💡 Master The Art Of Leveraging Instagram Reels For Your Business 🚀 With Allison Hardy — Build A Life By Design with Adrienne Hill

Instagram Reels, Facebook posts, and tweeting on Twitter are just some of the social media features that people use daily. How can you make these platforms useful for your business, and just how effective are they at doing that? In this episode, Allison Hardy shares how using Instagram reels benefits her business. She is leaving little breadcrumbs showing how success is discovered. Tune in to this inspiring episode and learn how to use this opportunity to sell more to people.

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💡 Master The Art Of Leveraging Instagram Reels For Your Business 🚀

You are in for a special treat because I am here with Allison Hardy. She is the Creator of the 6-Figure Mompreneur Podcast, and a Huffington Post contributor, she has been featured in YFS Magazine and was named one of Washington DC’s Most Influential Professionals Under 40 by Washington Life Magazine. I am so thrilled to have her with us here.

What Alison does is she helps mompreneurs to set up and launch systems that run in the background designed to help them sell their products, offers, and services daily so that they can scale their business without trading dollars for hours. She is an expert on using Instagram Reels to grow her following, her leads, and her client base. She is the perfect person to be talking with in this episode. Welcome so much, Allison. I am so glad to have you here.

Thank you so much for having me. I am excited to be here.

Let’s dig right in because many people are interested in learning more about Instagram Reels. It is a new feature. It is gotten a whole lot of buzz and a lot of people are addicted because they are so fun. In case anyone has not met you before, could you tell us a little bit about you and your background and how you started using Instagram Reels in your business?

My business started when I got laid off at six months pregnant with my first. I needed to make money. That is really all there was to it. It was a do-or-die moment. We did not have any savings. We were a young, married couple expecting our first kid and we needed money, so I started a business. What I quickly realized was that after my son was born, postpartum depression hit, and a business that was all over the place in the very new, early stages was not sustainable. The stuff I was doing to work my business could not be done anymore because my time was so short. I needed to take care of the house, family, myself, kid, and all that stuff. I dug deep one day and I was like, “What can I do to work smarter and not harder?”

Those were always my questions, “How can I do this better? How can I do what I am doing better to get better results? What does that look like for me?” I really dove deep into systems and automations. I got real nerdy with email funnels. Back then they were still in the earlier stages. How can I take what I have in place and do it better? I very quickly realized as I started working through this process, that there were other people out there experiencing very similar things as I was.

I was like, “How can I help these people?” I had a personal training business. It was a fitness-based business. I shut that whole thing down. I was like, “Let’s do this business thing because I could probably help more people do some bigger things in their lives through business than I can with personal training.”

That is where I got started. Why Reels are so important to me is because of what I just said. It makes you work smarter, not harder because Instagram favors it. They do not want it to fail. Never in the history of any social media platform have they been like, “Let’s roll out this new feature within it and have it fail.” They are going to prioritize it. Looking at Facebook Live when that first came out, its main job was to kill Periscope.

They are sure as heck wanted you to stay on that platform using Facebook Live. It did, nobody uses Periscope anymore. It is the same thing with Instagram Reels and Instagram Reels is trying to compete with TikTok. One would argue they are not as successful in killing it but they favor in the algorithm. We are here to use our time and our resources in a more effective way and in a way that gets better and bigger results. Reels are the way to go. That is why I dove head first into Reels.

IES S2 17 Allison | Instagram Reels — Instagram Reels: The thing about reels is that they can benefit you regarding visibility.

I love so many aspects of her story. I can relate to many of them. I am so glad you are here with us and I am sure the readers can relate with a lot of them as well. What I love about your story, specifically, is you had one idea for a business. You started this quest for knowledge to figure out, “How can I do this better?” It sent you in a whole new direction.

That is exactly what I did. I started building a business and encountering problems, I am like, “There has got to be a better way.” In my quest for knowledge, I did very much the same thing. I pivoted in the same way you did. Pay attention to her story. She is leaving little breadcrumbs showing how success is discovered and look what she did.

She found a feature that was hot and new and got all over it so she could work smarter, not harder. Let’s dig into that a little bit further then. I love what you shared about how anytime there is a new feature, whichever platform is featuring that, they do not want it to fail. They want it to succeed so the algorithm favors it, which is huge. That’s part of what makes Instagram Reels so unique.

No one really knows but how long if you were to estimate that period where the platform treats it as the hot, new thing, what time do you feel like they probably do that for? How long is it hot and how long has it been heavily favored in the algorithm? Have you noticed anything over time with how that has been playing out?

A couple of things happen. It is definitely still favored, not as much because it has been around now for a while. Instagram is cooking something else up. I do not know what it is but I get the feeling that they are going to do something new here pretty soon because they release new features about every year or so. I do think that eventually, the algorithm disfavors it a little bit but also what happens is everybody starts using it.

I do not know for sure if the algorithm is not favoring it as much anymore. All I know is that more people are using it now. You are competing with more people. Anytime a new feature within a platform comes out, the early adopters like the people who do it in the first couple of days, take that and put something out there, usually get a lot of visibility. People catch on and see that you are competing with more people. There is more fish in the water at that point. I do not really know if it is an algorithm disfavoring thing or a competition thing but that is usually what I see.

