So I’ve been experimenting with Reels on Instagram for the past six weeks to see if they're worth the time and effort, and I'm here to share the results with you. Has it been embarrassing? OMG yes. Has it been helpful? Sure has. Am I going to try to convince you to do Reels for your own author business? Absolutely.
(Am I going to make you dance? Well…)
I’ve focused on Reels because I’m already on Instagram, as is most of my audience, and I didn’t want to start a TikTok (I have enough social media to keep up with, and I am ANCIENT.) Reels felt like a much easier testing ground, and I think will be more broadly applicable to many of you authors, especially if your ideal readers are already there.
That said, I think TikTok is the perfect place for you if you write romance where things are cranked up to 11—high heat, high angst, and/or the totally bonkers (e.g. Ice Planet Barbarians blew up on BookTok) seem to do really well there. Most of the stuff I discuss here for Reels will pretty much work for TikTok, but TikTok starts the trends about two weeks earlier than Reels, so keep that in mind.
Why Reels now?
Back in the summer, IG’s CEO announced that Instagram would no longer be a photo-sharing app but would be pivoting more towards entertainment, with video (Reels, IGTV, etc.) being a big part of that. The app is now prioritizing video and rewarding people for using it. Reels index higher on IG (i.e. the algorithm will show them more) because there’s not a ton of inventory of Reels yet, which means you have more likelihood of being seen on Reels than you do just posting a picture to your feed.
If you hate video, I 100% understand. It’s not the most comfortable medium for me either (I am a shy introvert, and I have a behind-the-scenes kind of job for a reason). But if you want to grow your reader fanbase, you can’t just rely on writing a great book; you’re almost certainly going to have to grow on social media too in order to capture people’s attention, get them to read your book, and garner that base. It’s not to say that you can’t do it by posting interesting, attention-grabbing content to your feed; it’s just that video is going to be a much faster way to do it.
What Reels give you the opportunity to do is to both show off your books and show your personality and what you’re about. And if you can do the latter, that’s going to get readers invested in you as a person, not just as the cover of a book that they might want to read one day, and will keep them coming back for more because they care about you.
Getting Started on Reels
To get started on Reels, start scrolling through the Reels tab on the app. (Y’all, if you need to procrastinate, oh boy, have I got a new time-suck for you.) Scroll enough, and you’ll start noticing trends: similar setups, transitions, songs/voiceovers being used. When you see Reels you like and you think you can repurpose for your own work, save them (there are three dots near the bottom right-hand side of the screen when you're watching a Reel—hit that, and you’ll find a Save option). You don’t have to reinvent the wheel or create a viral trend; you can just use what’s already there and put your own spin on it. For example, here’s one of mine using Drake’s “Know Yourself”—everyone was doing this one this summer (stating something, then intensifying it to show how ridiculous and/or amazing it is), and I just related it to my own work using text.
Trends cycle through pretty fast, but remember what I said about low inventory of Reels? That means that older Reels are often shown again in people’s feed, and the same trend can come in waves. It also means that if your Reel doesn’t get a ton of views immediately, don’t panic and delete it—it might happen two weeks later.
Here are my most recent Reels:
Types of Reels
In my Reels experimenting, I tried to do all of the main types of Reels that usually pop up: lip-synching to songs or quotes, pointing, remixing, and dancing; I’ve done all of them except for remixing (basically responding to another person’s video in real time on a split screen; this is “stitching” in TikTok).
Lip-synching ones are probably the easiest since you just have to make sure you line up your lip movements with the sound (example here). These are so fast to do, and you can do some fun transitions to keep people interested.
If you can hit a beat, you can do a pointing one (example here). Great at conveying information in list form.
The dancing ones…okay, so the dancing ones. Listen. Dancing Reels are soooo watchable, so if you have rhythm and can bust a move, you can knock these ones out of the park. I actually love to dance, but I am sadly only good at it when it’s dark and when I and everyone else around me are drunk. But in the name of this experiment, I did do a dancing Reel, and it was deeply, deeply mortifying to film and to post. (I apologize in advance for subjecting you to my total lack of rhythm.) But it ended up being one of my best performers, which is the power of dancing Reels.
Reels Ideas for Authors
Scrolling Reels and seeing what’s trending is going to be the best way to come up with your own Reels, but here are some ideas for you to get started in terms of content:
About me/intro post
How you got started writing
Inspiration/moodboard for current release
Your biggest supporter (mom, friends, partner, fans, etc.)
The tropes in your book
Your favourite tropes
Tantalizing quotes from your book
Showing off your backlist
Keep them short, snappy, and fun. Reels can be up to a minute long now, but shorter ones (<15 seconds) seem to do better. Attention spans are SO low on here, so you gotta grab attention fast and get to the point. Use transitions to help keep that attention—change your clothes, your hair, your angle. There are tools (like the Align tool in Reels) and effects within the app to help you do this, and lots of tutorials out there to help you figure out how to do the transitions you’ll see often. You don’t have to spend forever getting them perfect—you’re just experimenting and playing around, and it's just social media (remember the low attention spans?) so just do it and don’t get too stressed about it.
Use the caption to expand more on what the Reel is getting across in that short amount of time. And make sure you tell people what you want them to do, both in the Reel itself and in the caption. Do you want them to follow you? Answer a question by leaving a comment? Sign up for your list? Buy your book? Ask them directly! I think we often forget to do this part, and we should be encouraging followers to do something on all of our posts.
I know you’re probably asking “do I have to show my face in Reels?” You don’t! If you go to Canva, there are lots of Reels templates to play with (example here), plus short video clips that you can use to create your own that do not require you being on camera. But (you knew that was coming, right?) you will get much more traction if you do show your face. We see this already when we post to our feed—a photo of you often does much better than a photo of your morning cup of coffee or your desktop. But experimenting is the name of the game here—try doing some Reels with your face and doing ones without, and see what performs better.
That said, don’t get mired in numbers of views. Define what “performing better” means to you—is it number of views, number of new followers, number of comments or likes, number of DMs etc.? Is it immediate or over time? To me, new followers and engagement are much more important, both when the Reel is new and then later when it’s been out for a while. A Reel with one of my lowest view counts actually netted me more followers and ongoing engagement than the high-performing ones, and I’m seeing old followers like or comment on my non-Reels posts because the algorithm is showing them my stuff again due to my Reels activity.
Results
So what happened in my Reels experiment? Over six weeks, I posted 10 reels—one a week to start, then I bumped it up to two a week. I got a 10% increase in IG followers, a tiny boost in newsletter subscribers (hello, new people on this list!), and a ton of continuing engagement on the Reels and on my regular photo posts. And as much as it was deeply embarrassing in so many ways (it’s pretty safe to say I won’t be doing a choreographed dance Reel again), they kinda got to be fun after a while. Most importantly, it kicked me HARD out of my comfort zone and challenged me (and surprised me!) in what I’m willing to do for this work that I love.
I hope you get out there and challenge yourself too. If you’re not already, follow me on Instagram to see my ongoing Reels experiments. If you get inspired to start experimenting with Reels because of this, please send me a link so I can like them and cheer you on!