5 Strategies to Increase Your Reach When You Don't Have Time to Create IG Reels

If your Instagram engagement has been on a negative slope lately, you’ll find comfort in knowing that you aren’t the only one. An analysis of 81 million posts revealed that since the launch of IG Reels, engagement on regular, in-feed posts has dropped by 44%. 🤯

We’ve preached about the value of IG Reels before (hello, ReelTok!), but also understand that finding the time and resources to create this kind of content is no easy feat. Read on for five strategies to increase your reach on Instagram when you don’t have time to create IG Reels!

LEVERAGE LOCATION AND USER TAGS

If you want to gain exposure on Instagram with minimal effort, this strategy is as easy as it gets!

Instagram recently revamped the look of its location search results to make it even easier for businesses to be discovered! When a user searches a location on Instagram, a map-view now populates to allow users to more easily discover posts and stories shared at each location. Traditional “Recent” and “Top” post tabs still remain.

But that’s not all! If you click “Search This Area” on the updated search results page, you can browse by local restaurants, cafes, sights, hotels, and more! Be sure to add your business’ location to your profile and each of your posts to leverage this discoverability opportunity. 

Another easy way to increase the reach of your account through tags is by tagging relevant users in your posts. By doing so, you’ll show up in the tagged photos on their profile and could potentially be re-posted by the user, thus unlocking exposure to their audience with little effort on their end.

RE-VAMP YOUR HASHTAG STRATEGY

While no longer quite as popular as they used to be, hashtags remain a simple tool that allows you to build your brand, boost a marketing campaign, and keep in touch with your current audience. Forming a hashtag strategy can take some time, but once the hashtag research is done, it’s smooth sailing from there!

We recently updated the hashtag strategy for all of our clients to include 3-5 hashtags total per Instagram’s recommendation. Rather than using the same hashtags across all of our posts (this can become spam-y and ultimately limit our reach), we like to create hashtag groups that correspond with our 9 pillars of content! For instance, if you’re an interior designer, consider having separate hashtag groups for different posts like bedrooms, kitchens, detail shots, etc. Both Later and Planoly have an awesome feature where you can save these hashtag groups for future use!

To create hashtag groups, we recommend compiling a master list of hashtags and narrowing them down from there. An important thing to keep in mind when doing this is hashtag density. It’s a highly saturated market out there, but luckily hashtag density provides insight into the level of competition associated with any particular hashtag. 

You want your hashtags to be popular and what your target audience is searching for, but you also don’t want that hashtag to have SO many posts that yours will only get lost. We typically try to aim for hashtags between 10k and 50k posts, but it is important to incorporate a healthy mix of small, medium, and large in each of your hashtag groups!

For more tips, check out our How to Conduct Hashtag Research blog post and Ultimate Guide to Hashtags freebie!

SET UP YOUR IG SHOP

Within the past few years, social media has really made an effort to streamline the buying process by enabling in-platform purchases through Instagram Shops. Formerly, brands were the only users able to tag their own products to shop. However, now ALL users are able to tag products from brands in their posts. Meaning, consumers can now share and directly tag to shop the products they love! This creates new opportunities for brands to drive increased distribution of their products and for consumers to more easily discover their products from users they trust. 

Brands with an Instagram Shop also now have the opportunity to create an affiliate program that allows creators to share and tag products with their followers and earn commissions for the purchases they drive — all within the Instagram app. Talk about an awesome and easy incentive to encourage influencers to share about your brand!

Needless to say, if you’re a product-based business that doesn’t have your Instagram shop set up yet, there’s no better time to get started than now! The potential for in-app discovery and purchases are only on the trajectory to increase. 

Learn more about how to get started in our Why Setting Up Your Instagram Shop is More Important Now Than Ever blog post!

COLLABORATE WITH INFLUENCERS ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Collaborating with influencers on social media is a great strategy for increasing brand awareness as it allows you to tap into audiences similar to your ICA. To keep up with the rise of influencer marketing, Instagram has recently released the Creator Marketplace to make this process as seamless as possible for brands.

Consider the Creator Marketplace your all-in-one tool for scouting influencers and managing the campaign from start to finish. Businesses can scout and filter creators by:

• Gender 

• Age

• Follower count

• Interests

• Location

• Similarity to other creators

• Whether or not they have followed or tagged you in a post

Once you’ve found a creator you like, the feature also allows brands to:

• Add them to a saved list

• Create campaigns and structured projects that outline the campaign, deliverables, compensation, etc.

• Communicate with them directly via a Partnerships Messages inbox

Don’t have access to this tool yet? No problem - check out our How to Find IG Influencers and Pitch to Them blog post and Influencer + Giveaway Outreach Spreadsheet!

LOOK AT PAST SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYTICS

The last and most important strategy for increasing your reach on Instagram is to routinely track social media analytics. Take note of what is doing well and continue doing it. Analyze why some posts may have seen a higher reach than others and if something is not performing as expected, consider trying out something else! Repeat this process each time when tracking monthly social media analytics to continue optimizing your strategy.

We hope you found this blog post helpful in learning more about how to increase your reach when you don’t have time to create IG Reels! For more social media tips, be sure to follow us on Instagram and subscribe to our weekly social media newsletter. Chat soon!

xx,

The Homies