Transcripts
1. Welcome to the Class!: Are you an artist or creative searching to enhance
your social media presence? Then this class is for you. I will show you how to make
the real making magic happen. This master class is tailor made for artists and creatives. So I will be showing
you here some tricks specifically for
your creative niche. If you don't know me
yet, I'm Anastasia. I'm an artist, illustrator, content creator, and educator. I've launched my own Brandt about five years ago thanks
to a simple Instagram page. And thanks to Instagram reels, I was able to grow my online community to
70,000 people on Instagram. In this master class, you will learn why creating video content nowadays is so important and essential to grow
on social media. I will teach you some
best practices on how to create captivating
and engaging reels, common mistakes that I see creative do while
creating their reels. I will help you to understand the algorithm and how to
use it in your advantage. I will also be sharing with
you some of my favorite tips on how to maximize your
chances to go viral, how to create more
beautiful videos, and how to edit your videos. Don't worry, any particular professional gear is required. So you just need your phone
to be able to do that. I will also be showing you
my step by step process of how I actually create
reels directly on my phone. So I will be sharing you
my phone and you will see the whole process
from start to finish of how you can make an Instagram reel by
creating Instagram reels. You will also learn the
structure in the base to create Tiktoks or Youtube
shorts, for example. So this class will be
helpful to anyone who wants to create a more impactful
video content in general. So if you're ready to learn
more about Instagram reels and how to use them in your creative business,
let's dive in.
2. Why Creating Video Content is Essential: I'm so excited for this
real making magic event. There will be so many things
to share with you tonight, so I'm super, super excited. Real making magic, that's
what it's all about today. And this event is especially tailored for artists
and creatives. As I said, because of course, a lot of people
create reels nowadays on Instagram in any
kind of industries. But I think there are
some specific things that artists need to know and
can use in their advantage. And this is something very particular to the
creative niche. So that's why this event is focused on arts and creatives, first of all, first
and foremost. So why is it so important to create video content nowadays? There are some specific
reasons for that. First of all, it's
visual appeal. I know a lot of you
think that photos are enough to say what you need to say, especially
for artists. I already create my work,
I put it out there, isn't the picture just
not enough anymore. The reason is, videos are
just naturally more engaging, in, more captivating
than photographs. So this is just how
the human brain works. I will give you just
a simple example of my real life experience. There was an event
that I took part in and there was a
big group of people, like 30 people, and they were
all looking at the screen. And it was actually a
personal event about a trip of someone like trip
to an exotic country. The person was showing pictures and videos about his trip. And it's curious that nobody was paying attention
to pictures. So people were
talking around like, you know, moving,
doing everything. But they were not looking
at pictures even though the person was talking and like explaining what was
happening on these pictures. But then when the person
suddenly switched to videos, there was just like this
immediate difference. The audience got
scotched to the screen. You know, they were
watching the video and there was even no
more need to talk. I saw this drastic change in people's behavior and
this is just a proof, one more proof of the
fact that videos, like human eye, is just
naturally more driven to watch videos
than to see photos. So it doesn't mean that
photos worthless or that photo content is not like worth it anymore.
Absolutely not. I will actually cover this topic in this
master class later on. But nowadays, if you want to be successful
on social media, you just need to do videos. This is just the way it
is. It may sound brutal, but that's it of course, if you hate videos, if you
feel totally rejected, you can try other strategies. But 99% your growth will be
slower than with videos. This is just how
it is right now. Second reason,
storytelling reels and videos in general
allow you to create storytelling and deeper
connection with the audience. Of course, if people
know how you look like or how your art
like, it's amazing. But when they know more about you or your art or how
you create your art, it becomes just more
interesting for them. And they feel that they know
you better as a person. This is something very
important because nowadays on social media it's
not only about your art, it's a lot about who you
are as a person's process. What's your life, how your studio looks like,
Not these things. It creates a stronger connection.
Information retention. One more important thing, videos combined with
combined audio and visuals. That's why they are so much
more powerful than just text, or photo, or audio because
they combine all the senses. Actually, this contributes to a better retention of information if you
want to be heard. If you have something to say related to promotion of
your art or anything else, the video is the most
effective way of doing it, getting your message heard. As I said, human
connection videos help you to establish a sense of
connection and reliability. Because a talking person
is always how I can say you have a better
understanding of who this person is than
just seeing a photo. One more important thing, shareability videos are more likely to be shared by
users on social media, it's just a proven fact. I will be sharing
some statistics with you here in
the next slides. But this is true. People tend to share
videos more than pictures. We are interested in these
kind of metrics because shares are one of the things that Instagram really
pays attention to. We will be talking about this
in the algorithm section. But shares are very important. That's why creating video
content is very important too. Let's see some statistics here. 91% of users watch videos
on Instagram weekly. Almost everyone social
media posts with videos have 48% more
views. That's a lot. Videos on social media generates 1,200 more shares than text
and image content combined. That's we were talking
about just now, Just look at this number, 1,200% more. That's a lot. As I said, shares
are very important. Reels especially get
22 more interaction than standard video posting. Like for example stories. Actually, one more thing on
Instagram before you could share video in your
feed as a normal video, it will appear as a video. This feature is no
longer available. If you want to share video on Instagram now you need
to share it as a real. That's why if you
want to make videos, you need to learn
how to make reels.
3. Understanding the Algorithm: Let's dig a bit deeper
into Instagram algorithm. This mythological creature, this is just general
presentation. Instagram algorithm is a
complex system that determines the order in which posts
appear in users feeds. This is very important
because of the metric, Instagram will
basically understand which posts he will
show to your followers. First, we will talk about the specific metrics
that Instagram uses. It aims to show users the most relevant
and engaging content based on their interests and
their past interactions. That's why we will be
talking a lot about interactions here and creating
connections with people. Because if you have a
very si***t community that don't comment on your
post, it's not very good. Because it means that if they never engaged
with your content, Instagram will put it lower on the list of content that he wants to show
to these people. Because Instagram it's
actually very easy. Like, you don't need
to think too much. The goal of Instagram in any social media platform
is to make visitors, to make people stay as much
as possibly can on the app. This is their goal. They want
people to basically stay there as much as it is
possibly achievable. If you are able to
make people stick to their screen and watch
what you have there, a video, picture, text, anything, if they do
it for a long time. If they watch your content
entirely, whole video. And then if they
go and they read the caption and then they interact by putting you alike or commenting or
sharing, or saving. All of this will just
say to Instagram, look, this content is good because
people are enjoying it. They are spending
time consuming it. They take the effort
because this is the effort of putting a like
of sharing, of commenting. This is all considered
not a simple action. It's considered an effort from
the user's point of view. If a lot of users
did these actions or some of these actions
on the content, Instagram will think
it will consider that, okay, this content is good, let's show it to more people. That's how you start to be shown to more people
and that's how you go viral. When a lot of people start to give a lot of attention
to a certain content, Instagram will just start
pushing it harder and harder, and it's just going to
obtain a snowball effect. More people watch it,
more people interact. Instagram will push
it even further. That's why once one
of your reels start to go viral very well, it starts to have hundreds
of thousands of views. So for example, 100,000
views, 200, 300,000 views. There is a good chance
that it will go viral and will reach 1 million
views, 2 million views. What I got until now, my best reel got almost
2 million views, and my second reel
got 1,000,200 views. It drastically changed
my Instagram presence and will tell you some
numbers later on. But just to let you know, like this thing really works, It's not a lot of people say
Instagram reels are great, but maybe you did a couple, you don't see any results
and you are discouraged. Maybe you think this
thing just doesn't work. I reassure you it works. It depends on a lot of things. Of course, Instagram
reels were not as easy to go viral
as they were before. Instagram reels are
over two years old now. In the beginning,
it was a real buzz, Not a lot of content
creators were doing them. If you were doing it right, you were getting
viral quite easily. Now it's not the case anymore, it's a bit more difficult. But if you follow
these actionable steps that I will be sharing you here. I can tell you it's totally
doable about the algorithm. While the, the exact way of how the algorithm works
is not publicly disclosed. There are some key factors in best practices you can consider. Just think about it as a thing that needs to understand
what content is good, good, what content is less good. Good because your photo is bad or your artwork
is not beautiful. This is not what Instagram considers because it's not a human being, it's
just a machine. So a machine does not prioritize
more beautiful content. Instagram needs to understand
why this content is beautiful and valuable to be
shared with these metrics. These ways of understanding
are likes, shares, comments, the duration of how much time the person
engages with your content. For example, if they
watched your entire video or maybe they watched it several times, this is very important. Let's see one thing
here real quick. The difference between users
feed and explore page. This is one of the very
important things to understand. Maybe you've heard
about Explorer Page, You have it on your phone. So when you open
the Explorer tab, you can see all of
these reels, photos. Nowadays, it's a lot of reels that just pop on your screen. And they are there because Instagram puts there
the content that it thinks you will enjoy watching based on your previous activity. What kind of content
you watched, you liked you engaged with Users Feed is
something very different. Users Feed is the
main content stream on your Instagram account. So basically you see post and reals and other content from
people that you follow. But here again, the
algorithm works the same way if you
follow someone, but you've never interacted
with this account, maybe you will never
see their posts. This is just how it works and it also depends on how
many people you follow. If you follow 10,000 people, it's going to be difficult
for Instagram, you know, to show you all the content from all of these 10,000
people to you. What Instagram will do, it will choose the accounts that you interact with the most. It will show you
only these posts. That's why one tip. If you want to see more of
something on Instagram, consider engaging with
these creators more. If you wonder, oh, why I don't see content by that
creator anymore? I liked following him. Like I love following him. Consider engaging a bit more, maybe putting more likes or leaving comments
from time to time. In this way, you will
let Instagram know that you're actually enjoyed
seeing this content. It will show it to you more frequently about Instagram Feed primarily showcases content from accounts users had chosen to follow and had
interactions with. That's what we just said. This is very important as
for the Explorer Page, as I said, it also depends
on your interactions. What is interesting about
the Explorer Page is that if you create content
that starts to go well, you have good chances to end
up on the Explorer Page. This is the exact
same way you go viral when your real starts
to go very, very well. It means most of the cases
that it got on the explore, that people are interacting
with this content actively. And Instagram is showing it in the page of more and
more and more people. If you open your Explorer page, now click on one of the
first videos that pop up. You will be able to see
that these videos usually have thousands,
millions of views. That's why they're on top because they're doing very well. Explore page is one
of the best ways to get discovered on
Instagram. Just as I said. Now the user interaction that algorithm pays the
most attention to are, again, likes, saves, and shares. All of these things
are important. What is also important? The Instagram algorithm tends to broadly share content
from its newer features. As we said, reels are
not that new anymore. It's over two years now. But it's still considered
as a new feature because it's one of the last ones
that they've introduced. Reels are still on top. Instagram will prioritize
reels over other content, especially now when all
the video feed posts are automatically
uploaded to real. When you post video
on your feed, it will be posted as a.
