How to go “Viral” on Instagram Reels

May 14, 2021

Instagram Reels is one of the quickest ways to grow your account and expand your reach on Instagram. With over one billion users on Instagram, and the app highlighting video content, Reels is a great way to expand your reach as a creative or the reach of your business.

The focus of this article will be Reels strategy specifically for creators in the outdoor industry, but many of the same principles will apply to other small business and niches.

How to go Viral on Instagram Reels

Instagram Reels is essentially Instagram’s answer to TikTok. Here, you create short videos, and add music, text, and various transitions to these videos. Success in Instagram Reels comes down to a variety of different factors: consistency in posting, understanding the algorithm, following trends, ect.

Don’t believe me? Above is my account’s growth rate in the middle of having two viral Reels, and immediately after those Reels started to lose traction.

Consistency Posting

Going “viral” on Instagram Reels or dramatically expanding your reach on Instagram does nothing unless you have a body of work that brings people back to your page and keeps them scrolling long enough that they want to essentially subscribe to your content (follow you). If you only have three or four reels total, people coming from Reels are less likely to stay on your page.

From left to right, some of the content I *already* had on my page when I started to see regular success in my Reels reach.

This makes intuitive sense: the people using Reels are here for Reels. They want to see evidence that you create quality video that they would like to continue to see.

Looking to build that body of work that inspires people to follow you, but don’t know where to start? Click here.

Composition of a Viral Reel

A lot of successful Reels are composed like a short story. The first 1-3 seconds set the expectation for what that “story” will be about. The middle tells that story. Ideally, you want your Reel to seamlessly replay or have incentive for people to watch it more than once. I’ve found the most success with a 7-12 second video; anything much longer than that and people will more easily lose interest by the end.

Note: I shoot my video on a iPhone and a GoPro. You can read more about that here.

Text is good, as are controversial claims that prompt people to comment. For example, “this is the best swimming spot in the world” is going to land you plenty of comments about how you’re a loser who’s never been to Hawaii. BUT those nasty comments spike your engagement. Furthermore, rude comments can give you a reason to be a little unhinged in your story, which as I talked about here, controversy can actually be a really solid social media strategy. So double win.

Understanding the Algorithm

Understanding the algorithm and how it works is only as useful as your understanding of human behavior. Why would someone watch to the end of this video? Does a tired person scrolling have a reason to watch your whole video? How about a reason to click on your profile after watching?

I really think “the algorithm” is the thing that everyone gets wrong about social media. You aren’t trying to understand the algorithm, or outsmart the algorithm. The algorithm is adapting to understand human behavior, and trying to learn what content a person wants to see and give it to them. Instead, focus on understanding how people interact with social media.

Start by asking yourself how do I interact with social media? Who’s updates do you look forward to and why? Who’s photos do you always comment on? What are they doing that you find so compelling? Don’t worry about the algorithm too much. Think instead about the actual humans you want interacting with your content/art.

Looking to make money from Instagram? Learn how I went from 0-full time freelancing through Instagram in less than six months.

Trends on Instagram Reels

Trends on Instagram Reels are a powerful way to get more eyes on your work. This works in a few different ways. One of them is that the algorithm seems to favor trending sounds. The other is simple psychology; we like stories that are easy to follow. If your micro-story follows a familiar format, people know what to expect when watching it. If you can emulate a trend with putting your own, small twist on it, you’ve created a video that people want to watch. You want a video that feels familiar enough to follow without feeling repetitive.

Trends can also be ineffective. If you replicate a trend too late and post the caption “hopping on this trend”, you’re likely too late to see any spike in engagement. It can also make you look a little tacky, especially if you copy someone else’s work a little too closely.

Ideally, you want to identify a potential trend before it starts flooding everyone’s feed. Like 2 weeks before. You want to emulate this trend, but add your own twist to it. For example, with two of my reels that went simultaneously viral, I emulated a trend that I saw two or three other large creators do, but I made my videos about three seconds shorter, along with a few other small tweaks. With the second, more successful video, I made sure to include a pan through of photos from my portfolio rather than just video. This very subtlety prompts people to your profile for more.

Note: personally, I like to mention the person who inspired the Reel in the caption. Not required, but good ethos to cite your inspiration.

After you go viral on Instagram…

Having a viral Reel on Instagram feels really cool at first! Except that people will leave thousands of nasty comments on that viral video. Beyond that, a few of them will probably leave mean comments on… all of your posts and content. I recommend changing your dms to be accessible only to people who follow you and using the block button liberally.

When I had two simultaneous viral Reels on Instagram, my following nearly doubled in three days. The week after? Engagement on my posts suffered. Your new followers aren’t necessarily engaged followers– they don’t know you, and don’t have any attachment to your content. And if they’re here from Reels they might be here for Reels.

More people than ever were seeing my posts, but less were liking, commenting, or otherwise interacting. Here’s my theory on that: the shiny new followers made up for the majority of people seeing my work. It takes a little while for a follower to become an engaged follower, and when you grow so much so quickly, you have a lot of people still lurking, deciding if they want to stick around. All of those people seeing your post but not interacting with it signals to the algorithm not to push that post out to your more dedicated followers from before who haven’t seen it yet.

Big takeaway: Consistency is key

Here was what my profile looked like in early May, before two viral Reels. Note: at this point I had already had one viral reel in February, and a few others with increased reach.

And here’s what it looks like now:

Content wise, the before and after of my page aren’t all that different other than a few small tweaks. I cannot overemphasize: going viral on reels will not get you more followers, nor will it get you more engaged followers, or even nice followers, nor will it help you make sales/land gigs. All that is work you need to do before, and after you expand your reach.

Want to start creating content but have no clue where to start?

I get it. Diving into the world of online creating, whether you’re a photographer, digital artist, or writer can be overwhelming. Especially when the entire field itself thrives on seeming very approachable, but in fact being a little exclusionary. Luckily, I’ve got a few other posts to help you get started.