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You are listening to the Grow youw Local Business podcast, where local marketing expert and life coach Leslie Presnell shares the strategies and the mindset to help you reach more people in your city and bring in a steady stream of clients. All right, let's dive in.
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Hey, welcome to episode 140. We're going to talk about trial reels on Instagram today. There is so much hype around trial reels right now. Some people have called them the cheat code to Instagram. Some people say they're, like, the best thing to ever happen to social media to help us grow our following. Basically, everybody just thinks they're a huge game changer right now. But do trial reels work for local business owners? That's the big question. And that's why you're here. Because as you know, there are a lot of strategies and a lot of tactics out there and ways to get a lot of reach and ways to go viral, but it doesn't always result in local followers and local reach and most importantly, local clients, which is what we really want. So is it worth it for you, as the local business owner, to do trial reels? That's what we're going to get into. So let's talk about what trial reels even are and how they work. So around the middle of this year, 2025, everybody got access to trial reels. They first came out around December 2024, so some of you may even had access, like, closer to a year now. But Instagram came out with this feature, so you could essentially test your content. Basically, trial reels are a way that you can post a reel and it will only be shown to people who do not follow you. Like, none of your followers will see it. And it's really for the purpose of testing, like, the name suggests, trial reels. So you get to trial different ideas out on people who don't follow you. Like maybe different types of hooks or different types of content that you wouldn't normally try and just see what works and what doesn't before you post it to your regular feed or before any of your real followers see it. But here's the cool thing. People have now realized that it's really just a free, easy way to get in front of new people, because it's only new people who see it every time you post. Like, this is genius, right? And it's really easy to create a trial reel. Like, you create your reel just like you would a normal reel. And before you hit publish or post it to your feed, you would just toggle the little button below it that says trial. And then your trial reel won't appear in your main feed unless you later decide to go share it to everybody who does follow you. So to answer the question, do trial reels work for local business owners? The short answer is yes. But it does take using them the right way. Because again, it's not just about going viral. It's not about global reach like influencer creators or even online businesses want. You still want to reach people in your city. And trial reels can do that for you. Trial reels can increase local discoverability, but that requires that you create content that matches what people are searching for, that includes local keywords. And that would clearly be for people in your city, not for random people all over the world. So that means your trial reels need to include the keywords of what you do and where you are. It needs to be very focused on the problem you solve and how you help your local clients. And the key things that your local people would be searching for and that they're interested in versus just copying like viral fun trends or sharing super vague content that would be relevant for anybody anywhere. Like, your reel has to be optimized for local discovery. So when Instagram is deciding who sees a trial reel, it's looking at four things. Number one, it's looking at viewer location. Like Instagram knows where somebody lives, like they know where people frequently go and move around. Instagram is trying to match your content with people who live in your area. If you're a local business, like, who are searching locally for what you do, who interact with other local businesses in your area and who follow similar local accounts. Number two, Instagram is indexing everything you say in your content, so it's figuring out what what your content is about. So like the services or problems you talk about, the location based keywords, the on screen text, the words in your captions, like it's using all of that to figure out how to classify your content so it can figure out who to show it to. And then number three, Instagram is also looking at who already follows you. Like your local followers, the people who are interacting with you. Instagram, Instagram knows your account is for people in your city. So the more you can build up a local following, which by the way, I give you nine steps to do this on repeat every month inside the localpreneur academy, the more you can do this, this massively increases the chance that your content is distributed locally. And then number four, Instagram is looking at behavior signals like it's looking if someone is doing similar things on Instagram that's related to you. So if someone is liking or commenting or engaging with other businesses like you, or if they're watching reels from other people in your industry, or if they have searched for what you do, or if they've interacted with anything similar to you. Um, so again, this is just why keywords and really establishing like who you are and what you do is so important. So Instagram can really categorize you and show it to the people who are looking for it. So long story short, now trial reels won't work for you if your content is generic, if it's not local. So like if you're a hairstylist, for example, and you're just showing client transformation that could be shown to anyone anywhere, it doesn't necessarily apply to local people. Or if a doula is just sharing educational content about how helpful a doula is, that could apply to anyone anywhere. Or if a photographer just posts behind the scenes of a senior session, that could apply to anyone anywhere. If a physical therapist posts exercises that could help anyone anywhere, Instagram will classify these types of posts as general interest and show them to people everywhere, not local people. So you have to localize your content. Like use location based keywords, share where you are, who you serve. Use like visual cues that make it obvious where you are, like your space, your city, landmarks. Like this tells Instagram that the content needs to stay stay within this geographical area. Now here's also a fun little hack that I have seen people do with trial reels that you could try and you may have seen other people doing this and we'll see how long this works too. But you may have seen creators who call out their audience in the reel, in the trial reel and they tell them that they don't follow them yet in in the trial because again it's only going to the non followers. So they do something like hey, this is a trial reel and you don't follow me yet. I'm trying to reach so and so demographic and if you like XYZ or you want to learn more about xyz, hit the follow button. So you could do the same thing in your city. You could be like, hey, XYZ city, I am an XYZ profession. This is a trial reel which means you don't follow me yet. If you want help with xyz, you hit the follow button like I'm your girl or something like that, you know. So again, trial reels can be really powerful to get you in front of new people and even local people if you optimize it for your local people. Now if you struggle with Instagram, showing your content to random people and just getting local people to follow you in general and you want more of a framework to do this and a framework to localize your content so you can reach people through not just trial reels but also all of your content. Inside the LocalPreneur Academy I teach you a system that helps you grow your local audience by at least 100 new followers every month. Localize your content so Instagram knows exactly who to show it to and create content that positions you to as the local go to top choice so local people can find you easily, they can follow you and most importantly buy from you. So if you are ready, click the link in the show notes, you can learn more and I'll see you inside. Hey, if you enjoyed today's episode, I want to invite you to check out my program, the LocalPreneur Academy. This is the only program for small business owners who want to become the local go to in their industry or with a steady stream of clients. You can find more information@lesleypressnell.com and I'll see you inside.