4. What are Instagram Reels?: Reels is your
ticket to the page. If you open your Explorer page, you will see some
pictures there, but I bet it will
be mainly videos if you interacted with these
contents in the past. I personally love reels. I love watching reels.
I love making reels. That's why I also have a lot of video content and reels
on my Explorer page. But I think it's a general
trend right now as well. One very important thing that if posts and stories are
mainly for your community, post and stories are mainly
seen by your followers, reels are mainly seen by the community outside
of your reach, outside of your followers. This is a crucial
difference between post stories and real
reels are really like. The standalone
thing about them is that if you see your statistics, your metrics, your
insights on Instagram, to be able to access them, you need to have a
business account. Consider having one. If you
want to know these things and take your social
media management on a more professional level, open a business account
instead of the personal one. And that's where you will be
able to see these metrics. So there is actually
a graphic showing you how many followers
you touched with your reels and how
many non followers. So in my case, it's very easy. It's like 10% followers,
90% non followers. So it's good from the point
of view of discoverability. So it means that a lot
of people outside of your existing community will
able to see your content. And it's incredible
because as you may know, a lot of people do
promotion on social media. And they pay actual
money to be able to get seen by the people
outside of their communities. And they pay a lot of money. I know that for sure, reals are a free way of
giving this exposure. Don't underestimate them. One more very important
thing as you see on this slide is one
of the main things Instagram focuses on in deciding what content
you will enjoy, is if you watch a piece
of video content all the way through, remember
this information. We will be talking
about it later here, but this is very important. You want your viewers,
your followers, people who watch your content to watch it all the way through. What are Instagram reels?
If you don't know? Instagram reels are short videos of up to 60 seconds long, featuring music
effects and texts. We will cover this a bit later. They allow users to
create engaging, entertaining content,
showcase creativity, and reach broader audience. As we said through
trends, chal***ges, and expla, it doesn't mean you need to do
trends or chal***ges. Absolutely not to be able to
end up on the explore page. So don't worry about this. You don't have to
use silly trends or silly sounds if that does
not resonate with you. Actually, this is
not to do that. We will be talking about
this, this presentation. The most important thing,
you need to be authentic. You need to do something
that resonates with you and does not feel fake. Or just because something did something that went well doesn't mean you should
do the same thing. Absolutely not. As for the
text and effects and music, we will be covering this topic here in depth, especially music. A bit of statistics here. As I said, I will share
my numbers with you. Maybe that will convince you to try Reals if you've
never tried them. So why using Reels in
your creative business? So my audience before reels, I had 30,000 followers. And it was a very hard work
of getting people on my page. So I worked very
hard for four years. And by very hard, I
mean posting every day, engaging with other accounts, making stories,
making live sessions, everything very consistently. So I got 30,000 followers, which is already amazing. I was already over
the moon, you know, because even if I show
you numbers here, so it doesn't mean like it's just thousands of random things. These are all people. So that's why we will
be talking a lot about humanity and the connection with your, with your audience. But just in terms of statistics, after making a couple
of viral reels, my audience grew
more than doubled. I got 40,000 people, which is more than half of
my previous following that came to me like
this in two months. Basically, it was a. I cannot say it was
an overnight success, but almost I was
seeing thousands of new people per day on
my page. It's crazy. And this is the effect
of when you go viral, you just start to have a bunch of new people on your page. In the beginning, it
feels like overwhelming. You don't know what
is happening here. It really works
this way In total, in five years when
I opened my page. So I opened it in 2018, I guess. I grew a community
of over 70,000 people organic followers on Instagram, no Pat advertising. It also helped me to grow
my following on Tiktok. I have almost 12,000 on Tiktok. And basically the algorithm
and the principle of making videos is exactly the
same I'm using for reels, it's the same I'm
using for Tiktok and the same for Youtube shorts. I'm also on Youtube. I'm just starting to
grow my community there. I'm under 2000 followers yet, but Youtube shorts are
the tool that you can use to be able to grow the effortlessly,
actually, and quickly. That's why, as I said, this, this master class will
help you to create content for all of
these three platforms. It doesn't mean that you need to go to all the platforms
available out there. Absolutely. Not only on
what resonates with you, but I think that
Youtube is important. If you are an artist as
Tiktok and Instagram, my favorite platform
is Instagram. Let's talk about benefits
of reels real quick. As we said before, it's expanding your
audience very quickly. Growing your audience much
quicker than with photos. I think it's not
possible to grow your audience that quickly
with photos anymore. It's very difficult. You need to be either very famous or you need
to make something like so exceptional that to be able to attract
this attention. And it's just much easier to obtain these results with reels. That's why we're talking
about reels today. What other things reels can help you to do
define your niche. So it may sound weird, like you maybe already know
who you are as an artist, you know who you are by making
videos, by making content, you are actually understanding
even more about yourself, what you're enjoying to share, maybe what kind of
things your audience enjoy seeing from you that
also you like making. Maybe that will encourage you to make more of these things. I hope it makes sense, but it's not only one
way relationship. It's a relationship
with your public. If you're posting something, your public will
resonate with it. And if you see that people are resonating more to some type of content and you enjoy creating
this type of content, You may consider doing
more of that because it's beneficial for you and
for your followers. Because you enjoy making it. Your followers enjoy seeing it. Why not making more of this very important as
well gain authority. So establish yourself as an authority in your
niche is very valuable. It's very important,
especially if you want to use your social media
presence as a business asset. So what I mean by
that, if you want to sell your artworks
on social media, on Instagram, maybe if
you want to sell prints. If you want to sell
your services, if you want to have more
commissions from your clients. If you want to make courses one day and
sell courses on line, your authority is something that you're building
over the time. You're not building
it overnight. Nobody is open the page and your famous and
your niche this is. It's a lot of hard work. But sharing content that
transmits who you are and your expertise
will allow you to gain this authority
and to build it in time. We will be talking about consistency a lot here
because consistency is key. I will tell you, like
everything in life, I think we will be talking
about this later on. This brings us as a result. As a result, what this
all will bring you to you if you achieve
success with reels. Of course, if it's your goal, you can promote your products
and services, as I said, by maintaining the
authenticity and avoiding appearing
pushy or fake or salesy because your content and the way you
present your content will sell for yourself. For example, if you
see some reels of very successful painters
or pottery artists. And sometimes they make a real, they share a real and their
whole collection is sold out. So you see they didn't
make a dance with, I don't know, flags saying hey, sell, buy my things,
buy my things. They just showed
their process maybe, and they showed what they
have to offer authentically. And people were willing
to buy it without you feeling awkward about
selling your stuff, your art, without feeling
like pushy or you know, like you are, Without
feeling fake. Without feeling embarrassed. Exactly, without
feeling embarrassed. Selling your art, this
is very important thing. Selling your art with confidence is something
that takes time. And creating content
consistently can help. Creating good content
consistently can help you to obtain
this confidence. Because I bet you
create good art, you spend a lot of time on
creating your amazing art. But the promotion, marketing, the efforts that you put
into promoting your art are as equally or even more important than the
quality of your art. This is something
that a lot of people understand because a
lot of people think, oh, I just make beautiful
stuff and people will buy it. This is not the case
on Instagram anymore. Unfortunately, you
need to work hard to make your content
seen and appreciate it. I'm here to help you
to do it with reels.
