How to Create Consistent Instagram Reels for your Service Based Business
We can no longer show up with the bare minimum to reach a new audience.
Being consistent in this new era of social media is a whole lot different than it was a couple of years ago. The founders behind social media apps, especially the ones we have come to love like Instagram, have changed the way we view the platforms whether you think it’s for better or worse.
You may be like many who have pushed back from posting on social media or you may have been one of the many who have embraced at full speed ahead. No matter the case, video content is being pushed to the forefront and with many introverts, shy individuals, people who aren’t yet comfortable showing their faces, or have been used to being the person behind the camera, this may be more daunting. So daunting it became one of the many reasons you might want to step back.
Stepping outside of your comfort zone is something you will constantly do in your business. Heck, you created your own business and stepped out of your comfort zone so let’s not view video as this annoying fly that wants to go away. Instead, let’s rock it in the best way we can.
I want to encourage you that you are not alone. Many people feel this way and it doesn’t matter whether you are an introvert, extrovert, timid, or confident your business still deserves to be seen. I don’t want you to let the new wave of video marketing hinder you. I want you to look at it as an opportunity to take your business up a notch without draining your energy.
Topics we will discuss in today’s article:
3 Lessons I’ve learned using short-form videos on social media
6 Steps to Getting Consistent and Confident with Video
1 Piece of advice you need here to get started on video
Recap and create your first month of reels!
Let’s get into it!
3 Lessons on Short form video on Social Media
Take it easy! You don’t have to go full force into posting reels all the time, you can take it one step at a time but remain consistent. Still, add in a mixture of carousels and static posts too.
Shake off the pressure! Short-form videos can be informative and helpful without dancing, face-to-face, and lip-synching. You don’t have to cram everything into the video simply use the video as a call to action to view the jam-packed caption.
Keep it simple! You can and should use a mixture of your own b-roll footage and high-quality stock videos to create a personal yet professional feel for your business.
6 Steps to Getting Consistent and Confident with Video
Step 1: Create a Reel-istic Plan of Action
Now, don’t go making rash decisions and grandiose marketing plans of going all in and posting 30 days worth of reels. It’s only going to lead to inconsistency in the long run, trust me I know. I highly suggest you focus on creating an actionable plan that works for your schedule without leaving you burnt out.
Focus on a certain number of days that you can reasonably do.
I’m not going to give you a specific set of days, you need to choose what fits best for your life and circumstances.
Don’t: If you know that you are going to be busy on Monday then Mondays probably aren’t the best times to post. If you know you want to take weekends off to spend with family then don’t try to post online during the weekend.
Do: Pick as many days that are reasonable for you. Be honest with yourself so that you don’t overwhelm yourself, especially starting off.
focus on setting a time you will post.
What’s a reasonable time for you? Again this has to depend on your life’s circumstances. When is the best time out of your day that you can realistically post?
Don’t: So if you are working a 9-5 job, chances are you may not have time to post in the middle of the day at least not consistently.
Do: If you know you can post first thing in the morning while chugging your cup of coffee then do it. Maybe it's as soon as you get home from work and want to relax and instead of scrolling you post. How about at 9 pm when the kiddos are in bed, hubby is half asleep on the couch and you are watching a lifetime flick? No matter if it's in the morning, evening, or night, pick a time and stick to it.
🎬Take Action and Stay Committed
You must commit to these 2 commitments. Give yourself 6 months at the latest to commit to this schedule. When you are able to get these 2 commitments down, then move on to adding in more posting if you can. This is only if you feel comfortable. Make a commitment and make it a non-negotiable in your online marketing strategy.
Step 2: theme your content
You are an intentional social media planner now, so you have to make each piece of content work for you. Start by identifying the key themes that are most relevant to your business and your target audience. Creating a theme for each post allows you to hone in and be intentional with your post. If you are posting reels 3 days a week then make sure that those 3-post rocks! It’s important to focus on 5 main types of themes. You can add more than one of these to a single reel so don’t feel like you need to create 5 pieces of content.
Inspirational: Be an inspiration to your audience by helping them defeat excuses and limited beliefs in their personal life. Remember before you can sell you must remove limited mindsets.
Educational: Educate your audience with tips and hacks to help benefit their life. This will help showcase you as an expert in the field.
User-generated Content: Share content from your clients, customers, and members. This could be anything from transformations, testimonials, or even a spotlight on outstanding supporters.
Entertainment: Add in your personality or your brand's personality. Share your opinion, get relatable, and share behind the scenes in your business. Everything doesn't have to be serious.
Promotional: Now that you built the like, know, and trust, factor you are now able to promote with confidence and ease. Promote your products, services, and freebies.
