Why Your Reels Aren’t Going Viral
How Do You Make Your Reels Go Viral?
In the ever-evolving landscape of social media, understanding what makes content go viral can seem like a mystery.
Over the past three years, I've dedicated myself to meticulously studying and analyzing Instagram's algorithm while creating and testing thousands of reels for both of my businesses.
Through this rigorous (and FUN) process, I've gleaned invaluable insights into the key factors that can propel Instagram Reels to viral status.
In today’s podcast episode, I’m eager to share these discoveries with YOU.
We'll explore the 12 key reasons why your Instagram Reels may not be capturing the attention they deserve—and provide practical strategies to enhance their impact.
Get ready to unlock the potential of your reels, attract more ideal clients, and significantly expand your following.
In this episode, you’ll learn about:
[4:26] Getting Started with Reels: What are reels and why they're crucial for your Instagram strategy
[6:51] The Power of Virality: Ever wondered what it feels like to have a reel go viral? I'm sharing my personal experiences and the incredible impact it can have on your follower count.
[16:41] Why Optimization Matters: It's not just about posting reels; it's about ensuring your entire Instagram profile is optimized to attract your ideal audience.
[23:03] Identifying Underperformance: Let's pinpoint some common reasons why your reels might not be hitting the mark, from technical issues to content strategies.
[24:28] Strategies for Success: I'll walk you through practical tips for boosting your reel performance, from grabbing attention to staying on trend and everything in between.
[29:57] Avoiding Pitfalls: Learn what not to do when it comes to reel creation, including the importance of removing TikTok watermarks and focusing on valuable content.
Links mentioned in this episode…
Insta-Growth: The 30 Day Private Instagram Mentorship (SAVE $200 WITH CODE "PODCAST") - https://www.elizabethmarberry.com/insta-growth
Free guide to Monetize Your IG: Seven Simple and Proven Ways to Finally Make Money on Instagram
Apply for your FREE Instagram Breakthrough Call with Elizabeth
Quotes
[06:07] Reels must be a huge part of your strategy.
[15:08] Posting consistently in your niche is crucial. Commit to what you can do and do it consistently week after week to train the algorithm.
[27:55] If you're creating content that's relatable, inspiring, or entertaining, it's more likely to go viral and attract your ideal followers.
TRANSCRIPT
S3 Ep11 Why Your Reels Arent Going Viral
**Elizabeth Marberry 0:00**
I see you, you've been posting reels consistently on Instagram, but you're still not seeing that explosive growth you know is possible. That's why today I'm sharing with you 12 reasons why your reels aren't going viral and what you should be doing instead so you can rock your reels with total confidence and get the results you're after. Let's do it. Welcome to Strut It. A podcast about creating bold visibility on social media with zero apologies. I'm Elizabeth Marberry, your host and Instagram marketing coach. I help small business owners get seen on Instagram and monetize their offers so they can make more money doing their sole-led work. If you're tired of spinning your wheels on Instagram and you're seeking simple, proven Instagram marketing strategies that actually work, you're in the right place. Let's dive in.
Welcome back to the show. Today we are gonna be talking about my absolute favorite form of content on Instagram, which is Reels. As you probably already know, Reels are those short form videos you see on Instagram, very similar to the TikTok videos you see or YouTube shorts. And if you've been listening to the podcast, you know that Reels must be a primary part of your strategy. and build a following on Instagram for your business. So today I would be sharing with you 12 reasons why your reels probably aren't going viral and what you can do instead. It was really fun and prepping for this episode because I was getting curious about how many reels me and my company have created that have gone viral. And it's pretty epic. For my dance studio business, we've had over 10 reels that got millions and millions of views. and countless more that had over 100,000 views. So I have created a ton of viral content in the last three years. It's part of why we have such an impressive following on Instagram. And I'm gonna explain that a little bit more because I think that there's this confusion about how do you get 50,000 followers, 100,000 followers. And I'm gonna explain to you how most people get there today so you can understand really how Instagram works. and how you can start to improve your reels so that way they can really attract more of those ideal clients, those ideal followers, so you can grow your audience and grow your brand.