5. Best Practices: Let's talk about the best
practices of real making. Number one, short and engaging. Keep your reels short. This is important. As I said in the beginning, reels are up to 60 seconds. This is the maximum, but I suggest you making a
much shorter content. This is also one of the keys on how you can create
content quickly. Because you don't need to shoot like 1 hour videos to
make amazing reels. Actually what you
need to do is to make a lot of short videos. This is crucial. We will be talking
about it later, but just to let you know
that one tip of how you can go viral easier is by
making short reels. Me under 10 seconds. It may sound like it's nothing, but it's easier to go viral with content for
a variety of reasons. Because people's attention
on social media is very low. This is just the reality. People are there scrolling. You need to really put an effort into stopping
them from scrolling, because there are
a lot of creators, and all of these creators are racing to get
viewers attention. You will not get their attention
just by making things. You did them before, like just posting a beautiful
picture of your work. Now, you need to
get more creative. Reels are one of the methods. Why? Short? As I said, the success of your
reel depends a lot on if the person will watch your
video all the way through, or that the person
will start to watch it and then get bored and
start scrolling again. This is very important. You need to stop
people from scrolling. You need to make them watch
this video till the end. Somehow you need to get creative
here to make them watch. It's need to be beautiful. It's need to be
engaging, captivating, or there should be
like this narrative going on that people
like they are curious, they need to be curious to
watch the video till the end. This is the goal. If
your video is short, it's just easier to make
them watch it till the end. Very simply because if your content is 60 seconds,
which is 1 minute, it's just much more difficult to make a person watch
something for a minute, then make a person watch your content for 5
seconds, or 10 seconds. This is the difference. And
then there is one more trick, why short videos are
performing better. I will explain this
tip to you very soon, but it is a very good one. You don't want to miss that one. My suggestion, you can create
reals up to 30 seconds to maintain viewers
interest depending on what you're
showing your process, the story behind your work. Anything I suggest you
keeping it under 30 seconds. Number two, be dynamic, maintain a dynamic
pace with quick cuts. And utilize quick cuts
to ensure engaging pace. This is also very important. I got a question from one
of my students and she was asking me some advice
about her reels. And one tip I gave her, that I'm giving you
now is that it's very important to have a
paste in your video, especially if you're
showing an art process. I would say it boring.
Just don't be offended. It's boring to see just you
painting for 2 minutes. I know it may sound like, oh, my creation process. Like
it should be interesting. It's interesting for
you, but it's not interesting for average viewer
because the viewer will see like the viewer makes the impression about the
content in the first 3 seconds. If the viewer sees that
in the first 3 seconds, like nothing happened
and like you started to paint something small
and very slowly, after 3 seconds
you're still there. Or after 10 seconds,
you're still there. After 15 seconds,
you're still there. People will start to
scroll because they think, okay, nothing happens there. She's just painting, okay?
This is just the truth. Think about how
you can make your content look more interesting, more dynamic, more captivating. Instead of just showing one
long video of your process, divide your process
into shorter cuts. So maybe you show something from the
beginning of your process, like maybe just the
drawing you're doing, then you switch to
how you mix colors. This is very important
as well if you want to show not
only how you paint, but also how you take
your art supplies, how you pour the
water in your glass, how you put the
brush in your glass, how you mix the colors
on your palette. All of this is very easy to shoot like you just
take your phone and you film it.
It's very simple. But it will allow you
to just give more dynamic and more
variety to your reels. Because this way you can mix these cuts and put the
drawing in the beginning, then show how mix colors
just for a second. Just a little piece of
how you mix your color. Then you switch back
to the painting and you show the
viewer how you paint. Then you show maybe
a time lapse. Then you show like the
final piece I told you, four or five different
scenes that you may think, oh, I need to shoot
all of this like yes, but it's not difficult. It's just shoot
yourself for 2 seconds, 3 seconds, 5 seconds. How you put a brush in
your jar with water. It's very easy. You just need to remember to take time
and make these videos. Or what you can do if
you forget about it during your painting
process. Shoot them after. Make some short videos, quick videos of how you mix
your colors. Random colors. It should not be the same exact color you used for the painting, it's just for the video. You need to create the
narrative in these things, such as your creative process, your start from finish process divided into different
parts, different cuts. Just more interesting
to watch rather than one straightaway video. That's what I suggested
to my student. I suggested her to make
quicker videos and shorter videos of
different things, such as her painting,
her mixing colors. Her video improved
drastically like instantly. Just because of this simple tip. Instead of making one big video, make 1020 as many
videos as you want. Your videos should
be very short. Actually, it's easier
to edit shorter videos. I will show you why make five second videos,
ten second videos. It's a process you
don't need to film at all unless you want to maybe put it on
Youtube after that. But if you just
want to make reels, it's enough to make a
video of you making a few brushstrokes and then show another video where
you're adding details. Don't overthink it. Make short videos from 2 seconds minimum and up
to whatever you like, but I think it's just more
manageable and easier to work with videos
that are from, let's say 34 to 15 seconds long. Number three, clear message. If you want give
a clear message. Sometimes I think it's good
to use a script, for example, if you want to show them, let's say a day in your studio. This is one of the ideas I
will be sharing here with you about what reals
you can imagine. Let's say you want to tell people about one
day in your studio, how you come to your studio, what you're doing there,
what's on your table. Show yourself working,
show, I don't know. Some nights, objects from
your studio want to share. In this case, maybe
you really want to build this narrative and
get this message out there. Just have this in mind, you should deliver
a clear message. It's not about just
going on your phone, picking a bunch of
videos and putting them together and
saying, I made a real. Because technically
it will be a real. But this will make
no sense because maybe you post a video of
you starting one piece, then finishing the other one, then starting something
else, then you walking, then you mixing colors, Like you see if there's no logical way of how
your video unfolds, it doesn't really make sense and your viewer will be confused, like what's going on there. Like she's showing
me this first. Then this other thing happens. Why is there?
