3 New Reel Features on Instagram and What these Changes Mean for Your Brand Strategy
If you have spent any time on Instagram lately, you’ll know that the platform is really pushing Reels, their short video clip content.
Not only is this type of content getting the benefit of being pushed out to new audiences that will discover you, but these short video clips are also highly engaging. This means that you won’t just get more likes, but more comments as well!
Instagram has been adding a lot of new features lately, particularly to Reels. Let’s take a look at three major recent updates that can help further engage and grow your audience!
90-Second Reels
Instagram Reels is in direct competition with TikTok. After TikTok extended their video length for up to 3 minutes for most accounts and 10 minutes for some of the bigger accounts, those of us in the digital marketing industry knew it wouldn’t be long before Instagram extended the length of Reels. And that has happened!
Now your Reels can be up to 90 seconds long. What does that mean for businesses and content creators? It means that you now have the opportunity to experiment with longer Reels. You can create longer tutorials, product demos, vlogs, or behind-the-scenes content. No one likes hyper-speed tutorials or the feeling like they could have seen more behind-the-scenes content; this longer format allows for a better audience experience for this type of content.
Will Instagram further extend the time limit on Reels? At the moment, probably not, but that doesn’t mean 3-minute Reels aren’t in our future.
Stickers for Reels
Those stickers that you love using in your Instagram Stories are now available for Reels! But what we are most excited about is the opportunity to include poll, quiz, and emoji slider stickers on your Reels.
Why? Because they add an interactive element to your Reels that is eye-catching! We know that audiences can often ignore the caption and opt to just like your video. With these interactive stickers, you can seriously boost engagement levels. Not only that, but they can introduce new opportunities for storytelling.
Import Your Own Audio
Instead of just selecting from the available audio and music in Reels or using the audio from the clip you record, you can now also import your own audio directly within Reels. This is a game changer for creating Reels on the go. These audio clips only need to be a minimum of five seconds long.
What does this update mean for users? It means that Instagram is trying to encourage more original audio on the platform, and they may be pushing Reels with original audio out even more to wider audiences. This push expands discovery and leads to huge audience growth!
Final Takeaways
It’s important to remember that not all of these updates will work for you. If adding your own original audio doesn’t lend to your account branding and voice, you aren’t required to use it. However, we do recommend always experimenting with new features–you never know what may work for you until you’ve tried it!
Instagram is always looking for ways to help users expand their creativity, engagement, and reach. With these new Reel updates, you are certainly getting the opportunity to increase all three of those aspects in your brand strategy for short video content. Increased time, stickers, and original audio can help make your Reels unique to your brand’s voice, but they will also increase engagement and make the audience experience more fun for everyone!