Pros and Cons for Marketing Professionals
From high above the city streets, we hear a familiar wail. It’s the mournful cry of marketing professionals coming to terms with the advent of yet another social media platform that requires content from them.
More accurately, it’s a new video-sharing feature from the good people at Facebook, added to Instagram at the beginning of August.
For the optimistic among us, Reels is a new way to reach your audience with short, 15-second video compilations that you can share with your followers or the general public.
To the cynics, Reels is a TikTok clone that replicates the sharing service’s basic features but implements them in a confusing and haphazard manner.
Whether the service takes off depends on whether there’s enough additional value on top of the four other sharing features the venerable platform already sports. Its fate will also be decided, at least in part, by whether marketers decide to get on board.
The platform could well get a boost from Trump’s battle with TikTok, if his threatened ban ever comes to fruition. Imagine — all of those dance videos, animal imitations, and hockey stick crotch shots without a platform to call home.
The future is still murky for Instagram Reels. So is it worth pursuing? Let’s weigh the pros and cons.
Reasons Instagram Reels Might Be Worth Adding to Your Arsenal
Even though the platform is unproven, an argument can be made for early adoption. Those marketers savvy enough to leverage the service now could be well-positioned for success once it reaches mainstream adoption. Other entries in the “pros” column include:
Reels Are Fairly Simple to Create
There are only so many hours in the day, and only so much content you can create. If you’re going to add something new, you want to be sure the ROI supports the investment.
Creating Reels is easy. Turn on your cell phone, hit record, do something memorable, and post. There’s virtually no learning curve, and your content can rain down like…rain. So it could be worth giving the platform a try.
You Can Repurpose Content You Already Have
If you already create video content for Stories, IGTV, YouTube, or, I don’t know…TikTok, you can move some of it onto Reels. Any short-form material could make the jump, assuming it generally fits the format people are interested in.
With repurposed content, your speculative investment is nearly nothing.
Your Audience Uses Instagram and TikTok
TikTok attracts a very specific demographic, specifically younger people who have nothing better to do than watch strangers balance spatulas on their noses and burp the national anthem. If that’s your target demographic, then Reels is a no-brainer.
Whether it reaches TikTok proportions or languishes in its parent’s basement, you’re still likely to derive value.
Reels Complements Instagram Stories
You’re likely to find Reels useful if you already get good results from Stories because the formats are very similar. One of the most salient differences is that Instagram Reels are permanent, whereas Stories evaporate after 24 hours. Posting videos to both allows you to connect with your Stories audience while increasing your content’s staying power.
Additionally, Facebook’s algorithm tends to assign a favored status to posts that use their new technologies, so if you’re already on Instagram, using Reels will boost your engagement.
Other Benefits
Reels are easy to share, unlike some other services, which is a boon to marketers. The service also allows audience retargeting, unlike Instagram’s other offerings.
If you utilize hashtags in your marketing, you’ll be happy to know that Reels supports up to 30 Instagram hashtags and up to 2,200 characters, more than an order of magnitude larger than TikTok’s diminutive character allowance.
Reasons to Wait Until Instagram Reels Proves its Worth
Not every video-sharing service will enjoy TikTok’s success, particularly one that’s essentially another TikTok. Reels could just as easily go the way of Vine. So before you start investing in content creation, you might want to wait and see if the platform survives.
People Might Not Ever Care
You might dutifully create content for Reels, spooling out groundbreaking videos that define the very nature of the platform, and find nothing but crickets. There’s simply no guarantee that even existing Instagram users will find value in Reels.
In its current incarnation, Reels are challenging to find in the Instagram app. Instead of opting for a dedicated Reels feed, Facebook buried the content in the app’s Explore tab.
Plans exist to rectify this, but your content may forever languish in obscurity if that doesn’t happen.
Instagram Reels Can’t Be Scheduled
Marketers aren’t known for spontaneity. We devise and follow rigorous content schedules and LOVE our automation. The service’s lack of scheduling support could well be a dealbreaker for those considering early adoption.
Reels Analytics are Feeble Compared to the Competition
The only things we marketers love more than automation are the analytical tools we use to determine if our efforts are getting results. TikTok features robust analytics and deep insights. Instagram simply saves you from having to count your likes and comments manually.
The difference is analogous to comparing Google Analytics to the visitor counters people used to feature on their websites in the late ‘90s. Again, until Reels ups its game, serious marketers might do well to take a pass.
So is Instagram Reels right for you? If you sell dance-related paraphernalia or men’s athletic cups, the answer is an unequivocal “yes.” Otherwise, it’s worth balancing the pros and cons we’ve shared to see if the platform fits your current strategies.
If you’d like help determining your place in the Instagram Reelspace (copyright us, just now), contact us at Six Degrees Digital Media today. We’re Reels experts, insofar as anyone can be an expert on a service that’s just two months old. We can help fit the platform into your social plan.
Or we might just dance.
