Instagram Reels for Artists: 11 Creative Ideas For Content
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Written by Ramsey Brown.
Instagram is one of the most used platforms among musicians to promote music and grow their fanbases. With 500 million daily users spending an average of 30 minutes per day on the app, there’s no question why artists look to this social media platform as their main means of self-promotion.
But now with the video-sharing app, TikTok giving Instagram a run for their money, IG had to step it up in terms of features they offer users — thus, Instagram Reels were introduced.
Instagram Reels are short-form, vertical videos that can be up to 60 seconds long. Users can record and edit together video and photo clips, add music, filters, and fun edits to the videos, and then share them on the app.
Since their start, IG Reels have certainly spiced things up for not only the average Instagram user, but for businesses, brands, and creators as well. Videos have a much higher engagement rate than typical still photos and offer a unique visual experience and story to viewers.
Reels are becoming integral to many brands’ content strategies and marketing plans. So, if you are an emerging musician trying to grow your fanbase — utilizing the power of Instagram Reels should be a top priority of yours moving forward.
Artists who implement Reels correctly see more content engagement, higher page traffic, increased followers, and have greater brand visibility than those who don’t use reels.
The effectiveness of IG Reels is obvious, but many artists fail to come up with the compelling content needed to actually make an effective Reel. This is why we have come up with 11 creative content ideas for you to use on your next Instagram Reel.
If you’re a musician in need of some inspiration to take your Instagram engagement to the next level, check out our list of creative Reel suggestions below:
11 Creative Instagram Reel Ideas for Artists:
In today’s music industry, having good music isn’t enough to make you famous. Social media is a crucial part of the puzzle and being able to market and promote yourself online is almost just as important (if not more) as the quality of your music.
Although artists have the creative gift of making amazing music, that doesn’t necessarily mean they have the creative gift of making amazing social media content as well. But fear not — below you’ll find 11 different ideas that you can use for creating awesome Instagram Reels.
1) Photo Reel
If you are brand new to Instagram Reels, creating a photo Reel is a simple and foolproof way to begin learning the feature. Photo Reels are a collection of still photos that play in the form of a slideshow video, with the option to include background music to play behind it.
When you go to the ‘Reels’ tab in the app, it will give you the option to pull photos or videos from your phone’s media library to include in the Reel. You’ll then select the photos you want in the video one by one, setting the duration of how long you want each photo to appear on the screen.
Instagram Reels have a time limit of 60-seconds. For example, you could choose 60 different photos with a duration of one second each. Or, you could upload 30 different photos, each with a duration of two seconds long.
For artists, this is a great opportunity to showcase photos of you, your band members, footage from events, and much more — in a much more creative way than just posting single still photos. You can also add your very own music to accompany the footage. The song title and artist name will appear on the Reel.
For more information on how to get your music on Instagram Reels, check out our article here.
2) Introduce Yourself
Before you attempt to make extravagant Reels with awesome edits and creative features, you first need to start by introducing yourself as an artist or your band. This is a simple way to engage with fans and give your followers insight into who you are behind the music.
If you are in a band, each member could record a short snippet introducing themselves, telling viewers what role they play in the group, what they like to do for fun, and who their musical inspirations are.
The great thing about this is that members don’t even have to be in the same room to create a Reel together. Each person could record their own short self-introduction videos and send them to one member to put them together in a Reel format.
3) Music Video Preview
Another quick and easy way for artists to create engaging Instagram Reels is through using their music videos that have already been shot and recorded.
Reels are just videos in themselves, so if you already have a music video out, you can take a 60-second clip of the video to include in a Reel. Or, if you are planning to release a music video soon, using Reels to give a sneak-peak preview of the new video is a great way to build hype among your fans and promote the video before it drops.
All you would need to do is save the video in your phone’s media library, trim the music video length to 60-seconds or less, and scale the video to size — fitting correctly with Instagram’s vertical format ratio.
4) Use Current Trends
Once you’ve become familiar with using Instagram’s Reel feature and you now want to get your videos in front of more people, a great way to increase visibility is by hoping on current trends.
TikTok is the video trend capital of the internet. If you are wondering what the latest fad is and how you can get involved, head over to TikTok and scroll through the Explore page. See what other businesses, brands, and influencers are doing and if it makes sense for you and your brand, hop on the trend as well!
Whether it’s a dance, challenge, or whatever, get in on the fun and encourage your fans to do the same! You can always create your own trend in hopes that it is the next big thing to go viral.
