NEW Instagram Feature! Do Trial Reels Work?

In this solo episode of Community, Kristina dives deep into the newest Instagram feature, trial reels. At first she admits she dismissed it but after some more testing has realized its potential to be a tool for growing the reach and impact of your content. 

Trial Reels give your Instagram Reels a  24-hour test period where your reel is only visible to the explore page and not on your feed. This allows for testing multiple concepts of a reel to see what people are engaging with most before deciding what you make permanent on your feed.

Kristina also shares what her journey experimenting with trial reels teaches us about testing more social media features and being apprehensive to experiment. 
Don’t be quick to blame the feature, sometimes it’s the content itself that needs refining!

Tune in to hear how you can be using Trial reels to grow your impact on Instagram!

Mentioned In Episode:
Avalon Mohns Photography

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Transcript

Kristina (00:00.718)
Hey everyone and welcome to a solo episode of Community. This is one that I have wanted to record for probably a month now and I kept putting it off. And it is about trial reels. And I love to come on here and talk about new features as they come out. So you kind of get the scoop right away, right from the horse's mouth about what is working and what's not working on social. But often it takes me a little bit of time to try things out.

And that is why, honestly, outsourcing is such a gift, right? My team's working hard. They're doing tons of stuff where they are learning about all the features and they are really knowing how to do it because they're working on so many clients. But because I really only work on my own account, I am not as familiar with all the new features that are coming out. And so the trial reel feature came out. I was like, this is cool. Well, what does this mean? And basically what a trial reel does is it allows you to test out your content with non-followers. So

Honestly, it's kind of a business owner's dream and I was a skeptic, a non-believer because what it does is it will, for 24 hours, push your content to non-followers. And so this gives you a chance to see the performance of a reel and to be able to see like, hey, does this move the needle? Does this connect with people? Does this really connect a message? Does the hook work? Does the photo work? Does the video work? Does the caption work? And you're able to see what resonates with

And so this is awesome because I don't know about you, but I have definitely posted in my time on social media, posted many times things that are low performing. And then I'm disappointed, right? I'm like, my goodness, like why didn't this perform? I really thought this was gonna be so awesome. Like, why wasn't it great? And then I find out later that, you know, maybe the hook wasn't, you know, really capturing people enough. The caption was too long or unclear. It really wasn't resonating. Maybe the video wasn't great quality.

And so really it allows you to kind of decipher what your audience might like or what prospective followers might like. Because often we talk about this, that stories are kind of your way of being able to cultivate existing followers. So being able to see existing people and saying like, okay, you you're already in my world. You're gonna love what I'm doing anyway. So let me tell you what I'm up to day to day. You can see kind of behind the curtain. You're kind of in it with me. While reels are how we attract new people. That's how we get new people kind of in our orbit.

Kristina (02:26.318)
And so I hadn't always thought about things that way. And so often we make reels that we think will perform really well with our audience, but the goal actually isn't about getting our reels in front of our audience. It's about getting new eyes on it. And so I had tried the trial reel and basically what you do for those of you who have the feature is you post it, you're about to post it you can click trial reel. And for 24 hours, it basically shows it only to non-followers.

And so I did that with a reel and it will tell you how many non followers have viewed it. So I did this twice and both times it never hit over 200. So for me, I was like, this is not a great tool. It doesn't really like meet my requirements, right? Like I want my content to be pretty widespread. I know that Instagram prioritizes when you use a platform or you use a new feature.

that they really prioritize that for you. So I was like, wow, this didn't really move the needle for me. This feature must suck. And I had decided that this feature sucked. So I had told everybody it sucked. I was like, guys, guys, don't use the trial reel feature. It's not worth it. And I was humbled. I was humbled. I went to our retreat that we facilitated with Jeanette. And I'm one of the women there. She is a photography educator. She's amazing, Lindsay.

and she showed us a trial reel that was popping off. Like it had at that point 10,000 views of non-followers, right? It was adding lots of followers for her. It was really moving the needle. And I thought to myself, I'm like, wonder what is working about what she's doing and what's not working about what I'm doing. So I looked at her reel versus my reel and I realized she had a better hook and her content was better. It was just a better performing piece of content.

