new next to it. And that's just Instagram as well. Way of telling you that this is a new feature. The first time you turn this on, Instagram will have a little pop up window to explain more of what the feature is. The pop up window will say try out content with a new audience using trial reels. Show a trial reel to non followers to get early feedback on whether your content resonates. You'll see key insights within 24 hours after sharing so you can understand how your trial reel is performing. And then the third paragraph says trial reels don't appear on your profile. Some followers may still see your trial reel, like when someone shares it with them. And then a big button that says try it. Or a Smaller button that says close. If you click try it, of course it will turn on the trial reel feature. And then, like that promotion said, basically, your reel will be posted to primarily non followers. It won't be completely hidden from your existing followers. They will still be able to see it if someone sends it to them or if they access it in some other way, but it won't be showed in their main home feed. Usually when you make a post on Instagram, the vast majority of the initial viewers are people who are already following you. And that makes sense. When you open Instagram and you see your home feed, yes, you see some ads, yes, you see some recommended posts, but the majority of the posts, at least it's supposed to be this way. The majority of the posts in your home feed are from people whom you follow. And so by that same logic, the majority of people who will be seeing your posts usually are going to be your existing followers. The cool thing about trial reels is that you will reach non followers. You will reach people who do not already follow you, so that you can test whether or not the reel will perform well. Now, I made an announcement reel about this new feature, and one of the most common questions was, why would I want non followers to see my reels? Well, there's a few reasons why. Number one, it's not just going to be a random group of non followers. There's no way Instagram would do that. And it would be really frustrating for us consumers who are constantly being shown trial reels from people who we don't follow and are not interested in. Instead, it's going to be people who we do not follow, AKA your post will be shown to people who are not already following you, but they're still interested. The Instagram algorithm has determined that they would be a potential follower for you or they are interested in the topic of your post. And so that's the group that it's going to be shown to. So the initial and somewhat obvious benefit of this is that those people could potentially follow you because they're discovering your content for the first time. And they're discovering it because it was recommended to them based off of their prior interests. The second benefit and the intention behind this feature was that you can see how it's going to perform. Now, I think something that some people may get confused with this is they think that this is going to give them some sort of boost in views or engagement, and that's not necessarily the case. Instead of looking at the pure numbers and the overall quantity of data, I think Instead, what we should focus on is the percentages. Another way to say that is focus on the engagement rate rather than the total amount of engagement. Let me give you an example. If I post a trial reel and let's say it gets 1,000 views in the first 24 hours, again, 1,000 views from not followers and it gets really high engagement. Like let's say it gets 400 likes and it gets 100 comments, that's 500 pieces of engagement out of 1,000 views. That's a 50% engagement rate. Just so you know, the industry average is like 2 to 3% for an engagement rate. So if you were getting like a 50% engagement rate, that's off the charts. And that's a great indication for you that this post is going to resonate with your audience as well, that this post is engaging, that it's captivating. If you were to post a trial reel and let's say it gets a thousand views views in the first 24 hours, but it only gets two likes and one comment, maybe that's a super low engagement rate, right? That's a 0.3% engagement rate. And so that engagement rate would suggest that this content at least is not engaging to non followers. Maybe it's the type of content that is only going to be engaging to existing followers, people who already know you and know your story. Or maybe it's just the fact that this content isn't super great. Maybe the hook isn't strong enough. Maybe there was some sort of glitch or malfunction or error with the music or the audio or the closed captions. Or maybe the video is just messed up altogether. And so this just gives you an opportunity to test these things out before actually posting to the rest of the world. And speaking of this idea that some posts are only going to resonate with your existing followers, that's definitely true. There are definitely some posts that are only going to make sense to your existing community, or they're only going to really connect the most with people who already know you and your story. We all make posts like that from time to time, and I do think that that is an important part of a successful Instagram strategy. Not every post should be about gaining new followers and reaching new people. Some posts are going to be about taking care of, connecting with and deepening your relationship with your existing followers. So if that's the case, if you're creating a reel that is meant to go deeper with your existing followers, that's meant to kind of highlight your own personal story or your journey or it's just a more personal post in general, I would recommend not turning that post into a trial reel. You could if you just wanted to test it beforehand, but more than likely because this was designed for existing followers, it's not going to perform all that well for non followers. Now, like I said a few minutes ago, this reel will not be shown on your profile at first and it will not be shown to your followers at first. But it is a trial reel. And so the cool thing that Instagram allows us to do is based off its performance, we can then share it to our followers and take it from trial stage into real life, existing real stage. Once we make that decision or after a few hours have passed, you have two options for going about this. One option is a toggle that you can turn on that Instagram labels share to everyone automatically. And then the subtitle below that says trial reels that get a lot of views in the first 72 hours will automatically be shared to everyone. Now, I have no idea how they define a lot of views, and only time will tell. How Instagram determines what a lot of views is is. I'm not clear on whether or not it's a lot of views based off your own posts. Like, maybe your average post gets 500 views. And so if it gets, let's say, 80% of that, if it gets 400 views, then Instagram will automatically share it. Maybe it's looking for above your average, or maybe it's just like an overall number. Like maybe if Instagram says, hey, you got more than a thousand views regardless of what your average views are or your average number of followers is, then we're going to automatically share it. Not quite sure there. And I know that historically Instagram has been, let's just say, not the best at determining determining whether or not your reel is performing better or worse. I don't know about you, but I get notifications all the time that say this Post is performing 80% better than your average. And then I look at it and I'm like, no, it's not. So I don't know where Instagram is coming up with these numbers. And I say all of this to say, if you want to just set it and forget it and turn on this feature, go ahead, but I don't think that's a best practice. That's not what I would necessarily recommend doing. So rather than using the automatically share to everyone feature, I would recommend manually checking your reel and