Your reel didn’t work: here’s how to figure out why.
So you’re diligently creating, editing and publishing reels to your business’s Instagram account and sometimes a reel does well, but most of the time it’s crickets in the audience. Have you ever wished you could figure out what part of the reel isn’t working? Is it the music? Is it the length of the content? Is it the hook or call-to-action?
What if we told you that there was a really simple way to figure out what was going on? That it takes a couple of taps on your screen to get a good idea of why your reel failed to resonate with your audience?
On your phone (this won’t work on Instagram’s desktop version), find a reel that you’ve posted that you feel should’ve performed better:
Double click on the 3 dots on the lower right hand side of the screen
Click on INSIGHTS
Then scroll to the bottom. You should see 2 graphs as you scroll - we’re interested in the second of the two in the “Retention” section.
Once you’ve got your graph, time to analyse what it means. Here are some of the most common reasons a reel might fail to gain traction:
If your reel’s graph looks similar to any of the above, now you’ve got your starting point. Go back and re-watch your reel to try and figure out where the pivotal moments are that have affected your content’s performance. If your hook isn’t hooking the way it should, figure out if you need a new one altogether or if you just need to word it differently. If there’s a specific moment where you lose viewers, figure out how to make sure your future reels don’t contain the same issue.
While it might feel uncomfortable to have to re-evaluate content you’ve poured your time and effort into, ultimately it’s all about future-proofing your content against lacklustre retention.
And if reel creation isn’t your thing, you’ll be happy to know we love it! Book your free 30 minute discovery call and let’s chat about how we can help take that stress away.
