BOOST Instagram Reel & Tik Tok Views in 2023 // 10 TIPS – YouTube

Transcript:
(00:00) I posted a tick tock that got 19 000 views and then a few months later I posted the exact same video but this time applied a few principles that I’m going to be teaching in this video and it got almost 5 million views same video just a few small tweaks so what made the difference let’s talk about it why are your Instagram reels or tick tocks not getting views now each social media platform will have its differences in formatting and algorithms but the basic principles that make a piece of content go viral are all the same and I
(00:32) want to share with you 10 of those principles in this video but first why why should you care about getting views on and building a following on Instagram or Tick Tock for yourself or for a video client in short because more traffic more followers equals more people to Market to which ultimately will allow you or your client to make more money in your business and if we’re being honest that’s the end game for most creators and businesses is to make a living off of that content so if you want to grow
(00:57) your business or be a capable marketer to grow other businesses you’ll want to learn and apply these principles so let’s dive in our first and most important tip is content is King the first and main reason why your rails or tick tocks don’t get views is that your content isn’t relatable relevant or shareable the rest of my tips in this video won’t do you much good if the content of your video just doesn’t appeal to anyone so let’s give you a few examples of how to do each of these
(01:24) first relatable can people relate to your content a good example of relatable content in the filmmaking space specifically is Chris Hua wow ha one of his most viewed reels as of late is him posing a relatable question so you want to get into photography he then shocks you with his answer don’t do it and then gives you all the relatable reasons about how expensive it is how many endless pieces of gear you have to buy how many posts on Instagram you don’t get any views and eventually you get one awesome photo and it makes it all worth
(01:55) it now these are all examples of relatable scenarios as someone watching this you think oh man he is describing my experiences so you hit the share button so it hits two of those three factors really well and that’s why this post got a lot of shares and Views now Chris is more focused on comedic sketches and posing relatable questions and scenarios but comedy may not be your strength so let’s look at Sam colder who focuses more on shareability one of his most viewed reels at 3 million views is him cliff jumping and an amazing
(02:25) tracking shot from an fpv drone now this activity is hardly relatable to most regular people but it is shocking both the activity and the camera movement are shockingly cool and that shock Factor makes things shareable you watch this and you think oh man I gotta show my buddy how cool this shot is and if you look a few weeks earlier he basically posted the exact same clip except this one only had half a million views which shows that the activity was still shocking enough to get a good amount of views but when he then added some epic
(02:54) music an epic tracking camera movement suddenly the share ability went way up so as you’re creating content for yourself for clients ask yourself the question would I share this with someone I know if the answer is no then think how can we spice this up to add some more shock or wow factor to make it more shareable the last example we’ll look at is my account on full-time filmmaker now I don’t put much Focus on Instagram and Tick Tock content so my numbers aren’t going to look as good as these other
(03:22) guys I’ve mentioned but my brand focuses more on relevant pieces of gear unboxing videos generally perform better than my tutorial content because everyone unboxes products so it’s relatable activity but beyond that when I choose to unbox a piece of camera gear that recently came out that makes it relevant relevance means it’s trending it’s in the news it’s new it’s a novel when you can post about something that people are already talking about it will catch their eye because it’s relevant to them
(03:50) my most viewed unboxing video was surprisingly this lens cap because not only was it new but it was unique interesting novel and unusual so the goal when creating any content Instagram and Tick Tock content included is to try and check off all three of these boxes let’s move on to our next tip and that is keep it concise a big question I get asked on this topic is how long should my rails be and vaguely the answer is as long as you can keep someone’s attention for generally the algorithms will favor
(04:20) shorter content like 5 to 10 seconds but that doesn’t mean longer form content can’t be shareable I recently started a new faith-based account called true Millennials and even though most of my reels aren’t concise at all one of my four minute rails got over 300 000 views and I just barely started this account so that shows you a couple of things that one you don’t need a large following to catch hold of Instagram or tick tock’s algorithms but two it also shows you that length doesn’t
(04:45) necessarily matter Instagram specifically has a 90 second limit on their rails but they recently changed posts that can be up to 15 minutes long to also show up in the real feeds even if it’s longer than 90 seconds so even if it’s longer than 90 seconds it still has the same shareability as a real that having been said our attention spans are short so generally speaking the shorter the better and that brings me to our next tip the hook the first three seconds is the most important part of your video as people are scrolling