There's no clarity. People will just be confused and they will start scrolling again. We don't want that,
That's why to prevent them from scrolling,
we need to be clear, for example, how
you can make it by putting a really clear
hook in the beginning. A hook can be a phrase or something very impactful
in the first seconds of your video that will
instantly capture the attention that will
deliver a very clear message. For example, there's
nothing. Don't overthink it. For example, it can
be a video of you painting in front, I don't know, in the nature painting
a leaf that you found on the street
and you just, they're painting
it but the visual, like the image is very clear. It's about you painting
something from life outdoors. If you then want to show
more of this content, you can then add you
making a drawing of this. Leave you mixing colors and Dadadada and then you
finishing this leaf, think about the narrative. Not just random videos taken from different
parts, put together. Number four, this
is very important. And also a very underestimated
thing, use trending music. This is something not a
lot of people think about. I see a lot of
creators just taking random music
sometimes that don't even go well with their visuals. With the video, they
just put it out there. Music is important. It's just as important
as the visuals. That's why avoid putting
just videos without music. Otherwise you want to talk, you want to make like the
voice talking on top of it. You can do that and it's
very good actually. Or maybe you have
the original sound of your video that
is already amazing. Maybe like birds singing like you're in the
woods painting and birds are singing like something
happens, this is okay. But in terms of music, don't you can actually put any kind of music you
want on top of your videos, but I suggest to explore what music is
trending right now. I will show it to you on
my phone a bit later. But there's actually
a section on Instagram where you can browse, like you can see what kind of music is trending
at this moment. If you use these
sounds on your reels, your chances of getting good or viral will become
significantly higher. Don't underestimate music. Also, what I suggest, I bet you follow sub creators
on line on Instagram, pay close attention to their following and how
quickly they grow. If you see that there was a drastic change in the
number of their followers, there is a very high chance
that they've recently posted a reel that
got very good, very well, maybe viral. Figure out what reel is it? You just need to go
on their profile, click on reels and
see their real feed. And I bet you will
find this one video that has the performance
that is like outstanding. That is not the same
as other videos. For example, all videos
have 5,000 views. And then you have a video
that has 150,000 views. Then you know this is the one. You go to this video, you click on it and
you see what sound, what song the person used. So you can see it on the right
lower angle of the screen, there is like a little icon
with the cover of the song. You click there and you
see what music it is. Sometimes when it's
a trending music, you will find this
little arrow sign and then it will be said
trending this way. You will have this one more
validation of the fact that this song is going
really well right now. It means you need to use this sound now as
quickly as possible. You will also see next
this trending sound. Or even if you don't
have trending, you will see how many people
made reels using this sound. This is very important
because if it's trending and if
you see that there are maybe under 20,000
reels made with it, it's a very good sign
you should use it. If you see it's trending
and there's already like 500,000 reels made with it, it's going to be more
difficult to compete with all of these creators
already using this song. I hope it makes sense. So it's like
hashtags, basically. If a hashtag has millions, billions of views already, so it means a lot of people
are using this hashtag. What do you think
are your chances of getting seen using the
same exact hashtag? Not a lot of chances, because if you're
not a huge account, if you don't have
millions of followers, your content will
be always lower beneath all of these more
successful accounts. So it means you need
to choose hash tags or sounds that are corresponding more or less to the
size of your account. If you are a huge account, you have 4,000 followers,
400,000 followers, sorry. And you find a song that
is super trending and it has already 300,000 views. You can use it, but if you're a tiny account under
1,000 followers, it doesn't make a lot
of sense unless you really like this song and
you want to use it anyways, which is totally fine. But what I mean by here is
that you need to chase for these sounds that starting
to get super on demand. But they are not there yet. There's like this opinion that it's better when it's
under 1,000 But it's very hard to find
these sounds under 1,000 reels made with
them or others say under 3,000 Under 5,000 I would say under 5,000 It's
amazing. Do it right now. If it's under 20 or 30, I think it's still doable. If it's more than that,
anything can happen. There's always a chance, like a matter of luck. Also, if you see that the sound that you really like
is already super trendy, I don't put it in the trash. If you really want to
use it, then use it. But pay closer attention to those sounds that
are starting to be trendy but are not exploded yet. Okay, that was long, but all to add, just
one more thing. Don't use songs that
are trending and maybe are having very great potential just because they're trending. If you don't like them, this
is very, very important. As I said, if you like a
song and it's very trendy, you can use it, but if
you don't like a song, sorry, but it is
starting to be trendy but don't really
into this sound, this song, it's not your vibe. You don't think it aligns well with your content. Don't use it. Don't waste your time, because you only
want to pick music and sounds that resonate
with your content. For example, if you're
creating very beautiful, I don't know flower
painting, very delicate. Uh, and you see like a
hard rock or I don't know, metal rock song that
is trending right now. I don't think they will
work together just because the song will
not match the video. I hope you know you
got what I mean. Don't use sounds that don't
work with your video content. I think it's a lot about
taste and about sensibility that I think you need to
have to be able to make good reels but
also common sense. Just think about
what will be more harmonious with the type of
content that you create. For example, what worked
very well for me are these very calm sounds,
maybe piano music. For example, the one of
my reels that got viral was using the song
by Ludovico Audi. It's an Italian
contemporary composer and it's just a very beautiful, elegant, simple piano
music calm, relaxing. And the video I was sketching
near the sea, on the beach, I was sketching a flower, so it was a very
easy thing to do. You know, I just took
this video, I posted it, I used this song and it
got to 1 million views. Sometimes it's just
as easy as this, I didn't even know. Make super cool cuts and dynamic
things I told you about. Sometimes this thing can work. Two, you just take
one beautiful video and you add a beautiful
song on top of it. If it matches. Sometimes magic can happen. As I said, like it
happened to me. You can try this as well. But very important thing,
it should be short. Please make it short. My video that got viral was like seven or 8 seconds,
something like this. So keep that in mind. Trending music is important. That's the same thing. Yeah. High quality visuals. I think this one is
pretty straightforward, but also the thing that
gets neglected very often. I know I'm asking you a lot. You need to do videos, you need to do this,
you need to do that. You need to think about the
lightning, the light quality. But what I have to say is that it's not that difficult
to get good light. I don't know what
creative you are, but if you work on
canvas or paper, like if you're a
painter for example, I think you work already near a window or
something like this. So you have windows
in your apartment. Try to make videos when you have this natural light
coming by natural light, I don't mean bunch of light in the middle of the day, sunlight,
direct sunlight. I just mean some light
actually, not direct light. Maybe on a cloudy day is even better than a
direct sunlight. But try to use these moments of the day
to film your videos. I know sometimes it's
complicated and sometimes we work by night,
everything can happen. But if you still want to shoot a video even by night,
just one suggestion. I usually recommend using
always natural light. Natural light whenever you can, near the window or in
a room that is full of light naturally during
the day. This is the best. If you don't have
this possibility or filming videos,
outside is great. If you sketch outside, if you paint outside, it's amazing because outside you have this beautiful light. Take this as an advice. If you're painting by night, you really want to make a painting use some
artificial light. It's better if it's a
ring light on top of your artwork that creates
this uniform light. Because if it's just a lamp
on one side and painting, there will be like these
very weird shadows sometimes and very hard light, and it's not very
visually appealing. If you want to maximize the appearance of your
videos during nighttime, use this ring on top
of your artworks. They are really inexpensive. These like influencer rings, you can find them on Amazon, it's like 30 euros or
something. I have one. I'm using it right now. You see it's a bit strong. I have a lot of light
on my face right now. So it's going to be the same
thing with your artwork. But a lot of light is much
better than no light. The worst case scenario
is that you paint somewhere in the dark with one light, with
a port lightning. And you try to make an
amazing video of that. Because you can try
as hard as you can, but you will not
obtain a good video with a poor or bad light. This is just how it works, no matter what kind
of camera you have. If you have a
professional camera, it will be as well. It doesn't matter. If you
use a phone or a camera, please make videos
with good light. Again, as I said, I
just use my phone. You don't need fancy cameras. I use my phone for my
Instagram content. In my real content, I also use my camera for my
educational content. For example, for my classes, my courses, my Youtube channel. For this, I use my camera
but because it's horizontal. Because I need more space
for different reasons, for like every day
content stories or reels. 99% of the time I use my phone. Sometimes I add some shooting from my camera to my
reels, but it's very rare. It's just so easier to keep everything in one
place on your phone. That's why I recommend
if you don't have a phone like a nice phone. By nice phone I
mean decent phone, like with a decent camera, invest in that before
thinking about anything else. If you want to create content, buy yourself a nice phone
with a lot of storage. If you know you want to film, a lot of video
storage is important. I personally have an iphone 13 with maximum
capacity of storage, which I don't
remember what it is. And it works fine for me. But I had, as I said, an older iphone before. I think honestly the
quality of video, maybe it's not
drastically different. Also, iphone 13 have some
problems with video quality, especially during evening, and sometimes it creates
this like watercolor effect. Personally, I don't
recommend iphone 13 for everything even
though I use it. Yeah, I think older iphones
are totally good in Samsung. All of these new models
of phones are more than enough to create
videos trending music. We told about it already. Use text and captions. This is important as well. By text, we were talking
about the script here. If you want to narrate a story. If you want to tell
a story and make it easier for the
viewer to understand what's going on,
you can add text. I will show you here later on on my phone
how you can do it. It's quite easy actually. I will anticipate myself and I will anticipate one
question I got by e mail. The Maria, I guess, who was asking me if I
recommend or if I use any kind of editing apps for reels
and my answer is no. I actually edit all of my
reels in my iphone and I use videos I made
with my iphone. I just do everything
with my phone. I am happy with it's going on. I add captions
directly in my phone, text directly in my phone. I do everything on my phone. It just makes my
life so much easier. I don't need to have
a lot of devices, a lot of different places
where I store things. It's all there and I will show you how you
can do the same. You can incorporate, again, in concise text, keep it short, or captions to
enhance your visuals. If you are talking for, it's important to
have captions because many viewers watch videos
and reels without sound. A lot of people
mute their phones, for example, you're talking on video put caption,
it's very important. There is an app that
I use for captions, which is called captions. By the way, you can download it, it's a paid app. I think it's ten or
