Instagram Reels For Artists: Making Reels that Serve a Purpose.

1. Intro: Hi, my name is Ada. I've been a one line illustrator and director of social media for the past four years. I have been using Instagram since 2011 and have been running my business there since 2018. In the last three months, over 200, 000 people saw, liked, or interacted with my art account on Instagram, all because I started making reels. Instagram is a powerful tool for artists, but growing a solid following and keeping up with the changes in the algorithm can be challenging. Instagram reels give you the opportunity to showcase your work and get in front of people who don't even follow you yet. I'll show you what reel styles are working for artists like us out there, how to make these reels, and how to keep an eye out for the reels that have the most potential to make you go viral. If you're an artist and you're trying to grow on Instagram, this is the class you should be taking. 2. Project: For this class, we will have four main projects instead of just one big one. We will be creating four different reels together, following four different reel types that serve four different purposes. You can follow along and create one like the one I'm creating, or use it as a guideline to create your own in the same style. We will start by understanding what Instagram Reels are and how they work. Then we will start exploring reels that will help us showcase new art collections or your most recent artwork. After that, we will analyze reels that help us promote a course we're teaching or show how much we know about our art style. From there, we will move on to reels to help us build a solid community. Finally, we will end the course with reels that wow the viewer enough to get them to follow you. This class is made for people who have already used Instagram and are looking to get more followers. I'd recommend intermediate and experienced users to take it. For this project, you'll need the app, Instagram and an Instagram account, the app, Videoleap, and your smartphone. Both these apps are free on the App Store and in Google Play. Download your apps, prepare your creativity and see you in our first lesson. 3. How do reels work: Reels are a relatively new feature of Instagram that is an entirely separate category from your feed and your Instagram stories. Instagram reels live in a separate tab and they are shown to anyone that, a, likes the sound you use on your video or, b, likes content like the one you produce. In this case, art. People falling on their any of these two categories will be shown your reels, whether they follow you or not. Think of it this way. All 1.3 billion people on Instagram are in a gigantic theater and you get 30 seconds to show them what you got. In addition, reels have a longer exposure lifetime than any other type of posts on Instagram. Stories are visible for 24 hours. Posts are relevant for a few hours before they get buried by newer posts. But reels, they are shown to people for weeks on end if they are performing well. Take this reel for example, I posted it on December 25th and people were still discovering it and commenting it on January 15th. That is three weeks long. The last comment on these reel was one week ago. That is, let's say, the last week of January. So if I go to my insights and I check the last 25th of December when I posted this reel to the last week of January. One week ago, let's say this was on the 24th, so one month. I grew a total of 2,261 followers just in the last month using that reel that was engaging people for a whole month. This is major because in the past, you will most likely not growing because whatever you post it on your feed was only seen by the amount of people who followed you, or the people who knew about the tags you used and saw it on their tag section. Tagging is extremely complicated. Hashtags are too reliant on keywords and language matching, whereas music and interests are universal. Now that we've discussed the basics of how reels work, let's move on to what makes a good reel. If you have any questions on what we've discussed so far, makes sure that you write it on the discussion session below so that I can answer it. 4. 1...2...3... Reels!: Virality cannot be predicted. If going viral had a recipe, then everyone would be going viral by now. What can be done though, is follow best practices that guarantee more exposure for your Reels. If you have taken any other classes with me, you would know that I love recipes. Here are the top three things you must consider before posting any Reels. Number 1, sound. Choose your sounds wisely. We all have an urge to choose music that we like or think fits best with the mode of our video, but in this case, that is not the only thing we should consider. The more people have used the sound, the better. The more viral the sound is, the more people the algorithm will show your Reel to. Viral sounds are more liked and therefore, any content with that sound will be pushed out much more. One thing I love to do is go to my Reels feed, and if I like a sound, I check if it is viral by tapping on the song and seeing how many Reels have been made with it. Anything above 5000k, I save so that I have a nice pool of sounds that are viral to choose from. This way I have several options when I'm creating a new Reel. The way that I save sounds that are trending is by going to my Instagram, going to my feeds of my Reels, and putting the sound on. [MUSIC] This one sounds okay, looks like I can match it to many things. I click on the sound button. This one is actually pretty good because it has about 20,600 Reels done with this sound, so it's pretty popular. You Right is trending. This one is 130K. I definitely had it saved already. The way that I go to my viral sounds is by going to my hamburger menu here on the right. If I go to saved, I have a whole tab