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Lindsay Favazza: Have you noticed that there’s a whole new piece of Instagram recently? My name is Lindsay Favazza. I’m with Crush It In Real Estate. I want to explain to you what a Reel is, what an IGTV Video is, what a Story is, and what a Post is, because you may have seen these new icons or new things popping up and you just want to understand it better and see where you should be putting some of these posts.
First and foremost is a post. A post on Instagram is a post. It’s mainly a picture. That’s how Instagram started, was so heavily focused on pictures. Over the years, things like Facebook lives and videos and things on those platforms, and specially TikTok, has made Instagram have to compete in a different way. They’re now making video a much bigger portion of what they do. When you do a post, it’s mostly an image. It could be a carousel of images, multiple images, it could be a layout, or it’s got more multiple on one image and so on.
Then you can also have a post that is posted to IGTV. That is the longer content. You can post a video as a post but it’s only 60 seconds long. If your video is longer than 60 seconds, then you would put it as an IGTV post. When you do that, now they can click. You’ll notice when you’re on Instagram, sometimes you have to click to watch the full video. That’s how you get longer form content onto Instagram. It’s a great way to do it. If you have a longer video, definitely share it that way.
The next piece is stories. Stories were around the same time. They started putting these stories out there and stories are quick hits. Stories are 30 seconds or so and they disappear after a day. You can save them in highlights if you really want to, but I would say those are those really quick, “Hey, I’m doing this tomorrow. Make sure to tune in,” kind of message. Quick short, and to the point and something that is time specific.
The last one is Reels, and this is actually the real reason that I wanted to do this video because Reels are huge. They’re blowing up. It’s truly that TikTok equivalent and you definitely want to be posting in Reels. We had a Reel that we posted for a company here at Lamacchia. We have a landscape company that we help with. We posted it, and the next morning we had 15,000 views on this Reel and it was just a quick short video. It’s crazy.
Reels are now a much bigger piece of what Instagram provides and you’ll notice, it’ll say, “Watch the Reel,” and you can go through and watch multiple Reels, just like you would on TikTok, and you can just scroll through them. They too are about 30 to 60 at the most. Again, quick hit type video, but there’s music that is within Instagram that you can attach to those videos and that will make it so that you get a little bit of the social juice off of the videos, off of the hashtags and so on.
Your homework today is to try out a Reel. Go through some Reels, go through some maybe real estate specific Reels or something like that and just get some ideas. Then don’t be afraid, just post a Reel. You don’t have to be doing dance moves. You don’t have to be doing anything that’s out of your comfort zone, but you can do a video and do it as a Reel and just keep it quick and to the point. I’m telling you, you’re going to see a ton of views on that Reel.
A little side note. When you post your Reel, spend about 10 minutes prior to posting that Reel and 10 minutes after posting that Reel engaging with people within your Instagram page, because that is going to help when you actually post the Reel to get the Reel to get more views. That’s my quick last tip for you. I hope that these Reels really, really help you. I know, it’s just too many puns, but I hope you guys explore this and try out all the different things that Instagram offers. Have a great day, everybody.