Creators 
CREATE ENGAGING CONTENT
Creative expression, powerful connections
On Instagram, you’re free to share all sides of your creativity. To experiment, to try new things, and to take chances on your ideas—big and small.
WHAT’S NEW
Stay ahead with our latest features
Trial reels
Share reels with non-followers first to see what performs best, before deciding to share with your followers.
Text tools
Improvements to our creative tools to give you more ways to express yourself and make your content your own.
Multiple audio tracks on Reels
Add up to 20 tracks to a single reel and visually align audio with elements like text, stickers, and clips while you’re editing in the app.
TEST NEW IDEAS
Try something new and “soft launch” your ideas with trial reels
Pressure-test new ideas
Trial reels let you try out content and see how it performs by giving you the option to share it with non-followers first.
Trial reels don’t appear on your profile or get shown to your followers. Instead, Instagram shows trial reels exclusively to people who don’t already follow you, giving you more freedom to explore content outside of your niche.
Note: You must have a professional account to use trial reels. Select creators without a professional account may have access to trial reels as part of ongoing testing.
See what performs
24 hours after sharing your trial reel, you’ll start seeing key engagement metrics like views, likes, comments and shares. If you like how a trial reel is performing, you can decide to share the reel with everyone on Instagram, including your followers.
You can also update your settings to automatically share any trial reel with your followers within the first 72 hours.
Take more creative chances
Trying new things can be exciting, but it can also be intimidating, especially if you're not sure how your audience will react. That's why we created trial reels, so you have a space to experiment with different concepts, characters, and content styles before posting it to main.
DIVERSIFY YOUR CONTENT
Engage your audience on multiple levels
Mix it up with different formats
Use photos, carousels, reels, stories, and live broadcasts to keep things fresh and interesting for your followers. Embracing multiple formats is a great way to stay consistent with posting while also mixing it up.
Express yourself with creative effects
Tell a richer story with audio
Express yourself and bond with your community through music and sound. Experiment with using both trending and original audio, like voiceover, to create a vibe or capture a mood.
You can add up to 20 tracks to a single reel, giving you the flexibility to pair the right tracks with the right clips at the right time. When you layer multiple tracks in a reel, you’re also creating a unique audio mix attributed to you. To get started, tap “Add Audio” when editing a reel.
Pro-tip: If you plan to monetize your content, only use licensed audio available in Meta's Sound Collection, original audio you create, or audio obtained through a license or agreement with the copyright holder to avoid getting demonetized.
*Trending audio is available in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, France, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Great Britain, Spain, Italy and Germany.
MAKE ENGAGING REELS
Create reels that stop their scroll
Reels best practices
People reshare 4.5 billion reels per day across Facebook and Instagram. Follow these best practices to help your reels break through:
🫶 Create content that people will want to share
⏱️ Hook your audience within the first 3 seconds
🎥 Upload the highest resolution possible
🎶 Use trending songs and audio
📝 Optimize for sound off (use text/closed captions)
🤝 Reply and engage with comments on your reels within the first few days
⏰ Keep content under 3 minutes to be recommended to non-followers
CREATIVE CONSIDERATIONS
Simple ways you can help your content find its audience
Don’t steal original content, put your own spin on it
When Instagram finds two or more identical pieces of content, it only recommends the original. That said, other people’s content can be a great source of inspiration for your next idea. Trends allow you to tap into a cultural moment and make it your own.
Create content that is valuable and shareable
Think about how to make your content relevant to your audience. For example, if you’re a creator who reviews food, posting about a new restaurant could result in shares from people who want to check the place out with their friends.
Make your content accessible
Accessibility features like captions, timed-text, image descriptions and text-to-speech give more people a way to enjoy your content.
Instagram will automatically display the captions on a video when it is played with sound off, and timed-text can allow people to read along. For users who rely on screen readers, image descriptors help them understand the content of your photos, and text-to-speech will read aloud any text that is added to a video.
NURTURE CONNECTIONS
Engagement is a two-way street
Reach out to your audience
What better way to understand what will truly click with your audience than to ask them? Reach out through comments, DMs, stories, channels, or even go live. You can also add a poll to your posts to get quick and easy feedback.
Avoid engagement bait
Engagement bait is any tactic that encourages people to interact with posts in an attempt to artificially boost engagement or increase their reach. Most people don’t enjoy seeing these kinds of posts in their feed, so Instagram will reduce visibility on any piece of content that’s using engagement bait.
For example, it’s fine to ask viewers to share your content with a genuine call-to-action, but you shouldn’t lure people into clicking the share button (e.g. “the 2nd person on your share list is your enemy”).
Connect in the comments
Keep the conversation going. Liking or replying to comments on your reel within the first couple days can help you generate more engagement. You can also reply to a comment on your reel with a reel for a more personal touch!