deciding whether or not it should be shared with the rest of your audience. How do you do that? Well, like I read earlier, Instagram will give you a list of statistics and insights after approximately 24 hours. It does take some time for Instagram to kind of pull in the data and total up how many likes, views, comments, save, shares, all of those things that your reel has received. But once 24 hours or so have passed and you can look at that data, then I think you can make an informed decision on whether you want to quote, share to everyone, view more insights, or just leave it as a trial reel, or even potentially delete or archive the post. Now, what sort of stats or insights should you look for? Again, I think you should look less at the total numbers and more at the engagement rate. I think that if you're seeing above a 5% engagement rate, which again, engagement rate is determined by adding up the total number of engagements and dividing that by the total number of views. Once you have your engagement rate, if it's above 5%, I would say that's a good indicator that this is a generally engaging reel. Of course, every audience is different. Maybe 5% for you is well below average. But just if you need a general number to stick to, I think 5% is a good number to shoot for. But if you want a more precise measuring tool for figuring out if this reel is worth posting and worth sharing to everyone or just leaving as a trial reel, I would recommend spending a little bit of time calculating your current average engagement rate. You can go on Google and just look up Engagement Rate Checker and you'll find a bunch of websites where you can put in your Instagram username and it will give you an engagement rate. But those aren't always super accurate. Sometimes the data isn't up to to date and sometimes the exact equation that they're using varies. And so you might check two sites and one tells you that your engagement rate is 5.6% and the other one tells you it's 2.3, and another one tells you that it's 20.7. So I would do the math yourself. Just look at your total number of engagements per post over the last 30 days. So if over the last 30 days you have been getting, you know, a thousand likes, 500 comments and 20 saves, then that would be 15, 20 engagements, and then divide that by your average views over the last 30 days. So if you have been getting, let's say 30,000 views per post, then you can divide 15, 20 by 30,000 and that would give you an engagement rate of 5%. That was just random numbers off the top of my head. So I don't know how we ended up at 5% again. But again, just figure out what your own personal average engagement rate is over the last 30, maybe 60 or 90 days if you have the time to dig deeper into the data. And then when you post one of these trial reels, you want to find an engagement rate or you want to see an engagement rate that is equal or at least close to your current average engagement rate. If it's far below, like let's say your average engagement rate is 8% and you post a trial reel and the engagement rate is only about 1%, then maybe you want to reconsider posting that to your audience. And that's really where I think you should leave it is just reconsider. I don't want to say that if it's a low engagement rate, you should just automatically delete it. I don't think I should say that. If it's a high engagement rate, it's guaranteed to do well with your audience. But these are just suggestions, generalizations. If your engagement rate is very low with the trial, it's probably not going to do so great with your audience. If it's a very high engagement rate with the trial, conversely, it's probably going to do very well with your audience. Ultimately, at the end of the day, these are called trial reels. And that's exactly what they're for. They're for experimentation, they're for testing new things. And I think that's something that as content creators and business owners, we should all be doing anyways. I think that that's a great best practice and habit to get into with your content creation and with your business is to try out new kinds of content, new posts, etceter. And this is a great way to test those things before posting them to the wider audience. Now, I will say this. I'm a big fan of just press post. That is one of my mottos, that's one of my slogans. That's something you'll hear me say time and time again. And I'm a huge proponent of just posting that into the world and letting the audience, letting your followers, letting the Internet as a whole be the judge of your content. Because at the end of the day, you will learn more, you will grow more, you will become a better content creator through looking at the data and the feedback that your followers or your non followers have given you, rather than just analyzing the post as it sits in your drafts or in your camera roll. And so I think this could be a really helpful tool for those of us who have analysis paralysis and those of us who have a bunch of content ideas or a bunch of things sitting in our drafts or our camera roll that we're scared to post, maybe you could post these things as trial reels because then you don't have the pressure of your audience seeing it. You have an opportunity to, to test out the content. Where I think some of us could get into trouble is I do think that trial reels could create some of its own analysis paralysis, where suddenly, instead of just posting your reel every single day, you're posting it as a trial reel and then testing how it's going to do for a few days, and then you're overanalyzing how it's doing. I definitely see that as a realistic possibility. And so ultimately, I think you have to know yourself. You have to know your own mindset. You have to know what's best for you as a content creator, as a business owner, and just as a human being. For your own mental health's sake. Trial reels might be a great way for some people to test their content and see how it's going to perform before sharing it to a widespread audience. It might be a great way for some people to show their content to non followers without the pressure of showing it to their existing audience. But for other people, the exact opposite could be true. For other people. This could create perfectionism. It could create a constant game of comparison, the comparison trap, where you're constantly comparing your trial reels to your other reels. And also, of course, there are just mistakes that are going to be made. Like said earlier, there will be some reels that are going to perform really well as trials, but you're going to post them to your followers and maybe your followers just aren't interested for whatever reason. Or the opposite might be true. You might have a reel that is doing really poorly as a trial, and so you never post it to your audience. Your followers never get to see that reel because you think it was going to do bad, but in reality it was going to do great, it was going to go viral, it was going to blow up. You just never know. And so I think that this is a very helpful tool and I'm very appreciative of Instagram for creating this tool. And it shows a clear intention in trying to help out us content creators and business owners. But ultimately, it is up to each content creator and business owner to know themselves, to know their account, to know their audience, and to know their content, to ultimately determine what should versus what shouldn't be a trial reel and how much you're going to use this feature. Thank you so much for being here today and for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed this content and you want more information about growing on social media, the latest trends and the latest new features, make sure to hit that subscribe button so that every single new episode that we put out, which is every Thursday by the way way automatically shows up on your podcast app or your YouTube account, whichever you prefer. And as always, I just want to say happy networking.
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