Before we dive into those 12 reasons, I wanna share with you a win, which is I have been working in the last month to really tighten up my schedule. So if you're like me, you're a multi-passionate entrepreneur, you have a lot of different projects going, you may have multiple businesses or side hustles, different commitments you have during your week. And I have spent the last month really trying to work on refining my schedule and doing more time blocking. Because what I found is I was struggling a lot with feeling easily distracted. And primarily that was happening from when I would sit down at my computer and I had like 20 tabs open on my computer and I would start to do a task and then I would think, oh yeah, I need to do payroll and I jump over into QuickBooks and run my payroll and then I think, oh wait, I need to do my profit first allocations. I'm going to go do that and all the different tasks that I do throughout the day. And I was kind of jumping from task to task without ever fully completing a task and then I would lose track of what I was doing. And the struggle was real. And so I knew that I needed to clean up my laptop first and foremost, clean up my tabs, but more so I was craving more structure in my days and in my weeks because as my own boss, it's fantastic.
I have all of this incredible freedom and I need to take ownership over my productivity and really maximizing the time that I am working so I can actually feel like I am done. That was something that I was struggling with is I would do all this work throughout the day and I get to the end of the day and be like, wait, what did I do today? I don't even feel like I accomplished all the things I wanted to accomplish. And so I have been bringing on this energy of completion mode of, okay, what is enough for me to do in this one day that feels like, okay, I'm done for the day? Because if you're like me and you're an entrepreneur, You might have a business that's open seven days a week like I do, and it's really hard to shut down or it's really hard to say, okay, I am done for the day. And so I decided that I wanted to really shift into that energy of completion and time blocking. So I've done two things. I'm still definitely a work in progress here, but I want to share with you two different things I have been implementing in the last couple of weeks that have really helped me. One is I decided that Mondays are my podcast day. So on Mondays I script my episodes, I research them, I record them. And that is really helpful so I can get into a weekly cadence of creating this content for all of you. On Fridays, I decided to clear the slate on Fridays and not take any meetings on Fridays. And this has been a game changer for me because I found myself filling my schedule and there would be a meeting here, a meeting there, and it was kind of spread out throughout the week.
And I found that when I had a meeting on the calendar, it took a lot of my energy and I felt like, oh, I still have to, you know, be on. And I found that when I have a day that's really spacious where I don't have any meetings, that is so necessary for my visionary brain. And so I've been clearing my Friday schedule and my intention for Fridays is twofold. One is if I want to rest or recharge or just take some time off before the weekends, before my kids are home for the weekends and I'm doing mom full time, just a little bit of time for myself to kind of recharge. I give myself permission to do that. The other thing I've been doing on Fridays, which is super awesome, is I give myself time on Fridays to learn a new skill. So I am in this awesome coaching program that's all about AI and learning how to leverage AI in content creation and social media marketing and all of that. And I'm really excited about it. I'm new to this whole AI space. At first, I was really nervous about going into it. But as I'm learning more and more about how you can leverage these AI pieces to work smarter and not harder, I am all about it. So I'm going to be sharing with you more of what I'm learning in future episodes.
But what I found is that if I don't have an exclusive day where I can just focus on learning new things, it tends to just get put off and I never have time for it. So I have been really enjoying having the spaciousness on Fridays to learn a new skill and or rest and take time to recharge. And it's awesome because it helps me to shift into my weekend and make that transition from work mode into mom mode. And I'm really enjoying that new structure in my week. So maybe this is an invitation for you. If you're also feeling a little bit scattered throughout your week, maybe you can add more intention. to each day or time block a certain part of your day so you're only focusing on one task at a time or one intention at a time and see if that helps you. Okay, let's get back to talking about your Instagram reels. So first of all, why would you even want a reel to go viral? And I can hear some of you being like, I don't want my reel to go viral. I'm scared. And that's totally a normal. normal fear to have as well. If you're new to this space and you're kind of like, oh my gosh, that brings up all your visibility blocks of, oh my gosh, what are people going to say? What are people going to think? What if I get a hater?
