Many of us have Instagram business ideas but is it really worth it to commit? Here’s a few things to take into account before diving in.

Quick Links:

• TIP: How to use instagram reels to benefit your business ideas [Infographic Download]
• Episode Overview – Are IG Reels for Business Worth It?
• Personal Note from Jenn Neal on Instagram Business Ideas
• Episode audio [Podcast on Spotify]
• Blog Post – Instagram Business Ideas – Are Instagram Reels for Business Worth It?
• Related Posts

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TIP: How to use Instagram reels to benefit your business ideas

What’s In This Episode

Are your Instagram business ideas worth the time and effort?  In this episode, I’m taking you behind the scenes to show you what we have learned about Instagram business reels and Instagram as a whole.  We’ve used this information to determine if Instagram reels was really worth it for our business.

“Are you prepared to take part on all of that work?  It’s a great question… but not one that I had asked myself.”

-Jenn Neal

Instagram Business Ideas – Are Instagram Reels for Business Worth It?

Should I take my business ideas onto Instagram? This is a question I’m often asked, yet the answer differs for each business. Growing any social media channel is going to be a challenge. And that’s exactly what Instagram provided me with – a challenge. More of one than I had anticipated myself. And to be honest, my Instagram was quite inconsistent… until about a year and a half ago when I hired a social media manager. She took one look at the channel and went to work cleaning it up. So, it’s very obvious where I let go and she took over. 

After analyzing the numbers for a few months, she’d suggested that we turn to Instagram reels for business. We came up with a plan and started repurposing our tip content for the reels. After seeing them performing well, we played with a lot of different types of content to see how much traction we could get. We found that our tip reels outperformed all the rest of the content! It was such an exciting experiment and it was exhilarating watching how our channel grew because of our reels. Our numbers doubled and our reels were getting 5-6000 views! This sounds amazing, but to be honest, our numbers are still quite low. 

Now here we are, 1 1/2 years later. My team and I recently sat down and took a deep dive into our social media channels. We needed to determine what channels were worth growing and which weren’t. Here’s what we found! 

Social Media Evaluation

When I sat down with my team, we laid out all our social media outlets. YouTube, Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok… you name it. We put it all out on the table. In doing so, we evaluated what seemed to be working and what didn’t. This included evaluating how much time it took to make the content for the channels. 

When Instagram came onto the chopping block, we realized that we were spending a lot of time on it. While we were having no issue repurposing content, we needed to determine if the energy was worth it. All in all, we realized that with Instagram reels for business, we’d fallen into a trap of doing something just to do it. 

Although we were getting more engagement with the reels, it wasn’t enough to make a huge difference in our business. We decided that we needed to reevaluate the numbers for Instagram and our Instagram business ideas. Is it taking up too much time and effort, or is it worth it? We needed to consider a few things first. 

How To Decide If It’s Worth It

Okay, so there are a few things to consider when you’re doing the work my team and I have been doing. The first thing to consider is if your audience is hanging out and spending time on that outlet. If you’re wondering if you should create an Instagram channel, do the work to make sure that’s where your audience is. You don’t want to put in all the effort and time to create something that is not going to reach any of your actual ideal clients.

Time and Efforts

The second aspect to consider is if you’re willing to put the time into creating the channel. How much time do you have to dedicate to creating the content and posting it? Creating a social media channel is a LOT of work. It takes a lot of time and energy to gain a following. You’ll need to make sure that you’re consistent with posting and that you’re engaging your audience – which in itself takes quite a bit of trial and error. This brings me to my next point.

Details and Numbers Matter!

Many things can increase (or decrease) your views – especially on Instagram. You’ll want to be sure that you’re trying different marketing tactics as well. Take a look at what type of content is getting the most traction – is it quotes? Tips? Longer videos? Solo pictures? Change the days/times that you’re posting. Play with color combinations and try mixing up different fonts. These things can all make a huge difference in your posts.  Even the slightest changes can make your numbers jump or tank.

It’s important to check your stats weekly and monthly to ensure that you’re numbers are rising instead of falling. Surely, once you’ve gone over your data and know what content your audience is interested in, you can start breaking it down into smaller pieces and seeing how it performs. (See my episode on how to repurpose content for lots of great insight into this!) It’s fun – I swear! (Or maybe I’m just a bit more nerdy than I had previously considered!)

Our Instagram Business Decision

After we looked at all of the stats and details, we realized that our Instagram business ideas weren’t panning out. While our numbers did double, the amount of time that it took to create the content and consistently post was not in our best interest. We were posting for a year, very branded and on point, about 5-8 times a week and yet still have under 1000 followers.

Now, I’m not saying that we’re going to completely abandon our channel. You all know I’m a huge fan of Vanessa Lau but am DEFINITELY not getting the engagement that she does. Instead, we’ve decided that it IS in our best interest to keep the channel open and maintain our branding. We want to ensure that if someone looks us up, that they’re able to find us, and have a way to get in contact with us. We’ve also realized that our reel content won’t be going to waste! We’ve currently decided to nix TikTok since we are still learning about the platform and want to focus our efforts elsewhere, but we do know that we’ll be able to repurpose our tip reels there when we decide to revisit! (No content gets left behind!!)

So if you’ve decided that you’d like to be highly involved in Instagram (and want to get good engagement), there are plenty of people, like Vanessa, who teach you how to do that. However, be sure that you’ve done your homework and considered all of the aspects above before dedicating your time and efforts to building your channel.

Related Posts

How to Use Instagram Reels for Business in 2021

How to Use Instagram Reels for Business: Tips and Examples

18 Instagram Reels Ideas to Build Your Brand (With Examples!)

Instagram Reels Statistics 2022 [Latest Data]

The Four Types of Content Best for Social Media Marketing

I’m curious – are you looking up your engagement stats or questioning your IG work right now?