(05:15) through Instagram or Tick Tock you have about three seconds to capture their attention to hook them into watching the rest Mr Beast is one of the Masters at creating engaging hooks his primary way of doing this is by posing a relatable question right out of the gates or giving a quick summary of what the video is about right at the beginning but as you’re brainstorming content and as you’re in the editing room think what can I do in the first few seconds of this video to get people hooked I did that with this video you’re watching
(05:43) right now I picked out what I felt was the most shocking most engaging part of this video and I put a little teaser at the beginning to hook you in to get you interested in learning more so if you have a one minute video for example I’d put the most engaging clip my most shocking moment or the most relatable clip at the very beginning but moving on to our next tip and that is the 10 second rule originally I made this roll up about seven years ago since then attention spans have diminished so we’ll update it and call it the five second
(06:10) rule but basically what it means is don’t let more than five seconds go by without changing visually what your audience is looking at the first step is to to hook their attention the second step is to retain their attention throughout the whole video this can be done through captions or on-screen texts or it can be done with changing camera angles or punching in on the existing angle but probably the most engaging option is to add b-roll or video clips that visually show what you’re audibly hearing this tip is more relevant to
(06:37) Talking Heads like this but the rule applies to any kind of edit now ideally you have your own b-roll that you’ve shot but if you don’t have any b-roll of the subject matter at hand then just use some stock footage the site I use for all my stock footage is story blocks and they’re actually the ones sponsoring this video today recently I’ve been using them a ton for a lot of my Instagram edits allowing me to turn otherwise rather boring Talking Heads into engaging Instagram reels and I can always find the stock Clips I’m looking
(07:04) for at storyblocks because they have over a million 4K and HD royalty free video clips to choose from and they regularly add more based on in demand keywords and you also get unlimited downloads and simple licensing without any extra fees with their flexible subscriptions that’s my favorite part is I don’t have to license individual Clips I can just download as many as I want and I also frequently use their pre-made motion graphic templates to increase the production quality of my videos and streamline my creative process with
(07:32) minimal effort so as a long time subscriber I can highly recommend their services and you can learn more by clicking the link in the description below or go to storyblocks.com Parker and it doesn’t have to be exactly every 5 to 10 seconds that’s not the point just keep the edits engaging keep your audience on their toes by giving them something new to look at as often as possible but moving on to our next tip and that is to add value rather than ask for Value let me point out one of the biggest mistakes I see content creators
(08:02) make on social media in general and that is that they post about themselves newsflash no one cares about you until they know how much you care about them until you add value to their lives that could be in the form of entertainment or giving them news out updates educating them or it could be making them laugh making them feel good about themselves inspiring them but this is why so many podcasts and Vlogs fail out of the gates because most Vlogs and podcasts are centered around me and my life hi welcome to my podcast today we’re going
(08:34) to talk about me no one cares Peter McKinnon tried to start a vlog back in the day and no one really cared about his daily life until he started adding value to their lives through tutorials and education now it help study is also super entertaining so he adds value in that way as well but the bigger value that exploded his channel was his focus on educating others so ask yourself that question when brainstorming what kind of content to create is this going to add value to other people’s lives okay next
(09:03) tip is humans connect with real humans not with brands or organizations this is a tough one for me personally and for many videographers and filmmakers in general because we usually like to be behind the camera we don’t like putting ourselves on camera unfortunately though in today’s landscape of social media it favors the extrovert favors those willing to put their face on a camera now of course it is possible to create successful reels and Tick-Tock content without putting your face on camera but I encourage every Creator even if you
(09:32) are a behind the scenes camera person to build your personal brand by including behind the scenes shots of yourself talk to your audience on camera when it makes sense not only will this help you better connect with your audience but it will attract more video clients as well as they get a feel for who you are as a person since they’re hiring you to work with you not just buying a final video product from you and on this note I’ll add that people connect better to you when you’re being real authentic organic
(09:58) unscripted again I’m not great at this because I script A lot of my content but for example that’s why such a popular format you’ll see in reels and tick tocks is a clip of two people talking to each other in podcast format because two people having a real unscripted dialogue comes across so much more natural and real and organic than someone talking to a camera in monologue in order to monologue the person has to be insanely talented as a communicator which some people are but for those of us who