You know, all of those things. So that is totally legit. And I actually have another episode I'm working on for all of you in terms of how to handle haters because I have mastered the art of handling haters on social media. And I have some really juicy tips for you. So I'll be sharing that in a future episode, but okay. So why do you want a reel to go viral? Here's what's great. If you create a piece of content, a reel that goes viral and it gets. Hundreds of thousands of views. If your Instagram account is optimized, meaning that your bio is positioned really clearly of who you help and how you help them and really what your. followers can expect from following you. Like what kind of content should they expect on your page? And all of your content is delivering on the promise of your bio. So basically what I'm trying to say is, if your Instagram account is optimized for your business to attract your ideal client or customer, when you have a reel that goes viral in that niche of your business, you can get lots. of new followers from one piece of content. So I'm gonna give you an example.
About five months ago, I posted a reel that went viral. It got over 500,000 views, over 16,000 likes, over 1,100 comments, 1,300 shares, 2,200 saves, and this little six-second reel brought in over 1,600 new followers to my account. I was also looking at my wedding dance coach brand page and we have had many reels go viral on that page. In fact, we've had reels get millions and millions of views that brought in even 4,000 followers off of one video. So. If you go onto Instagram and you see an account that has 100,000 followers or 50,000 followers like my dance studio brand or 30,000 followers like my personal brand, as long as those people have not bought followers, which you should absolutely not do, that will kill your engagement and make the platform not work for your business. But assuming that those people actually got those followers organically, That happens because a certain amount of their videos have gone viral and they've gotten hundreds of thousands of views and when that video pops off, you guys should know by now how this works, right? A video pops off, people click on the handle to say, oh, like who is this Elizabeth Marbury? I love this video she made, it made me laugh. Like I like her vibe or whatever they're thinking. They click on your handle, they go to your page, and again, if it's optimized for that ideal person, they will give you a follow.
Before I knew all this information, I had some videos in the past go viral that did not help my business, and that's why I'm really trying to emphasize this whole piece of your whole profile has to be really smartly optimized for your business, because you could have a video pop off. and have it really do nothing for your business. I hope that's making sense. The other reason why you want a reel to go viral, of course you wanna grow your following and build your audience, but it will tell the algorithm, oh my gosh, this account is hot. This account is blowing up and of course your engagement rate will go up and that means more of your content will be showcased and pushed out by the algorithm. So, If you have a video that's going viral, you need to really take advantage of that and be posting more awesome content to capture as many eyeballs as you can while that video is popping off. So it's a great way, of course, to boost your engagement rate so you can attract more of your ideal followers. Okay, so you might be thinking, I'm posting the reels, Elizabeth. I think my bio is optimized. I think my page is optimized. I'm not so sure. what am I doing wrong? So let's get into the 12 reasons your reels aren't going viral. I'm gonna go through these fairly quickly and there are no specific order. It's not like the most important to the least important. It's just 12 thoughts I have for you in how you can improve your reels and probably highlight some of the mistakes that you're making right now. Okay, reason number one, you are posting horizontal videos.
So, On Instagram, you want to take up all of the real estate of the screen, so you want to film all of your content in vertical style video. My husband likes to call this hot dog style. So you don't want a hamburger style where it's that horizontal, you want hot dog style. Because again, you want to take up the whole real estate of the screen when someone is on their app. It kills me when I see people post horizontal videos. They just don't perform well. Now, the exception to this is right now on Instagram, a really easy way to create a reel right now is to use memes. And a lot of memes are in that horizontal format. That is okay if you're already picking a meme that is going viral and it's blowing up. Clearly it's doing well. It's probably from a famous movie or something like that. That is different. What I'm talking about is your content that you're creating organically. It needs to be vertical style. Number two, poor video quality or your video looks blurry. Instagram really wants your video to be high resolution, high quality.
There's different ways depending on what phone you have where you can turn on 4K or a better resolution for your video, but Honestly, my biggest pro tip for this is to wipe your lens clean before you film your videos. I literally do this every time before I film content. I have to wipe the lens because inevitably I've gotten makeup on the lens or a fingerprint or a smudge or something is on there. And you'll be amazed if you just clean your lens, voila, you have awesome video quality. The third reason you're real may not be going viral is poor lighting. Lighting is super important. Again, it's that whole visual aspect. Remember, these videos are like dessert for our eyeballs. We want them to be visually appealing. Lighting is very, very important. Make sure it's clear and bright lighting. Number four, your video may be too long or not include enough quick edits.