5) Offer Tips, Tricks, & Advice
If you are running out of creative content ideas for Instagram Reels, consider offering your audience tips, tricks, and advice about whatever craft you know well! If you are a producer, you could create a video showing some DAW tricks that you use to create music.
If you are a singer, you could show your audience some tips on how you warm up your voice before a show. Or, you could even go completely go left-field and offer tips and tricks on something completely unrelated to music.
You may be an artist who is also an amazing cook on the side — get creative here and show viewers your cooking skills and advice you have in the kitchen. This not only shows your audience a side of you that they’ve never seen before, but they also will appreciate gaining valuable knowledge from someone they follow and admire.
6) Be Funny & Make Viewers Laugh
If it’s the attention of viewers you are wanting to grab, one of the best ways you can do this is by making them laugh. IG Reels give artists a great opportunity to show their fans a glimpse into their lives and personalities aside from the music their most known for.
Using Reels to make a video compilation of you playing pranks, doing impressions, or just being goofy and joking around is a perfect way for artists to show a less serious side of themselves.
Throw some on-screen texts and captions on top of the videos, along with some of your own music or audio to further increase engagement and views.
7) Capture The Creative Process
An artist’s creative process is going to be unique and different from any other artist in the world. Therefore, if you are in need of a unique IG reel idea, try giving viewers insight into the creation of your music and the efforts you put behind your song production.
Artists can show clips of them in the studio, a producer making beats, or the trial and error of songwriting and recording. One specific artist who often makes these types of creative reels is rapper and producer, Russ.
You can find numerous Reels on Russ’s Instagram showing clips of him in the studio creating instrumentals, writing hooks, building song bridges, and displaying the creation of certain songs from start to finish.
8) Fan Q&A
If you are in a bind coming up with new Instagram Reels ideas, try looking in your own DM’s and comments section for inspiration. Chances are you have followers asking you all sorts of questions like “When are you dropping new music?” or “Can you make a tour stop in Miami?”
It’s not always feasible to respond to every single DM you receive, but you could take the time to answer some of these questions via Instagram Reels.
If you notice some good questions, jot them down and save them for future Instagram Reels ideas. You can also encourage your followers to ask you questions by using the questions sticker on Instagram Stories, then create a reel to answer the questions later on.
9) Reel Remixes
Instagram launched a feature for Remix on Reels, allowing people to mix in other people’s Reels into their original posts. When users create a Remix, another user’s original Reel will appear on the left side of the screen, while their own recording will appear on the right. Both videos will play at the same time. This allows users to create reaction videos, duets, and so on.
This is a great reel idea for artists to experiment with, getting fans to use and repurpose their own videos, sharing them with a wider audience. One of the best ways to incorporate a Reel Remix is through song remixes.
A common example of this is artists posting acapella versions of their songs as Reels. Followers can then ‘remix’ the reel, adding side-by-side videos and audio of them playing an instrument over the original audio. Artists can even further encourage followers to remix their Reels by posting their favorite fan videos on their page.
10) Bloopers & Mistakes
When it comes to what people post on social media, the majority always put their best faces forward. As an artist, you probably have a ton of videos and clips of your best live performances or the best images from your photoshoots.
But if you are looking for unique content ideas to really grab the attention of your audience, try something quite the opposite by creating a Reel displaying videos of your bloopers and mistakes.
Everyone makes mistakes, especially performing musicians. Showing this side of yourself to your fans will make you look humble and more relatable, plus it’s sure to give viewers a good laugh.
11) Every Day Life Footage
When artists and musicians are coming up with Reel ideas for Instagram, they tend to think that their content has to be music-related. While of course most of your posts should be related to your music, it is also a good idea to incorporate and display real-life footage.
Similar to a behind-the-scenes Reel, but instead of focusing the Reel behind the scenes of your music, take your followers through your daily routine or the scenes leading up to making music.
This may look like you doing morning yoga, cooking breakfast, picking out your OOTD, or whatever it is that you do in your daily life that viewers may find interesting to watch.
Wrapping Up
The great thing about Instagram Reels is that you have a completely blank canvas to play with. Artists can literally create whatever type of video they want, however they want it. These 11 content ideas mentioned above are just a very few examples of how musicians can use Reels to their advantage .
It’s important to remember that your Reels don’t have to be perfect, and they don’t have to be serious either. The important thing is that you are actually making them. So, what are you waiting for? Give your fans what they actually want and start creating your very own personalized IG Reels today!
When your song is ready to go, it's time to start promoting it to potential fans! Omari has the best organic promotion services money can buy. With packages for Spotify, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, we will get your music the traffic and attention it deserves! Click below for more information.
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