(10:25) aren’t dialogue with another human can help it feel a lot more real and natural as humans connect with real humans moving on to our next tip though is to keep up to date with Trends and trending audio yes it is possible to succeed on Instagram and Tick Tock without ever jumping on a trend or ever using a trending audio but of course the algorithms will work in your favor if you can include some trending audio and your content will instantly fall into the relevant category if you’re jumping on a video style or song that is
(10:55) trending this is one of the easiest ways to grow from nothing an example of this on our Tick Tock page at full-time filmmaker was a one minute clip from one of my tutorials showing the difference in focal lengths but if you’re shooting at too wide of a focal length the face looks too skinny and pulled back and it did okay it had 19 000 views but we didn’t use any music just the clip then a couple months later we posted the exact same video and except this time we cut out my voice and instead put the
(11:21) stupid Siri voice as the voiceover and we put a caption on the screen and put it to a song that was trending at the time and we also followed my second tip and chopped it down to just 10 seconds to make it more concise this is how different focal lengths affect how how you look I’ve been dancing in my room and what do you know it got 5 million views 19 000 versus 5 million and using the trendy Siri voice and the trendy audio was a big part of that difference now don’t feel like you have to jump on Trends if you can naturally include some
(11:56) Trends in your content then great but don’t force it I have seen people though that will post multiple variations of the same edit each one with a different hook and different music and different lengths until they get one of them to take off and then they’ll delete the other variations but moving on to our next tip which is specific to talking head content like this is don’t neglect lighting and audio a lot of shareable content these days can be done from a smartphone camera and I think that’s
(12:21) fine as far as video quality goes even the audio can be usable from a smartphone as long as you’re close enough to the camera but if you’re doing anything where you’re not right next to the camera then use a microphone it will make your videos feel so much higher quality I promise and if you love mic options I recommend in different price ranges would be first the FTF gear lav mic which is thirty dollars that’s your cheapest option and it is wired the biggest downside of these cheaper mics plugged into a phone is that you can’t
(12:48) adjust the volume level so you can’t talk too loud or else it’s going to distort your next step up is something like a saramonic love mic that can plug straight into your iPhone and it has a wireless transmitter and this one costs about a hundred and forty dollars but does give you some gain control and then I also own a DJI love mic which is a nicer version of The saramonic Love mic that comes in at three hundred dollars and I’ll show you now the difference between the audio in each of those alright so so your audio sounds like
(13:13) just coming from the iPhone itself usable fine but now and this is what your audio is going to sound like with the FTF gear mic nice and cheap thirty dollars next you’ve got the saramonic lav mic that you can either talk into this or you can talk into a microphone this is going to be Wireless that transmits to it so you can have more freedom and then you have your DJI love mic that just comes with this you can plug a mic into it but doesn’t come with one and this is going to give you the most control over your game levels just
(13:40) coming from the iPhone it’s self with the FTF gear mic the saramonic lav mic and then you have your DJI love mic and we’ll talk about Studio mics in another video I have coming out talking about podcasting but on the lighting side again you can get by with a cheap camera as long as your lighting looks decent the free option of course is plop yourself next to a window or you can pick up a ring light for less than a hundred dollars or take it a little more serious and get something like an amaron 60D plus a soft dome for around 200
(14:07) total but with just a couple hundred dollars in audio and lighting gear your videos are going to look and sound much higher quality watch me now deliver the same line with good lighting and good audio versus bad lighting and bad audio and tell me which one you’d be more likely to stop and listen to stop scrolling and listen to what I have to say I desperately need your attention stop scrolling and listen to what I have to say I desperately need your attention on now to our next tip that is captions or on-screen text watch that same video
(14:40) but now with captions added stop scrolling and listen to what I have to say I desperately need your attention captions or subtitles are a growing necessity on short form content it makes content much more engaging and easier to consume as you can both hear audibly and see visually what’s being said this also makes the content more shareable across other languages as some people may be able to read your language better than they can understand it personally I use Adobe Premiere Pro for most of my posts to Auto generate all my captions and I
(15:12) did a tutorial on adobe’s YouTube channel that I’ll link below on how to generate those captions but you can also use phone apps if you don’t have Premiere Pro I’ve used the app captions and I’ve really liked using that but captions are a great way to do what we mentioned in the five second rule tip and that is to keep your audience engaged and retain their attention better throughout the entire video and even if there’s no talking in your video by throwing on some text on your video
(15:36) at the beginning for example it can act like a hook to add anticipation and to tell the viewer what they can expect to see happening later on and now moving on to our last tip number 10 is aspect ratio and Export setting this tip pains me but sadly vertical 9×16 content will typically perform better as it takes up the full use of the screen and looks more organic like you shot it on your phone vertically if I’ve shot something in 16×9 I will either just scale in to fit a vertical frame or if too much of