12 euros per month. I think they have a free trial, so you can try it for free. But if you want to
create a lot of this kind of content
where you want to consider investing
in purchasing an app. And it will just make all the captions for
you automatically. You don't need to do anything. Basically, you
upload the video and the app will add
captions to your video. Even it will emphasize the
words for you if you want it. You can also, um, uncheck this option
if you don't want it, but it just makes
your life easier. Number nine, be authentic. As I said, show
your personality. Show who you are,
show your studio, your humor storytelling
behind your work. As I said, it's not just enough. But putting your work out
there because it's beautiful. People will look at your
work not only because it's beautiful and will buy your work not only
because it's beautiful, but also, And sometimes
it's really 15050. Yeah. They will buy it
because they like you. They will buy your art because they know who
you are as a person. They know how you look like, they know how you talk, you know they know
something about you. They know something about
your personal life. They have an idea
of who you are as a person because this
is what it's all about. You are not Nike, you are not Mcdonalds
and Amazon. Fortunately, you are not a huge brand that doesn't
need to be personal, that does not show
any personality. This is your difference
from these kind of things. Small creators, small business owners like this is
their only tool. This is the only way to make people buy from them and
not from someone else. Because people will buy
from you because you are who you are and people
will like who you are. And people who
follow you will most likely share the
values that you share, and that's why they
will buy from you. For example, I am a
huge nature lover. I love nature, I paint nature. I love spending time in nature. And automatically I
attracted a community of people that are also passionate about nature
and these things. And they will buy my art or buy courses from me because
they are into it as well. You see it's you need to show who you are if you want to be successful
on social media. Number ten, include to action. This is something I see
a lot of creators doing. Now, sometimes I think it
also seems a bit not push, but a little bit like okay. But I think it's still
a good thing to try, encourage your viewers to take action at the end of your reel. So comment or save, or share. I think if you just say, hey, share this video, it's
going to be just weird. Like why should
you tell me that? If I want, I will share it. You don't do this, but try to incorporate this
call to action wisely. For example, if you make
a tutorial on how to paint a simple
landscape or anything. If you want to make
a tutorial how to paint, let's say clouds. And then at the end
of this tutorial, you tell them, read the captions to learn more about my tricks. Or for example, if you want to learn more about my full
process, read the captions. So you're kind of inviting
the person to discover more without being very
aggressive or pushy. Or say, hey, comment,
comment or share. You're inviting
people without making them feel like they're pushed to do something
because people don't like it. People want to think that they do something because they want
to do it. You know? They want to feel that
you don't force them, they want to feel like
you're inviting them to do something and they are accepting it because
they're interested in it. So you see there's always
this beneficial relationship. So you don't just ask them
for something for no reason. You invite them and they will do this thing you want them to do if they have a
reason for that. So it means at the end of that video about
clouds painting, you need to put something in the captions that is valuable. So a tip, an additional,
I don't know, maybe a list of your art
supplies that you use to make that video so you can come up with a lot of
creative ideas. But. Give them a reason to
explore your content even further if they watch
the full video. Encourage them to go
and read captions. Encourage them to
comment on your video. This is one of the easiest ones. For example, you ask them what other tutorials
you want to see from me or let's say what is your
favorite color for painting. See, you know, just start a conversation without
being weird or awkward. Just start a conversation
and ask them something about their experience or what do they expect from you. And you will see
that people will start interacting
with your content. And this is what you want,
because interaction is the base of your solid,
engaged community. Because you don't want
just a community, you want an engaged community
post at good times, this is a good one as well, but this is something
that will not work as a standalone thing. For me, it's just
like with Ash tags. Hashtags are I
think, okay to use. It's not essential but I think still valuable thing to use. But only by putting
great hashtags, you will not go viral. Same thing here, only by
posting at a perfect hour, you will not go viral
if your content is not good. For many reasons. But it's still important
because what I mean, post at good times is
a very vague thing. As you may know good times
depending on your audience, you can discover good
times of posting for you by exploring your analytics again in, in your profile. If you have a business account or one more thing you can do, you can think about your
audience in general. For example, if you know you are addressing to a
specific nationality, for example, you are
addressing to American people. Or if you live in Italy and you create
content for Italians, you already know what time
to use for posting because you have these three
slots during the day that people are usually more
active during these times. These slots are early
in the morning. When people wake up,
they check their phones, they go to the bathroom. They scroll their phones
before they go to work during the breakfast
time in the morning. The next slot is during
the lunch pause. During the lunch pause, people are taking the break again, they're check their phones. They scroll on Instagram 12:00 P.M. to 02:00 P.M.
something like this. Depending on the breakfast or lunch time in the area
you want to target. Then third slot is in the
evening when people go from work or are you
getting from work to home, maybe they're in the subway
checking their phone. Usually for me it's like 07:00 P.M. 07:00 P.M.
something like this. Just after work. These
are usually best times, but then it also depends
on your specific audience. Some audiences may interact with content during the night or maybe before going
to bed as well. But it depends what time
they go to bed. It's tricky. You need to try to trial an
error, try different times. But now you know you have these three main slots
early in the morning, midday and then evening. But of course,
there are no rules. Try them on yourself. Number
13, reply to comments. This is very important too. If you're getting comments, make sure you reply to them. And also make sure, if you can, that you
reply to them quickly. I will have a sip of water. If you reply to your
comments quickly, it will allow people
to reply you again. And maybe there will be a
conversation that will be born. All of these conversations, all of these things
will just let Instagram know that your content is good and that people
are talking about it. People are finding
something to discuss about it and it's a very good metric. It will give Instagram an additional sign that
your content is good. Let's show it to more people. That's why if you want to maximize your chances to go
well on Instagram reels, engage with your
audience 30 minutes before posting and 30
minutes after posting. It may sound like a
huge amount of time, but you can make it
like 10 minutes, 10 minutes, no big deal.
What do I mean by that? Before posting a reel, go and check some content
from your favorite creators. Or maybe from people
that you follow or from people like accounts with
who you interact usually. A couple of comments, like maybe interact somehow
with their content, then to a few from
previous reels or posts. Then after you reply
to the questions, to the comments
immediately and engage with some other content
as well during this time. This way people will see. They will see that you
commented on their thing. Maybe they will go and
check you as well. Again, creating connections
is very important. Diversify your content. Posts and stories
are not in the past. We also want to use them. As I said, posts and stories are for your community who
already follows you, who already knows who you are. And reels are for
everybody else, but also for your community. That's why you don't
want to make something totally weird that has nothing
to see with who you are. You still want to create
content that is in line with your general
brand identity. But keep in mind that reels are mainly seen
by the strangers and this is your chance
to grab their attention and to make them
become your followers, your friends, your
customers, whoever you want. Your people, again, interact
with other accounts. We have already covered this. Especially accounts
in your niche, not only random
content that you like. For example, if your
account is about art, I think if you like, you can interact with
maybe content creators that post things about funny
pets or something like this. But it will not bring
anything to your community. If you want to use this strategy
to grow your community, interact with people
in your niche. Maybe especially with accounts of the same following as yours. Try to find these accounts with whom you can
create connections. Especially when you are the
same level of followers. Because maybe you will
create a friendship. Maybe you will
collaborate, who knows? Then you will grow together
and you will stay connected. I have a lot of accounts
that I follow for years. These accounts actually became my colleagues or my friends. Some guest experts
in my course make art with confidence were just
accounts I was following. And then they
became connections. And then they became friends.
Now they're in my course. Connections are born this way, sometimes. Don't
underestimate this. This is the last one I think in the to do list, create
content consistently. This is one of the
most important things. As I said, regular content
creation is essential for staying relevant and maintaining the interest
of your audience. Because if you just make one incredible
video, it's great. Maybe you will attract
a bunch of people, but then you need to
continue interacting them. You need to keep creating
content for them. Because otherwise
they will think, I don't see anything
else from this creator. What's going on this maybe
they will follow you, which is okay, nothing bad. But maybe Instagram will just stop showing
your post to them. If you don't post
anything for a while, again, don't be compulsive. And don't just do
an amazing job for a week and then stop for
a month and then restart. Because this way you
always start from zero. It's just better to create
consistency for yourself, even if it's a
small consistency. By small I mean
you tell yourself, I make one reel a
week, only one. But if you do it every week, it will be better than nothing. Or it will be better than ten reels in a row
and then nothing.
6. Common Mistakes: Common mistakes.
This is a good one. Bear with me for this one. Number one, don't re post videos from other platforms
on Instagram especially. Don't re post videos from Tiktok if you have
one in from shorts. This is crucial because sometimes
it's easy to think, oh, I will just cross posts from other social media
platforms and that's it. I don't need to worry
about my content. I will tell you a secret, this tactics still works. I don't know for how many
long time on shorts, For Youtube shorts, it works. I uploaded several
Instagram Tiktok videos on shorts and they went well, regardless of the fact that
there was a logo of Tiktok or Youtube on Youtube, Youtube shorts is
okay with that. But Instagram is not okay
with that because Instagram, when you download the
video from Tiktok, for example, there
will be a logo on your video like a watermark
that you cannot delete. It will be there.
Instagram detects these watermarks and it will put your content
lower in the feed. It will say, okay, this is not original content, this is like from
somewhere else. I will just put it down
and not show it to anyone, even if it's amazing
just because there's this Tiktok logo
on it. Don't do that. One more thing, don't
use monotonous videos, this is something
we just told about. Don't use just one big
video for 60 seconds, a few painting, one
detail of the flower. Nobody will ever watch it. Not because it's not beautiful. Even if the lightning is good, nobody will watch it. If this thing lasts for 60 seconds and
nothing happens there, make your videos dynamic
somehow. Use the cuts. Use the different angles. Shoot from different angles. This is one way. Or use very short clips
without anything else. For example, like viral video 8 seconds of a
beautiful footage. This is very important.