So it's not going to go viral with you just speaking at the camera for 60 seconds without any kind of edits or any swift transitions in your video. What I have found in my experience is shorter videos are more likely to go viral, meaning like under 15 seconds, sometimes even under seven seconds. those shorter videos tend to do better in terms of going viral. Now, you'll see some viral videos of famous people or really big influencers that are just kind of talking at the camera and their videos are going viral, but don't copy their strategy. Remember, they've already built their audience. When you are in the place where you are trying to grow your following from the beginning organically and build that audience, you need to keep your content short and swift. And those first few seconds of the video really matter. A lot of people of my generation, like 40 plus, we make this mistake of having this pause at the beginning of our video, even like a two second pause. And then we start talking and right there, that's not gonna work. You have to dive right in. There has to be quick edits. You can kind of think about when you're watching a news story. They do a lot of B-roll footage when they're telling the story. They go to the person talking, they go to the person who's being interviewed, they move out to the street, they tap, you know, like there's all these different angles and it's a way of capturing the viewer's attention. It's a way of telling the story and your reels need to have a lot of those quick edits to capture people's attention because as we know, in this economy that we're living in right now, attention is. key, keeping people's attention.
We all have a shorter attention span. You can be upset about it, but that's just the truth. So you need to be capturing people really quickly. And again, those shorter videos tend to perform better. That leads me into the fifth reason that your reels are not going viral, which is you're not stopping the scroll.
So you absolutely must have a hook on the screen. And remember, a hook is just an attention grabbing statement or visual element. So that could be you are in this like bright pink shirt with like pink lipstick or something that could stop the scroll. Or maybe it's text on the screen with a really compelling hook. But you must capture the people's attention within those first two seconds because remember people are just scrolling through. So you in order to go viral, you have to stop the scroll. Number six. you're not using closed captions or text on screen. Remember that about 80% of Instagram users consume the app with the sound off. So if you are not including captions on the screen when you're talking and or text boxes explaining what is happening in your video, you are going to lose viewers. I also think it's really important to add text, add closed captions so your content is more accessible to people of all abilities. Number seven, you're not hopping on the trends fast enough.
If you are using trends in your strategy, which I do for both of my businesses, I find those trending audios that I really like that resonate with me, my brand, and I love to get really creative about how I can take a viral trend and spin it for my... business and a problem that you might be having is that you're hopping on the trends, but you're hopping on them like weeks and weeks later when there's already 20,000 other reels with that trend. So ideally, if you are playing the trends game, you're hopping on those trends within the first few days or even the first week. One of the things that I look at when I'm finding an audio that is trending, is I see how many reels have been created with that audio and I try to find audios that have under 10,000 reels created, if there's only a thousand reels created, even better, right? I don't spend too much time on this. I don't want you to get hung up on it, but I do want to point this out because if you are always planning your content now 30 days in advance and you're trying to hop on a trend that's trending today and you're planning on posting it in three weeks from now, it's probably not gonna do well. So maybe if that's you, if you're a person who's batching content and you're planning content 30 days in advance, maybe you're not gonna be necessarily using that trend or you're gonna just create the video content and then find a trending audio that day or that week that you're gonna post it. Number eight, optimize on-screen text placement.
So this is really important. So you know now that you should have some text on the screen so people don't have to guess what your reel is about. And that's a great way to stop the scroll as well. Now, when you do use text on screen, you need to stay within the text box. When you are on reels and you're adding text, if you put your finger on the text and you kind of move it around, you'll see these blue lines pop up and you'll see that there's a text box. and you wanna keep all of your text within those blue lines. And here's why, on different people's devices, it will look like if you have the text go too far to the left or too far to the right or too far up or too far down, the text is gonna bleed off the side of their phone. So you wanna make sure that the text is optimized and right within that text box.
Number nine, you're probably putting too much text on the screen. So you need to be using simple language that an eight-year-old could understand. I struggle with this because I'm sure, you've probably figured out by now, I'm very wordy, I have a lot to say, and when I'm writing out my text on screen, I will kind of write it out how I would speak it, and then I look through it and I see what filler words I put in there, and I go through and I delete all the filler words, and then I delete the other elements that are not necessary. I might have a caption with like 20 words and then I can cut it down to 10 words. So less is more on reels because you don't want the video to be covered with too much text because people are not going to be able to read it. So cut out those unnecessary words, be really concise, get straight to the point and you will see your reels start to perform better. Number 10. This is a biggie. you may not be going viral because you're not posting consistently enough in your niche. So there's two pieces to that, right? You should be posting a minimum of three reels per week. And we've talked about this before, but if that feels too overwhelming to you, then start with one a week or two a week. Commit to what you can do and do it consistently week after week. But the consistency piece is so important because as you start to show up, You're training the algorithm. Remember, the algorithm is just a tool. It's just trying to funnel your content into the right bucket, essentially put it in front of the right eyeballs. And so the more you can feed it content, the more it's gonna understand what exactly you do, what your content's about.