So this is something I'm just gonna say, and I'm gonna say this with love because I'm actually just saying it to myself, is that you can't blame a feature for bad content or bad messaging. So if you put something out there and it hasn't really worked that well, it might not be the real feature. It might be you, right? It might be the content, it might be the messaging. So I had sworn it off mostly out of shame and embarrassment, and now I was like, my goodness, other people are able to make this work. It's now time.

Kristina (04:41.866)
So I tried it again yesterday and I hadn't posted in a little while and I used a video that I had used in another trial reel. So same video, very high quality video of me speaking on a stage. And that one only got like maybe 150, 200 views. I used a trending sound and a trend right now, which is like it's, I'm 32 and I'm not ashamed of, and I listened to a bunch of things that were like a bit more vulnerable and in the caption. And so I...

posted that as a trial reel yesterday. And when I woke up this morning, I had a bunch of new followers and 2000 views on this reel, which typically my reels get between two and 3000 views organically. So I was like, sick. I posted it publicly and now this reel is growing and growing. I'm almost at 4,000 views. People are commenting on it. It's getting quite a bit of attention. Why? Because it's a good reel. So the trial reel feature actually allowed me to use a piece of content twice without my audience seeing it or my audience getting burnt out by it.

and allowed me to see, what are people looking to hear from me? I know that people love really vulnerable content. I know that people love more of that personal stuff, but I always am a little like hesitant with doing it because I wanna give social media advice. And so with that in mind, I can, you sometimes tie those things together. Sometimes I can't, that's okay. But with that in mind, I realized that the trial reel feature was perfect for me be able to see what, if I wanna attract new people, what they're gonna look for from me.

So it was actually interesting because I tried it, it didn't work, tried it again, didn't work, tried it and it really worked. And so this is just a reminder that when new features come out, you it might not be perfect. I see this with threads as well. Like a lot of people are kind of like iffy on threads, there's so much opportunity on threads, but you just need to be consistent with your posting. I also saw, and this was something I was just doing research on is there is a entrepreneur, I guess she, I would say maybe like an influencer celebrity entrepreneur.

And she used, I do not follow her. She came up with my for you page. I watched one of the reels and I read the caption. And so I read the caption that it was in my brain. So then I keep them scrolling through, I'm scrolling through. She comes up again with the exact same hook, the exact same caption, but a different video. I was like, that's weird. I go again, I'm kind of scrolling through other stuff, other people. She comes up a third time, same caption, same hook, different video. And then, I went to her page.

Kristina (07:07.744)
None of them are on her page. I was caught in the trial reel. So what she was doing is actually just testing what people are responding best to. One of the reels was very polished. Another one was very casual. There was a third one of her eating. So she's really just seeing what is attracting people in. So this is an interesting thing is that we need to remember that when we're posting on social media, a lot of the times it's experimental. So we're seeing, does this work? Do people like this? Do people not like this?

You know, why do people like this? What's resonating for people? So sometimes I'll post something and it's like kind of cheeky that really resonates with people because that's not the way I do things normally. But I don't like being polarizing. So that's just like for me. But other people will do other things and it really works for them or they post really beautiful photos or you know, there's a lot of different things you can try out. So this is just a reminder that like everything is just a test, right? So there's no good, there's no bad and a trial reel...

is a great way for you to actually test some of those things out and see like, does my audience care about these things? Do they care about in a really aesthetic video? Does a caption matter? Does the hook really matter? What is gonna make people follow? And so ultimately, if that's your goal is to get your eyes or your, ultimately, if that's your goal is to get your stuff in front of more people, then you need to be paying attention to things like this because this is a great opportunity for you to be able to really see

like what people are looking for from you and how they're liking it. And so I am vowing the next time that I see a feature and I try it it doesn't work, I'm gonna try to find some people it works for and really get more information because I was pretty much done with it and seeing her success was really inspiring for me to be able to continue to really kind of build more success. So I'm excited. I'm gonna keep trying trial reels. actually have a dream for tomorrow, so I'm really excited about it. But yeah, give it a test. Let me know what you think. And maybe I'll see you in my free page.

Anyway, keep on building community. Can't wait to see how this helps you build community.