(16:07) my subject is being cut off then I’ll just put a title on top and some subtitles below to utilize the space better but ideally the video itself is taking up the full vertical frame so you’ll want to keep that in mind when framing your shots but when I edit together content that I’m delivering for both YouTube horizontal and Instagram vertical I’ll first do the edit vertically in a 1080 by 1920 sequence I’ll then copy my whole timeline and paste it into a new horizontal 1920×1080 timeline and then I’ll just reframe the
(16:36) clips to fit the horizontal aspect ratio and adjust the captions as needed usually only takes me about a half hour to reformat the entire video from one to the other keep in mind though with your vertical edits that part of your frame is going going to be cluttered with Instagram or Tick Tock details like likes comments shares and the caption below so I actually have a PNG template that I made that I’ll link below that you can download for free that you can overlay while you’re editing to ensure that none of the important captions or
(17:03) important imagery is clashing also keep in mind on certain phones like the newer iPhones when you click into an Instagram reel or on Tick Tock it actually crops your video even slightly skinnier than 9×16 aspect ratio so again if you use my PNG overlay you can see exactly where stuff gets cut off on these red lines on this note I get a lot of questions about the best export settings for Instagram and Tick Tock how do you keep the videos from getting reduced in quality I hate to break it to you but social media
(17:33) sites will always reduce the quality of your videos through compression you’re just gonna have to get used to that whether you can press it in Premiere Pro or once you upload it to Instagram either way it’s getting compressed so edit and export from Premiere Pro in the quality you’re happy with I personally just do high quality 1080p preset and Premiere and then I match Source the aspect ratio but the important part that will make a difference in the overall quality is in your Instagram settings
(17:58) click on accounts then go to data usage and make sure you have toggled on upload at highest quality if you don’t have this toggled on then if your internet speed is slow it will reduce the quality in order to allow you to upload your videos quicker so make sure that’s toggled on and that will give you as good of quality as Instagram can muster and as a bonus tip for you distribution is Queen if content is King distribution is Queen this refers to things like using hashtags using a good cover photo or thumbnail posting during a certain
(18:27) time of day posting on certain days posting a certain frequency and posting consistently in general all these little things will increase the likelihood of your videos getting seen so go look your analytics to see when your viewers are most active for me it’s in the mornings around 9am so that’s when I try to post for me there’s no specific day that people are more active on Instagram and I personally don’t take the time to do hashtags to I’m sure it can help probably the most important part of good
(18:51) distribution though is consistency algorithms love to see regular activity for example I went a couple months without posting much on Instagram maybe only once or twice in that time and for the first time in years I started losing followers rather than gaining so I set a goal to at least post once a week and after doing that for three or four weeks the algorithm God smiled upon me and my daily followers started regularly going back to positive I think once a week is a good Baseline to try and shoot for if you want to grow following and stay
(19:20) relevant to your audience ideally you post more than that and if you don’t see great results after a few weeks be patient stay consistent learn from your mistakes and successes and pivot your content each week based on what’s doing well and what’s not doing well and keep in mind that there is a variable of Randomness to this virality game sometimes what it takes for a post to go big is that one specific person with a large following happened to see it and share it and that’s what gives it the
(19:46) initial push to start spreading but you can’t predict or Bank on that one big person to share it so don’t get frustrated trying to nail this down to a science some posts will fall flat some will take off and there won’t always be a specific Rhyme or Reason to it don’t let that discourage you from continuing to create and on that note educate your clients as well when you’re doing rails for them that virality is a random game and I would brainstorm 10 variations of the same piece of content with your
(20:12) client making a bunch of different Hooks and then in the editing room I’d pump out a variety of edits with different styles and approaches so there you have my tips on how to get more views on Instagram reels and tick tocks obviously you don’t have to do all of these on every post these are just some general principles to keep in mind as you’re creating also I did an interview with my buddy Tanner Townsend who grew his music Instagram Tick Tock following from 2 000 followers to over a hundred thousand
(20:39) followers in just a matter of two months and then shortly after he grew his dad’s business account from 13 000 followers to again over a hundred thousand followers in just two months and and he explains how he applied the principles mentioned in this video to do it so if you’d like to see that interview is reserved exclusively for full-time filmmaker members linked below to check that out to get access to over 600 tutorials to help you grow your business lastly don’t forget to subscribe for more content just like this and if you
(21:06) have any further questions please let me know