Now, if you're posting reels consistently, but you're not being disciplined about it, and you're not posting in your niche, let's say your account is all about flowers and teaching people how to arrange their flowers. so that way they can look gorgeous in their home. And that's your niche, but then you start to post about your favorite desserts and then you start to post about your vacation you went on and you start to post about your girls' night out. That is not going to do well, so you need to be posting consistently in your niche over and over again, and that will help the algorithm to really understand what you do so that way it can push out your reels to more and more people. Number 11, you're posting with a TikTok watermark. Okay, this is a big no-no. Instagram has said this many times that they will not be pushing out content that has any kind of watermarks from other companies on the videos. So this is a quick one, easy fix. Make sure you're downloading all of your video content onto your camera roll before you post it on TikTok or before you post it on Instagram. So that way you have that content library. in your phone, that way if the app ever goes down, you get locked out, you lose your account, you still have access to your content, and you're repurposing content from TikTok, that's okay to do, but again, you wanna save it, download it before you post it to your TikTok, so that way you can use it on your Instagram without that TikTok watermark logo on the video. Last but not least, number 12, you are not posting educational, inspirational or entertaining content.
So those three different genres of content are the ones that go viral. If it's relatable and funny, it will go viral. If it's inspiring and motivating, it can go viral. If it's super educational and informative, it can go viral. But if you're creating a reel of your vacation and like all the things you did on vacation, but you're not connecting it back to your niche and you're not teaching someone something new or inspiring them or motivating them. In other words, if it's all about you and your business and me, look at us, and it's not about your followers, that reel is not going to go viral and it's really not going to move the needle in your business. I hope today's episode was super helpful. I hope you had some big aha moments. Send me a direct message on Instagram. Let me know one through 12. which one are you doing? Oh my gosh, you're doing it. And now you're gonna stop doing it and you're gonna implement a different strategy moving forward. I would love to know what did you learn today? What you're gonna do different?
Because as you all know, new results require new actions. So even take a couple of these tips and go implement them this week and see how they perform for you. And if you feel like you're still struggling with knowing if your bio is optimized, your feed posts are optimized, if you are creating enough value in the content that you're putting out there, then I would absolutely love to support you in my private 30 day Instagram mentorship program. It's called InstaGrowth and it's so much fun. During our 30 days together, we do an audience deep dive. So you're really clear on who that niche audience is for you, how we're gonna optimize your bio. So it's gonna be like a magnet to you. your ideal clients. And I'm gonna teach you exactly how you can implement all of these techniques into your reels so you can learn how to create those viral reels, grow your following and attract more of those dreamboat clients. I cannot wait to support you in doing this. If you want more information on Instagram, the 30 day private Instagram mentorship program, then just DM me the word grow on Instagram and I will send you a link with more information. Of course, you can ask me any questions. to see if that is really the right coaching container for you.
You can also check out the details on my website, elizabethmarberry.com slash insta dash growth. That's elizabethmarberry.com slash insta dash growth to get more information. And don't forget, podcast listeners save $200 at checkout with code podcast. I hope you got so much value out of today's podcast. If you did, share it with a business bestie, rate and review the show. That really helps us to get in front of more incredible, ambitious entrepreneurs like yourself. And I can't wait to strut it with you next week. Thank you for listening to Strut It. If you're ready to start leveraging Instagram to grow your business, then you're gonna wanna grab my free monetize your IG guide. where you'll learn seven simple and proven ways to finally make money on Instagram. You can grab your guide at ElizabethMarbury.com slash freebies. That's ElizabethMarberry.com slash freebies to get my monetize your IG guide. If you got some incredible value from today's episode, be sure to leave a review and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. And I cannot wait to start it with you again. next week.