🎬Take Action and stay on Theme
By focusing on these 5 types of themes you are making it easier for yourself to come up with content faster. For example, you can put inspiration and entertainment together or educational and promotional ideas together. The most important thing is that you create a post that will aid in the LIKE, KNOW, AND TRUST in order to get seen by the people you truly want. These 5 content pieces will do just that.
In the next step, we will focus on putting it all together so that you can ask yourself these questions as you decide on your new pieces of content.
What can you educate them on that they are struggling with?
How can you inspire them in achieving their goals?
How can you showcase how others have been able to use your products or services?
How can you make light of the struggles that your audience faces through entertainment?
What big or small launches can you promote that will get your products or services in the right people’s feed for their struggles and goals?
By incorporating all 5 types of content into your social media marketing, the promotional post will be so scary because you were able to inspire, educate, entertain, and build that trust that is important in turning a follower into a customer. Once you have identified what themes you will use, develop a content strategy around them, creating a set of core topics that you can use to guide your content creation efforts. These are what many people call Content pillars.
Step 3: Create your Content Pillars
What the heck is a content pillar?
You hear it thrown around a lot so let’s give a definition to it as it relates to service-based business owners.
A content pillar is the main topic that a service-based business focuses on when creating social media content. It's a way to organize and structure your content strategy around specific areas of expertise or interests. By creating content pillars, you can establish your business as a thought leader in your industry and provide value to your audience. For example, a marketing agency might have content pillars focused on social media marketing, SEO, and content creation.
Come up with content categories and stick to them. I like to think of your social media as a blog. With any blog, you need topics to easily talk about. What topics will you touch base on? What in your niche will help your audience in their goals, struggles, and limited beliefs and how will your products or services help them with each of their areas?
How to come up with Content Pillars?
To come up with content pillars for a service-based business, start by identifying the key topics that are most relevant to your business and your target audience. These core topics or "content pillars" should be broad enough to cover a range of subtopics, but specific enough to ensure that your content remains focused and relevant to your audience.
🎬Take action and put your topics and categories together
You can use those categories to connect the dots between your services and their needs through inspiration, education, user-generated content, promotion, and entertainment. But you need to have topics that will align with your core audience.
Come up with your content pillars:
Write the struggles you see people facing in this area
What trends are happening that you can share
What facts can you share
Write about the goals they want to achieve.
Write how your products or services can help make it easier to achieve those goals.
Write about who you are outside of the brand and behind the scenes of you working on your business.
After the brain dump, categorize it. What categories can you write about that will help with their struggles, their goals, and your services?
Examples of Content Pillars
How-to guides: Create step-by-step guides on topics that your audience is interested in, such as cooking, DIY projects, or social media marketing.
Product reviews: Provide detailed reviews of products or services that your audience might be interested in, such as the latest tech gadgets, beauty products, or travel destinations.
Inspirational stories: Share inspiring stories of people who have overcome challenges or achieved great things. These can be personal stories or stories of people in your industry.
Listicles: Create lists of tips, tools, or resources that your audience can use to achieve a specific goal, such as improving their productivity, saving money, or learning a new skill.
Industry news and trends: Stay up-to-date on the latest news and trends in your industry and share them with your audience.
Step 4: Plan your content for Reelz!
You need to take a day to plan. This is the only way you will be able to create with intention and master the art of consistency in your content creation.
Here are some tips for planning reels for a service-based business:
Identify your target audience and what type of content they would be interested in.
Showcase your services in a creative and engaging way.
Use trending music and hashtags to increase your reach.
Keep your reels short and to the point.
Use captions to provide additional context or information about your services.
Remember to always keep your branding consistent and have fun with it!
🎬Take Action and Plan your content
As you are starting out to be more consistent with short-form videos, I would suggest focusing just on the week ahead. If you have 3 pieces of content for instance just focus on planning for those 3 pieces of content.
Your Planning session should look like this: 1-hour time frame
Grab your content pillars and your themes.
Have a list of struggles your audience faces and goals they want to achieve.
Have a list of facts and trends.
Have a list of your benefits readily available.
Brain dump a bunch of ideas that relate back to those struggles, goals, facts, trends, and benefits.
Write down the content topic that you will focus on for the week
Pick the topic that you will focus on and pick content ideas from your brain dump. Save the rest for another week.
Then focus on being intentional with scrolling through Instagram for ideas and audio for those content ideas.
Set a timer for 20 minutes to save any audios that capture your eyes. The more you scroll the more you will start doubting yourself and comparing yourself. Simply get audio that will work for your pieces of content.
Now take a breather you got your content topic, ideas, and audio ready!