It should be beautiful. You doing something
creative, maybe. I don't know,
something, something happens actually there. Not just like people need to understand what
is it going there. For example, my reel, you could see that I
was sketching flowers. And my sketch was
already almost done, so they could
instantly see that. Okay, she sketched
these flowers from life on the beach, very clear. But if I was sitting there in the same exact position
sketching my flowers, but I was like right
in the beginning of sketching and it was not really clear like what's
going on on my page, it will not have
the same effect. I bet if it's just a simple
video of you doing something, it should be very beautiful
and it should be very clear. What is it that you're doing? Number three, don't make
reels that are too long. It's similar to the
previous point, but again, I will not
be afraid to repeat it. Don't make long reels, even if you want to show your entire process.
Don't do that. You can find other creative
ways of showing your process in an interesting
and engaging way without it looking boring. You don't want your
viewers to be bored. And I have to say if the viewer, the first 3 seconds, the person will decide if
or he will watch it or not. Make a hook. Catch
their attention in the beginning and then
make it short and sweet. Not more than 30 seconds, I suggest, of course, if
it's a long tutorial, if there's something
really valuable in it that people are interested in, you can go longer than that. But as I said, it
will be a bit more complicated to make
them remain engaged. Number four, as we said, don't use port lightning. Prefer daylight instead of
artificial light when you can. Don't choose compatible. Music Again, if
you paint flowers, don't put strange, maybe hard
rock music on top of it. If it's something
you don't want to do on purpose and you think
there is a sense to it, choose music that is in
line with your content.
7. How to go Viral: Now very exciting how to maximize your
chances to go viral. First of all, keep it
short. Use a hook. As we said, use
beautiful imagery. In the first 3 seconds, we already told this, choose trending music that
aligns with your content. Again, I told you how
you can do it and I will show it to you in
just a few minutes. Create videos that
invite repeat views. This is very important
and I will tell you now how you can do it
when you choose a song. When you choose a sound, sometimes you know there are these songs that
repeat themselves. Or there is a moment in
the song, that one moment, and then they start again
from the beginning, The sound goes in loop. If you find this sounds, use them and make your
video go in loop. This is the trick,
and this is the trick of how I made my viral reels. Because people don't even realize that your video stopped. And they just keep
watching it over and over again for 3410 times. Especially if it's beautiful, they want to rewatch it. But it's just so seamless
that a lot of them don't even realize that the video had stopped
and started again. This is a huge trick
I'm giving you. Use it because it really works. And this is the
easiest way of making people watch your video several
times. The easiest way. Don't underestimate it.
8. Reel Ideas for Creatives: Now let's talk about
creative ideas, or real ideas for creatives. Of course, these are
just a couple of these. Feel free to try
different things, but just to give you something
to start working with, think about these
before and after. Maybe you show blank
piece of paper, or maybe you show the subjects
you will paint and then, wow, boom, it's already
painted on your paper. This is something very
cool to do, palette tools. As I said, you can do
a whole video about it or you can
incorporate these, um, shooting these clips in
your reels show your pilot. The most important thing
here is to show close ups. This is something I want to talk to you as well if
you shoot your painting, if you shoot your art supplies, if you shoot
something like this, make sure it's close enough. If you are shooting from a very long distance and it's somewhere here and you're
sketching something very small, we don't really see what it is, it's not going to work out. Make sure that your image is nice and clear and close enough. This is important mini
painting tutorial. This is something
that works well. I just started a new account which is make art
with confidence, which is a baby account. I just started it and I am testing some things there
to see how it works. One of the things that
did work very well for me were making these
mini painting tutorials. My last, it did not go viral, but it became my best
real ever so far because it was a mini
painting tutorial and I understood that that's what
people wanted from me there. It will encourage me to
make more of this content. That's why making different
reels like testing and trying is important as well. Because it will allow you
to understand what kind of content your followers
are expecting from you. For example, this was
a sign for me that my followers are interested
into quick tips on painting. That's what I will do for them. Next, Inspiration
and references. Tell people or show people
somehow what inspires you. Maybe if it's nature, show them how you walk in. Nature, maybe touch plants
and something like this. Art studio tour, as I said, show them some behind the
scenes art versus reality. This is something I
use all the time and this is something I got
a lot of success with. I love showing the
finished artwork and kind of revealing
it by taking off. Like for example, I'm painting a leaf and I'm
holding the leaf in my hand and I'm
taking it away and I reveal the painting
underneath of this leaf. And it's really impactful
and fun and people usually really enjoy seeing
these kind of fun things. They see, wow, like she
painted this like this leaf. It looks like real, these
kind of things which is, it's not a big deal, you know, it's just one trick
at the end of the video, but it really entertains people and people like
seeing these things. One more interesting
idea is art evolution. So for example, if you have some pictures of your
artworks from the past, for example, of your child works and then your
teenager works. If you're painting for
a long time already, if you have pictures of
your creative journey, of what you were making in the beginning and
where you are now, it's super interesting
for people to see your growth and to see
the evolution of the art. This is a nice idea to you. Then one more art life
behind the scenes, maybe some humor for artists. I personally enjoy
these kind of things. For example, when
you paint a lot of times and you have your
drink side by side, sometimes you just
dip your brush into the drink instead of dipping it into the water for painting. And it's something that happens to all the artists all the time. Sometimes I see these videos like making fun of these things, making these art jokes. These videos are popular. If you want to use humor, for example, in your videos, it's a very nice way to do it.
9. Tips on Making Better Videos: Now, before we pass to
actually the reel in my phone, I wanted to tell you about these tips on actually
making videos. These are important
because as I said, making a reel depends a lot on what you have as
a given material. It, if you have bad material, you will not be able
to make a good reel. There's nothing you
can make about it. If you have ten videos
of you painting with horrible light and maybe shaking camera and in the
middle of the night, you will not be able to make a nice reel using this footage. That's why before you even think about editing your videos, think about making
good videos first. As I said, you don't need
much to make good videos. First, your phone with a
good camera is enough. Again, just your phone. Create several short
clips instead of one long video of
your entire process. I have already covered this, but this is very important. It's just going to make
your life so much easier. If you do a lot of
short clips instead of one big video, do that. Use different angles to make
your videos more dynamic. This is not like something you should do all the time,
every day, all day. But try it and I think you will have fun
editing these kind of videos as well because it's just entertaining to
people to see that. I think for you to make these, for example, if you do
painting process you. So as I said, how you mix colors, how you take the water, how you make the
first brush strokes, different scenes from different angles, this
is very important. In short, the focus is in the right place and that
the image is not blurry. This is a very basic one, but sometimes things can happen. Shaky image, blurry image
will not work out for you no matter how beautiful
they were. So don't do that. Avoid shaking as I said, always make sure
that life is good. If possible, enhance your
setting with plants, art supplies, or
something like this. So it's not a must. I think it can add on the
visual quality of your videos. For example, if you paint, maybe you want to put
something beautiful in the area where
you're painting. For example, maybe
some art supplies or maybe a flower or
something nice to see. Because Instagram is still
a very visual platform, people on Instagram are
attracted to beautiful visuals. For me, that's the difference between Tiktok and Instagram. I think Tiktok is
full of everything. Tiktok is not about
pretty stuff. It's not about curating
your beautiful feed. It's more straightforward.
But an Instagram, I think what it kept from the original vibe of this
platform is about aesthetics. It's about beauty, it's about aesthetically
pleasing content. So I think it's something that transitioned
into videos as well. So that's why making
beautiful videos is very, very important on Instagram.
10. Tips on Editing Videos: Now tips on editing videos. As I said, I edit my
videos directly on the Instagram app
and I save them as drafts if you don't want
to post right away, if you don't want to post
your real right away, you can also save it as a draft and post it
whenever you want. You can also schedule it so you can schedule
it for later. And don't ever worry
about, you know, forgetting to post this is
just my way of doing reels. I know some people use apps or programs to
edit their videos. Honestly, for everything I do, Instagram editing app is
more than enough for me. I'm not doing any
fancy transitions, I'm not doing any
complicated stuff. I'm not trying to do cinema. I'm not doing movies
with special effects, I'm just doing my
painting processes, tutorials, things like this
for these kind of things. Instagram app is more than
enough, in my opinion. It's just easier. As I said, have everything in your phone, shoot with your phone,
edit with your phone, post with your phone,
your life easier. Because I know making
reels can be hard, especially if you
never tried it. Make it easy for you. Make it just everything in one place. Avoid using the default
Instagram editing. I will tell you what
I mean by that in just a few minutes when we
will start to make real. But when you select the
videos you want to use for your real Instagram will actually pre
make a video for you. It will cut your video totally
randomly, in my opinion. It will take pieces
of your videos based on his idea of what
is more interesting. Actually, it will give you a
video that is ready to post. It will choose a random
***gth. I don't know. It depends on
something probably, But I've never understood
on what it proposes you something like
pre made thing that you can decide
to edit or to leave. I just advise you to edit
it because the cuts that Instagram made for most of
the times make no sense. You need to adjust the
selection, for example. What I mean by that, if your
video is only 3 seconds, Instagram will probably
take all of the 3 seconds. But if your video is 50
seconds or 20 seconds, Instagram will not
take the whole video. It will cut a piece for you that Instagram thinks is more interesting or
pretty, or something. And sometimes it's a
nice piece actually, and sometimes it's
a random thing, like you moving your hand
without doing anything. In this case, you need to adjust the selection how you want it and not how
Instagram decided. But I will show you what I mean in just a couple of minutes. So if you don't understand
what am I talking about, just bear with me
one more thing. Synchronize the clips
with the music. I will show you what I mean, it's not something you
should do all the time, but I think it just enhances the appearance of your videos. For example, if you
choose the song and you follow the natural
rhythm of the song, if there is a moment in the song when something
happens in this song, it's nice that something
happens in your video as well. For example, I don't
like the song goes ban. During this ba, you show your artwork appear or
like your final piece, like you make the cut
right in that moment. And then something happens. It will create this
like wow effect. It's about making
creative videos, understanding these
wow effects as well. It's a very nice tip. If you want to use music and play around with
music and your footage, I suggest you to
pay attention to these moments in
the songs and think what you can put there to make this video even
more interesting. And yeah, I think you
know what I mean, because a lot of people
on Instagram are creating this kind of
content now. I don't know. For example, these songs that
have this drastic change, for example, there's like
this la, la, la, la, la. And then boom, something
happens in the song. And at this right moment, your video changes drastically. Or you show your final piece. Maybe you started in the beginning and
then boom it's ready. These kind of things.
