Meta’s Guide to Creating Winning Reels

Instagram Reels has taken the social media world by storm with its unique style of communication that is entertaining, digestible, and relatable all at once. 

For reels to be engaging, Meta identifies essential steps to aid creators in boosting their online presence using these short video formats.

The Language of Reels

Reels can be comedic, mesmerizing, or thought-provoking. They can surprise us, teach us something we didn’t know, or introduce us to a brand or product we haven’t met yet. 

But they all have one thing in common – a unique communication style that’s entertaining, digestible, and relatable. This is what Meta calls the “language of Reels.”

Creating videos in the language of Reels can improve cost-per-incremental conversions for lower-funnel conversion events, such as Purchase or Subscribe, by up to 51%. 

Using the “language of Reels” creative approach for your Reels ads outperforms business-as-usual creative for lower-funnel campaign objectives.

To enhance your Reel creativity, Meta recommends three easy steps:

1. Build in 9:16 video to make your video captivating: Reels is a full-screen, immersive video format. To help your creative feel at home here, consider leading with video and resizing it to 9:16. Reels ads that featured 9:16 videos showed a +7 point statistically significant higher average positive response score compared to non-9:16 ads.
2. Build in safe zones so your messages are clear: Work within the safe zones so your text sticker overlays, calls to action, or key messages aren’t obscured by the Reels user interface. Keep the bottom 35% of your 9:16 creative free of text, logos, and other key elements. Ads that violated the Reels safe zone had a 28% lower click-through rate, on average, compared to those that did not violate the safe zone.
3. Build for sound to make your video entertaining: Audio, whether music, voiceover, or sound effects, is a key driver of engagement and entertainment on Reels. Over 80% of Instagram Reels are viewed with sound on.

Once you’ve mastered the creative essentials, explore different ways to make your reel more entertaining, relatable, and digestible. 

Great Reels ads provoke an emotional response through a mix of music, visual effects, and storytelling.

They entertain us by sharing something useful, making us smile, or satisfying our curiosity.

• Make it entertaining: Many great reels have a way of capturing viewers’ attention at the outset and encouraging them to keep watching until the end. Experiment with using those first few seconds to “nail the hook.”

• Make it relatable: Invite a connection by casting real people in your reel – creators, staff, or customers. Reel ads with a human presence in the creative had a 27% higher CTR than those without.

• Make it digestible: Show and tell by combining audio and text. Use text and voiceover to strengthen key brand and product takeaways to reinforce ideas simply and clearly. Text stickers are also a great way to ensure you land a strong call to action at the end of your reel. 

These are some of the points highlighted by Meta; read more on how to create successful reels here