After your planning session you should have:
Your Content Pillar/s picked (ex. You decide to just focus on different Pinterest tips, facts, and trends)
Your Intentional topic was chosen (ex. Entertainment and/or educational)
What you plan to do (ex. lip synch, role play, voice-over, tutorial)
Your Audio Selection (will it be original audio (like a voice-over) or trending audio you found on Instagram)
Step 5: Create in a good mood
Now that you have successfully planned out your content you now need to take a day to create it. This day is the day that you need to have your energy up and you need to be in a good mood! That will make this day so much more fun and it even feels like a task.
Here are some ideas to boost your energy up for a successful creation day.
Do it on an off day that you aren’t working at your 9-5
Start your day off with a slow morning routine that makes you feel relaxed or energized whatever makes you feel good
Shower and get dressed, making yourself look good and smell good will be a sure way to boost your mood.
Play some music: What’s your favorite type of music or artist get jiggy with it and bust a move…ok did that make me sound like a millennial!
Now that your energy is boosted it’s time to get creative.
🎬Take action and create your content
Grab the content topics you planned out on the previous day. This should include:
Your Content Pillar/s picked (ex. You decide to just focus on different Pinterest tips, facts, and trends)
Your Intentional topic was chosen (ex. Entertainment and/or educational)
What you plan to do (ex. lip synch, role play, voice-over, tutorial)
Your Audio Selection
Give yourself 25 min to focus on creating those reels.
If you need extra time, take 5 minutes for a breather and then come back for 25 more minutes.
By stepping back you are able to recharge and alleviate any frustration that you may have that is hindering you from continuing.
Step 6 Schedule and Breathe!
The last thing you need to do is schedule it. This can be the scary part, but remember you put in so much work to get this far.
🎬Take action and get it scheduled!
Use a scheduling app like Planoly, Plann, Later, or even Instagram’s own scheduling app(I see a few errors in the Instagram planning app like no text on the screen so just beware of that, but it’s a lifesaver not to mention money saver.) Click here to learn about the tools I use.
Create your caption. Don’t procrastinate on this, you’ve planned for this, use the caption to bring to life your audience's goals or struggles. Add a call to action that is simple. You can learn more about How to Write Better Captions here.
Use appropriate Hashtags. Take 25 mins to scour and find your hashtags for each content pillar. By using relevant hashtags, your posts can appear in searches and in the explore page. However, it's important to use them effectively to get the most out of them. Once you find your hashtags keep them with you at all times. Starting off, yes it will be time-consuming but once you get your hashtags you can keep using them and refining them each month to see how well they are performing.
Here are some tips for using hashtags on Instagram:
Use relevant hashtags: Use hashtags that are relevant to your post and your audience. This will help you reach the right people and engage with them.
Use popular hashtags: Using popular hashtags can help your post get more visibility, but make sure they are still relevant to your post.
Create your own branded hashtags: Branded hashtags can help build your brand and make your posts more discoverable.
Use a mix of hashtags: Use a mix of broad and specific hashtags to reach a wider audience while still targeting a niche market.
Don't overdo it: Using too many hashtags can look spammy and decrease engagement, so stick to a few relevant ones.
Remember to research hashtags before using them and keep an eye on how they perform. By using hashtags effectively, you can increase your reach and engagement on Instagram.
There you go, everything you need to start creating short-form videos for your service-based business consistently.
Remember this:
Perfection Does Exist
My last piece of advice is simple, cut the perfection out! You don’t have to be perfect at this. You don’t need the latest and greatest camera and technology. You just need to get started. As you do the work, it gets easier, but it gets easier when you put in the work. Challenge yourself to throw perfection out the door for the next 6 months and watch you flourish. I’m with you on this, you can do it!
🎬your 1st month of reels
Start by making 4 reels for a month!
Pick the day you will post your reel and do it for the next 4 weeks consistently.
Decide what theme you will use for these next 4 reels (inspirational, educational, user-generated, entertainment, or promotional)
Pick your Content pillar (topic) for each post (think: struggles, goals, facts, trends, or benefits you offer)
Take 25 minutes to get inspired, save your favorite audio, and brainstorm content ideas with a brain dump session.
Take 25 mins with breaks in between and create your 4 reels (remember do this on a day you are in a great mood)
Schedule that bad boy out with captions and hashtags that work best for those reels
Rinse and repeat until you get the hang of it each month. Keep adding new reels each week when you feel more comfortable. Start small and overcome perfectionism and inconsistency by taking repeated action weekly. You got this!
Final Words
Content and consistency with showing up online will ensure that your online business thrives on social media. That’s where your audience will get the value, they need to either decide if you are for them or not. Share your expertise, inspire your audience, and showcase the transformation. When you do that promotion of your product and services will become easy as 1,2,3! Let’s take action today!
🗣️Spread the Word
Pick your favorite Graphic and pin it to your Pinterest board.