It's a lot about impact of you're not showing
your entire process. And a lot of artists
feel frustrated. Like I receive a lot of
comments from people saying, yeah, but I cannot show
my whole process in real. It's useless, it's short. People have the idea that
creating art is super easy. Like it makes my
art less valuable. I don't think it, I think it's just a very entertaining
and fun way of presenting your art. And maybe some people
will think, oh, it's easy to create
art, but I mean, we need to think about the intellectual capacity
of these people, because we all know
creating art is not easy If the video made
you think this way, well, okay, but it's not magic. It's not like boom, you
created this artwork. I think it's just an
entertaining way of showing your process in
a short amount of time. That's what is
required in reels. Again, use trending
songs, as we said, And make the end
of the song match with the beginning so
that it loops smoothly. This is what we
are covered here.
11. Let's Make a Reel Together!: The exciting part, let's
make a reel together. This is when I want to switch to my camera
and I will actually be holding my phone and
I will be showing you how I usually go
about making a real, I don't promise that I will make a final reel I'm
100% happy with. I will just show you the
process and I will show you how I save it
in my drafts so that you have a full
overview of what real making looks
like on practice. There you go. This
is my other phone. I will bring it closer to
you so that you can see it. There you go. Let's start. I'm going
on my Instagram app. There you go. I will show you everything
from beginning till the end. I hope you can see
it when I go here. This is my reels tab. You see that immediately
when I tap on reels, I see some reels that
start to appear here. What I do, Sometimes
I will lower the song to explain to
you what I often do. I like to get
inspiration directly from this tab here,
the real tab. I like scrolling and seeing
different videos that pop. I listen to the sound. If I want to know
what sound it is, as I said, I need to tap here. You see this little icon with the note in the lower angle? I click on it and you see it opens me a
tab with this song. It gives me a lot of
information actually. It allows me to use this audio. So I can click here directly and use this audio
immediately and make real using this audio if it's
a trending audio or not. If there is a trending
icon means yes. But here we don't have it. I can see the number of
reels made with this song. For example, for this song it's 1713 reels, which is not a lot. I think it might be a good sound if your
account is small. That's how you do it. If you want to use it
to click, use audio, it immediately brought
you to your camera. So you can decide to shoot a
video or what I usually do, you can decide upload videos. In this case, what I
do, I go on plus icon, I select my footage. I made a folder for
our today's reel. Let me find it. There you go. My footage, for example, I like organizing my videos
on my iphone for reels, like videos I want to use. For reels, I put them
in one folder and then it's just
easier for me to go and grab videos from there. For example, this folder is
all about this painting, I call it Fig reel here, I have all the videos
that day when I was painting this
leaf on the beach. Okay, we can actually
see my footage. I'm showing you my footage here. I have the scenes where
I'm just painting my leaf. See, I'm starting to paint. You see it's a close up. It's a nice outdoor slide. You can see some of the leaf, you can see some of the drawing. This is one idea. The other idea, I had
to go take my cup, like the painting cup and
show it how it looks like. Then maybe another one
and go in and grab some water from the sea.
I thought it was fun. I was painting on
the beach and I thought it's going to be a
fun to show this moment. Basically, I'm doing
these short videos. One is five second, 4 seconds, 7 seconds, 2 seconds.
This is my principle. I'm doing a lot of short videos of different stages of
my painting process. You see here, I'm
just starting to paint the veins and
nothing else is done. I'm not using an tripod, just holding my phone with my hand and I'm painting
with the other hand. That's it. Different
things here. I put my sheet of paper on the ground and
I keep painting. Maybe here like I asked my husband to hold the phone and to shoot
how I'm painting, or you can use a
tripod or ask someone, there are different
creative ways. Views from the top,
views from the side. Do you see? That's me again. There's even this bird
that walk through. You see here I'm
mixing colors again. You see 2 seconds, 1 second. 1 second. Don't do it less than
1 second because Instagram will not allow
you to use it otherwise. Then I like making these videos. Maybe of myself, like
me showing the artwork, or maybe something like this, like revealing the artwork. That's what I was talking about. And maybe something like this, like showing them
the whole scenery. This is my painting
on the beach. I thought it would be fun. This is, again, to summarize
how you make the videos. Let's talk about the song. Let's say I don't
want that song. I want to go and find
something better. I need to go go back from here
and I will keep scrolling. The first song, I
see 7,000 reels. That's not bad. I want to find a trending one for you
to show how it works. No, he let me find
it, I think. Yeah. Okay. See that? It
says trending here. This song is trending.
And there are 5,700 reels using this song. It's a good number, actually. I think it's good to use
this song right now. Also, if you see
that there are reels that went viral using this
song, it's a very good sign. For example, this reel
has over 100,000 views. It's very good if there's
one with 1 million, 2 million, 3 million, it's an even better sign. It means you need to
use it immediately. So you see this song goes
boom, boom, boom, boom. It's a nice way that you can actually edit your videos
depending on this rhythm. You see if I click on
Look where it brings me. This is something very cool you want to use to choose the songs. It actually brought me to
this whole page where I can find a lot of trend sounds
that are trending right now. And I can save these
sounds for later. This is a very cool hack. You see number one in
this list is this song here by Gino Pause. It's an Italian singer
and I just used this song and one of my reels on Make
Art with Confidence page, that went really well. I mean for my size
of the page because my page is only
200 followers and this real got 1,000 views which is a lot
more than my following. So it's very good. You
see there is a real that got 4 million views
using this song. This song, you
should pay attention to it and then you
have the whole list. You see, for example, this one is 86,000 124,000 That's a bit
too big in my opinion. 12,000 bad. 33,000 not bad. You see this, 1370000. Well, that's a bit huge. You can have fun on
this page and listen to these sounds to these
songs and choose the ones you think are nice,
the one that you like. You can also see on these pages what other
creators are making, like how do they use this song? You can go and check their videos and see how people are using
this sound creatively. So you can find a lot of ideas, a lot of inspiration here. Let's say I want to
use this one again. I will click on Use Audio, Go to my figure, real thing. Let's say I want to create a
video of me painting, right? I will just show you real
quick how I would do it. I will go to the first
videos where I'm doing the drawing hoops to
select multiple videos. You click here on Select and you see these
little buttons appear. It will allow you to select multiple videos and
add them to one video. I will select one. This one I will just
grab a bunch of videos. Right now, you can
always adjust and add more or delete some videos you
don't want to use for now. I'm just making this
selection here. Then if I want, I
can change that. You see I'm choosing
different things. The leaf, maybe the leaf
from more of a distance, me again, close up. Then sunset, like me
painting a sunset, mixing color, mixing colors, and maybe final
painting this one. I have a bunch of videos here. What I do then I
click on this arrow, which brings me
to the next step, and you see that my
video is actually read, Instagram already
created a video for me. Actually, I think it's not bad, depending on his logic of
what he thinks he can. Do you see He took the pieces of my video
and he created a video. Will add. The volume and let you see
how it works with music. And if it works, I have no idea. Let's see, I think it's not bad. You see sometimes even
without doing anything, your video is ready for you. If the footage is good, You see, I had a very
nice footage here. Very different scenes
from different angles, different details,
different things. Even this random
Instagram approach allowed me to make
a decent video. So you see how the quality
of your videos affects. And again, this is nothing special about
making this video. Making these like
shootings my phone, outdoor painting
during the sunset and no gear at all, no tripods. Just my hand in my phone, in my husband who helps me. If you want to edit this
video, for example, if you want to adjust
the selection, you need to click
on Edit Video here. Now you see that you can see the total ***gth of
your video -10 seconds. Now you can see it here, which is actually a great ***gth. If something that
Instagram created for you that is short and you
like, you can already use it. But if you want to adjust the ***gth of certain
clips, you can do it. You can add clips here. So you can add this plus button and it will allow you
to add more clips. You can re order, for example, I put, let's say this
clip before this one. I just take it. I press on it, I hold it, I drag it and I put
it where I want. It also allows me to see
the duration of each clip. I see Instagram decided that
he will cut my clip clips in one into 0.6 second clip. These clips are
less than 1 second. It works. I think this is the minimum that you can go with because
if you make your clips like less than 0.6 it will be just difficult for the viewer to have time
to see what happens. I think don't go