that's just saved audio. Here are all the songs that I have saved. Whenever I don't know what song to use for a Reel that I'm creating and I don't have enough time, I just go to these ones and I know that I'm going to use one that's already trending. Number 2, time. How much production time you want to put in it or can put in when creating a Reel. Spending dead hours or days into producing a Reel does not guarantee that they will do better than a quick one. Posting a Reel a day is only doable if you can post them easily. If you try to make a full-blown production, every time you make a Reel, then it is less likely that you will be putting one out every day. Number 3, purpose. Choose a Reel type that goes with the goal for that post. If you want to showcase a new collection, then uses scrapbook style Reel. If you want to promote your next art course, then do an educational type Reel. If you want to create a community, then do relatable Reel and if you want to show your skills, then do a demonstration Reel. I will be going back to this three concepts for all the Reels we will create in this class. You will learn how to keep them in the back of your mind and how they will become second nature when creating them by yourself. 5. Scrapbook Reels: This style is great for when you don't have time to paint anything new. This is great for when you're feeling uninspired or you are simply too busy with life. This is my go-to style when I only have 10-15 minutes or so. Here's how to do it. I go to my camera, and I start recording vertically. As you guys can see, I have a white piece of paper, but is exactly the same paper I use for this piece, which is the piece I want to show. It's the same size and everything. It's exactly the same type of paper. I'm going to put this here, and I'm going to record myself, my hand going in and snapping. I want to start recording. Sorry. One more time. I'm going to go in and snapping. Now, I'm going to stop the video, put my artwork exactly where the other paper is, in a way that it doesn't show, and then I'm going to record again and I'm going to snap. I'm going to stop it. Now, I'm going to go to Instagram, and I'm going to go to my saved sounds. I'm going to go to my hamburger menu on the top right corner, I'm going to go to saved sounds, and I'm going to get something like this one. Let's use this one. I'm going to use audio, and I'm going to add my first video. I want to add it and I want to cut it to the moment that I snap my fingers, but not the end of the snap, so the beginning of this snap and that. Then I'm going to to add it, and then I'm going to go on the plus sign again at the bottom left. I'm going to add my second video where I'm going to cut to the moment that might snap ends. This will take really no time to do. Then I hit "Next", I write a caption. I usually have my hashtags in the note, so I just copy paste them from here. Select all, copy, and I paste them here. Let's say a golden girl, I'm going to call it. I'm going to separate my hashtags with a period and then I'm going to paste them here and I'm going to change my cover, something attractive that shows the actual art. Something like this. Then I'm going to share, and that would be it. This style is great to show a lot of art pieces in the same reel. It is also great for when you have new collections or flash sales. Moving on to the next style. 6. Education Reels: [MUSIC] The following type of Reels can also be made quickly and they're the easiest to produce. You can just record yourself talking or showing a tip or trick you use in your art style. This Reels look a lot like a story and they are often liked by people who can become potential students. Let's make one together. The way I create educational videos for Reels is the following. I've already set up my camera from my phone on top of my iPad screen. I usually record my iPad screen and then cut it but that's very specific to people who use their iPad as their drawing tool. I am not going to get into that right now. If you are teaching something that's on a screen, I suggest you record that screen. But for the sake of education, for the sake of this course, I am going to record this Reel directly with my phone. As you can see, I've already made sure that my phone is recording vertically, not horizontally because that's the aspect ratio that Reels use and I am going to get started. For this Reel I'm going to be recording my own voice. I'm going to be using the voice that's recorded in the video for the Reel, so I am not going to just be talking randomly behind the scenes because I'm not going to have that muted. I'm actually going to be giving the tip with my voice so that I don't have to show my face or so that I don't have to do extra editing in the part of actually making the Reel. I want to keep these processes as short as possible so that it's really easy for me to create Reels on a daily basis. I'm going to start recording. I'm going to give a tip on how to do one-line drawings. The line in the one-line drawings more smooth in the appropriate. I'm going to record myself now, I'm going to start recording there. If your line looks very jittery when you are trying to do one line on Procreate, it's because the stabilization is very low on the brush settings. You just have to go to Brush Studio stabilization for whatever brush you're using and in stabilization, you just have to toggle that and immediately you will see that's easier. Look how straight that line looks as you changed the stabilization. You're welcome. Then I just go, I have that video saved. I am just going to go to Instagram. I'm going to again, same process, go to my sounds saved. I'm going to go to my pool of popular sounds and I'm going to choose this one. [MUSIC] Yes, pretty good because this one doesn't compete with my voice so much. I'm going to use this audio. I'm going to upload this video [MUSIC] and I'm going to just check that the music goes all the way to the end of my video. It does, so I'm going to go Add and I'm going to hit ''Preview''. In the preview you can actually click on the Music and [inaudible]. It's because the stabilization is very low and then just hit ''Done." Maybe you want to add some texts, for example, how to fix your jittery one line art, that's much better because it's not condescending. How to fix your jittery one line art. Always this is my signature sticker, so I'll put that here and then I'm going to next and that's going to be it. Like you guys know, I'm just going to put in a caption, put on my tags and publish. This is a great style to show people how well you know your craft and how experienced you are at it. Use this type of Reels to promote a class you're going to teach or to get people learning the style that you are working with. This is great for upcoming artists and people who want to connect and want to become as good as artists as you are. 7. Relatable Reels: These reels are the reels that show viewers you understand exactly how they feel and the struggles they have to face as fellow artists, commissioners, or buyers of art. These reels tend to be funny, cheeky, but above all, they are relatable. Show your messy studio, how many times you've failed before getting to that point, mistakes you often make, etc. These reels show you are human. Here's how I do them. The reels that are good for relatability are usually not sounds. They are people talking, or inviting you to do something. I'm going to be using this one. It says, "Hey artist, I've got an idea. Show us what your workstation looks like and be honest, don't clean it beforehand." Exactly. I'm going to choose that one. I'm going to use this audio, and I'm just going to show my workstation. I'm literally just going to pan my workstation like this with the recording, so 3, 2, 1, record. Sorry, I have to delete that and start again. 3, 2,1. "I've got an idea. Show us what your workstation looks like and be honest, don't clean up beforehand." I'm going to go to Preview. "Hey artist, I've got an idea. Show us what your workstation looks like and be honest, don't clean it beforehand." "Hey artist, I've got an idea. Show us what your workstation looks like, and be honest, don't clean it beforehand." I'm going to write some texts like art studio/recording studio, and of course my little, "Hey artist, I've got an idea. Show us what your workstation looks like and be honest, don't clean it beforehand. Hey artists, I've got an idea." That's it. Write your caption, write your hashtags and publish. These reels are great for connecting with your followers and building a loyal community, people who appreciate your work and are more likely to support it. This style lets us connect. 8. Demonstration Reels: These reels can be quick or complex. Therefore, showcasing your skills and make you seem great at what you do. These are show off reels and they're necessary to keep the magic and make you fit the deal. This is for you to be the artist people look up to. Let's learn how to do them. Going to get right to it. As you guys can see, I've already set my canvas and I'm going to be just drawing here. I'm literally just going to record myself drawing. Just make sure, again, I've made the mistake too many times to record vertically because that's the ratio used in reels. Let's get started. I make a video drawing like I just did now. It's usually very long. So I look for my app, Videoleap. They have a paid version, but they also have a free version up to one minute and a half, which is great because reels don't last more than one minute. I usually just go here, get my drawing which took me a minute to draw. I select it. I change the speed to half the time for example. It goes just much faster, so a video that was one minute, now is 30 seconds. I'm going to export it. I going to save it. Now, I'm going to go to Instagram, choose a sound from my library, and I'm going to use this audio. Then I'm going to put the shortest version which is faster and I want to get rid of the time that I'm not drawing at all, so I want to start when the pen touches the paper. [inaudible] I'm going to preview it and I remember to change the cover because usually the cover that it chooses the first frame which is not exactly great. But for example, something like this that's unfinished but sparks curiosity. Yeah, just hit done and share. Process videos with complex techniques or displays of mastery, work best here. Use them to wow and convert people who like your reels into actual followers. 9. Conclusions: Before we finish our course, I want to leave some thoughts with you. First of all, you have to stay consistent. Instagram reels are great for growing, but if you don't do them on a regular basis you can't pick up where you left off, meaning it's some sort of upwards hill, I would say. If you stop going here, you would go back down. You're going to have to start doing all the efforts that you started with again. Every time you let it go and start again, you're going to have to start from the beginning. Second, use your insights. Inside each reel there is information about how your reel is doing, how many people are watching it, those are the impressions. You have impressions, reach, and likes or saves, and you will be able to see an in-depth information of how your reel is doing. Use that information to help you decide which reels that do best, which reels worked best for you. The third one is to not give up. Be patient. Rome wasn't built in a day. You are not going to go viral on your first reel or maybe you will, but you have to stay open and consistent because it takes really small steps every single day, little effort every day. That's the most important thing. I'm really glad you took this course and I can't wait to see you again. See you soon.