lower than that, but you can make it longer. But don't make one clip last for like 10 seconds. It's
going to be too boring. That's what I was talking about, making quick, short
dynamic cuts. You see? Instagram cut this video
for me in 1 second video. He took my videos which were
already short and he made them even shorter to
create this reel. Now you see if I
want to zoom in. You see what I was
doing with my fingers? If I want to cut this video, for example, or make it shorter
or longer, I click on it. I click on it, and then I
see these yellow things. Yellow arrows appear. I can drag and make it
shorter, make it longer. I can split the video. If I click on the video, you see the split icon appear. So I can click Split, and you see it's made
two videos for me. Now I can, at each one of
these individual videos, I can delete one of them. Discard, I deleted one piece. You can adjust these things, or you can delete
the whole video. For example, if I don't
want something from here, I just go and delete it. These are the features I usually use. What
else you have here? You have speed. You can adjust
the speed of your video. You can like for example, you have a long video
of you painting. You can make a
time lapse of that right here in your iphone app. In your iphone app,
Instagram app, without even shooting
a time lapse mode. So you can speed it up here. It's a very cool trick as well. Then you can adjust
the selection of your song if you want. You can start in a
different moment, you can adjust these things. Then what else? I'm zooming
out to see the whole picture. Basically, that's it. Let
me show you something else. If you want to add
text, for example, I want to add a text saying, paint a leaf with me,
something like this. Let's paint a leaf. When I'm happy I'm
clicking done. Then I can decide where I
want to position this text. For example, here I'm
clicking on Done. Then you can actually adjust this text so you can decide
if you want the box, if you don't want the box to
make the different colors, see that I will maybe
just go black and white. You can decide on the free, you can try these
different funds. I don't recommend going with key Didst to read for example. I don't like this one. This is. I think it's a very
readable fund. We don't see the end of the
word, Don't use this one. Don't use this one. You don't see what
code is going on. Use these funds that
are clear to read, that are easy to read. This one is not easy to read. This one is okay.
This one is okay. This one is okay.
Choose the fund. That is easy to read because you want your viewer to
understand what's going on. Once you're happy, you can make the fund bigger or smaller. You have this
scrolling thing here, so you can make it bigger and smaller so you can decide
how big you want it. And then you just
click and you position it approach to the side. You see Instagram says no, this is way too
close to the border. Don't put it there, respect
these yellow lines. Okay. I need to put the text
more or less in the middle. Otherwise it's going
to be cut off. There's also this guiding
line of the middle. You see that this blue line. When you approach your
finger to this middle line, you will get this
signal to stop there. If you want your text
to be in the center, I want mine to be
right in the center. I put it there and I just release my finger and
I leave it there. If you're happy with the
placement of the text, you just go on net. You go on edit video again. You see my text got added but it got added in
this random place. I don't want it to be there. I want it to be
in the beginning. I just click on the text
and I make it bigger. And then I drag it and drop it in the
beginning of my video. And I want it to stop. Let's say here I
wanted to stop here. You can drag and decide
how long it should last. The click on plate and you have a preview of
what it's going to look like. If I want to give my
viewers more time to read, I make this longer. I adjust it now. Oops, Sometimes there's
no, there you go. This is how you make
a real technically, I hope it's more
clear for you now, I will show you how you
save it, then you go on. If you're happy with how
everything looks like, you go. Here you edit your cover. So it's very important
because if you want your reel to appear
in your feed, you need to think
about the cover. I usually like choosing the prettiest moment
of the video. For example, a close up
like something like this. Like a beautiful leaf. Like a close up of a leaf or
something like this. You can actually preview how
it will look in your grid. So you can click on
Profile Grid and you can adjust how you
want it to look like. For example, I like
this piece where I have the leaf maybe a little bit of a C, Let's say I like this. I click Done. Now my cover is saved. I write the caption,
Always write captions. Even if something
paint a leaf with me, then you just put your hashtags. I like to separate my text in my hashtags by
putting some dots. I usually go on the other line, then I put some dots. Oops, A couple of more. Oh, there you go. Then I put my hashtags. Some of the hashtags are
already proposed by my phone. You can type something
like botanical painting, you start typing, you see an Instagram gives you some
examples of what you can use. You see some of
these hashtags are even followed by my followers. I usually use botanical
art all the time. Botanical illustration. I just know what
hashtags usually and what resonate with what I have to show what I'm
showing on the video. I usually put ten
to 20 hashtags. You can use up to 30 I think. But as I said, use hashtags, but I don't think it gives a lot of, it makes
a lot of difference. I don't think so
then if you want to tag people at the location, it's also a nice feature. For example, if I painted this painting in one
particular place, I want to mention it. I put the location there, can tap on it and just
go and search for it. That's it. What I also
share my reels on Facebook. This is a really cool feature. If you want to cross promote on your social
media, you can use this one. And then you just click on Share if you want
to share right now. And you can save if you want to save it for later and
you see draft saved. My draft was saved and I will be ready to post it anytime I want. Let me switch to my face. I hope you enjoyed this process. Let me know if
everything was clear. This is how I usually
edit my reels. Nothing very special. I showed you how
to adjuster clips, how to move them, how
to choose the song. Yeah, this is M step
by step process.
12. Create Your Social Media Strategy: As a conclusion of this session, I hope you learned a lot.
It was already a lot. But as I said, this method of creating an integral strategy for your social media is
actually very important. You can create a
strategy that goes beyond Instagram and
also touches Facebook, Tiktok, Youtube,
especially for reels. Because as I said, it's the same for all of the
Instagram reels. Facebook reels, Tiktoks and shorts on Youtube are
basically the same thing. If you have one strategy for
all of the social media, it's going to bring
you a long way why it's important to have
a strategy for all of your social media to
define your niche. To define your mission and
vision as an artist to understand what you want
to bring people with, all of that you're showing. Because everything
you're sharing is not just random pieces
of information. Everything you're
sharing should fall into this umbrella of your, your mission and vision
of how you imagine your brand you're creating with purpose, not just randomly. Then as I said, it
will allow you to understand your audience
in what they want. As in my case, I understood that I should
do more tutorials, for example, and then
understand your own goals. By having this big strategy, it allows you to get a better understanding what are actually your goals
as an artist. For example, it may be
straightforward like, okay, I want to sell more art,
but it's not that easy. Because I started from
having an Etsy shop, and this was my goal
at the beginning, like having more sales on etc. But now, for example, I've transitioned from
that to different things. For example, having
more commission, illustrating more books, selling more courses,
these kind of things. My goals have changed over
time and yours can too. So you need to define
for yourself what kind of work you want to attract. You want to work
with more clients. You want to sell more
of your original work. You want to sell
more of your prints. Or maybe you want to get more commissions on working for natural parks
maybe, or books. It's very good to be able to have this idea in mind of
what you want for yourself. And this is what making this whole global social
media strategy is all about. And Instagram reels are
a great way of like boosting the reach the
way people discover you. It's very important but
it's not everything. As we said, re's like this
nice cherry on top of the pie. They will bring people to you, but then it's up to
you to decide to make people stay with you to
create this connection. As I said, you need to deliver the information
about your brand, about your mission, what
you're doing, why you're here. Understanding this really takes time and intention
because these kind, this kind of knowledge does
not fall on you overnight. You're building this strategy, in this knowledge over time. So thanks again to everyone who joined and I will
see you next time. Stay tuned for next
sessions and next events. Thank you so much again, bye.
13. Class Project: Thank you so much for
watching this class. I hope that now you feel equipped with everything
you need to be able to make better videos and create better and
more engaging reels. As I said, use this strategy to create content for
other social media, such as Tiktoks or
Youtube shores. Because the principle here is exactly the same as
a class project. You can create an
Instagram reel by following my step by step process that I
showed you in this class. If you have any
kind of questions, feel free to write me here or contact me on
Instagram again. You can find me at Natura Lust or make art with confidence. I'll divide it by underscores. Thanks again for watching and
I will see you next time.
Natura Illustrata, Anastasiia - Watercolor artist