I am sure Instagram has metrics of what they would consider successful. I am guessing that more and more people jump on the bandwagon and start using it, that is what they are considering success. They are going to continue to boost that algorithm until they have reached some goal number that they have, I would imagine. From what I have observed, it still seems to be really hot. For anyone reading, have you been getting into Reels? Let us know if this has been catching your attention because we want to dive deep now into this. You had mentioned that they were similar to TikTok. Do you use both and have you observed any major differences between the two or are they easily comparable?

I do not use them both. I cannot handle another platform. I am open to exploring because, with the whole working smarter, not harder thing, I am already on Instagram. I am already there. I have built a pretty okay following there. I spend a lot of time there. I like it. Me spending time on something else is not in the cards, so I have not dug deep into TikTok. I was on it for a day and then I was like, “Too much.” I do not want to learn another thing. The reason why I spend time on Reels and Instagram is that I am already there. It makes sense for me and what I am doing in my goal to hang out there.

That is great because I am sure tons of the people reading already have an Instagram account. They have probably already been growing a following. Maybe TikTok is this new thing that they are like, “Is it worth it?” Instagram is unique in that it is one of the only platforms where you can share a traditional post but you can also share Reels and you have stories.

Use your time and resources more effectively and in a way that gets better and bigger results.

Instagram is the platform that is layering in all these elements that, to my knowledge, no other platform carries that many features. It is definitely, like you said, working smarter, not harder. Tell us about what are the benefits of using Instagram Reels as a part of your social media strategy and what have you seen transforming your own business? What is possible when you start leveraging Reels?

The actual format of a reel is super consumable. They used to be 15 seconds long and then they went up to 30 and now some accounts have 60 seconds. They are short pieces of content that play. I do not know if this is human psychology, a good idea but either way it is the truth. Our attention span is a lot shorter than it used to be because these pieces of content are a lot shorter, they are very consumable. The average Reel watcher watches for 7 seconds, despite us still having the ability to go up to 60 seconds. It is a seven-second attention span we have now. It makes me think of a goldfish analogy. We really have no attention span. That is important to know.

With Reels, having a hook, in the beginning, is important to get people to pay attention. The thing about reels is that they can really benefit you when it comes to visibility. A lot of people say to me, “I do a post and get five likes or I will spend all this time crafting an IGTV or doing the IG Live and it gets 50 views. While I am super grateful for those views and I am grateful for the likes, and I know that there are people with a beating heart, I just want more.” If you want more people to see your stuff, Reels are the way to go. In my account, my regular posts will get 50 likes and that is fine and great but my Reels get 5,000 views.

Compared to other accounts, that is nothing. The sheer reach that you got with Reels is considerably more. Now that Instagram has rolled out insights for Reels before we had the views count and that was it. Now we can see how many people are our followers that seeing our Reels, and how many people are not our followers that are seeing our Reels. In my accounts, 30% of my followers see my Reels and 70% of not my followers see my reels.

It is getting me and my message in front of new people. When you can get people looking at your stuff, Instagram’s algorithm is going to push your content to them because they say, “They watched this. Let’s send them some more stuff.” When you have carousel posts or Instagram TVs, they are more likely to see your stuff because you have done a reel to gain their attention and then brought them in through the carousel or the Instagram TV, or whatever that other piece of content you are creating is.

This is playing a key strategy in your business to get more eyes on your content than you would otherwise be getting.

The visibility with reels is considerably different than any other feature in the platform.

I am seeing a two-part strategy. You use the Reels to get the eyes on your stuff and then they start looking at all of your other stuff within your Instagram family of content.

Reels are so bingeable, if they go onto your account and click the Reels tab, that is the Holy Grail. They are going to scroll through all your Reels because they take fifteen seconds to watch. They are going to watch a couple of Reels. When it does that, Instagram’s algorithm is like, “This person likes this person. Let’s send them more of their stuff.” When you continue to back up your strategy with educational posts or awesome IGTVs that serve and deliver them juicy nuggets of goodness, they are going to become your people a lot faster than wishing crossing your fingers and eyes, and hoping that like your beautifully curated image gets to the right people. If you want to get to the right people, do a Reel first.

You guys, pay attention. If you have your actual workbook, take it out and write this down. The Reel is the first step to attracting people in and then make sure you have other content that they can discover as well, whether it is a story or a post or an Instagram TV, they will start bingeing your other stuff. Make notice of what Allison is sharing here because Reels are so consumable and short, I have been noticing this phenomenon as well that no one wants to sit down and watch an hour-long video but they are happy to binge-watch 62 Reels for an hour.

Absolutely, because they are entertaining. The main goal of the reel is to entertain someone. While an educational video is great if you can make someone laugh, if you can relate to them, you should do that first, and then be like, “I have these awesome other educational videos you can watch.” You have got them in your wheelhouse and they are your person now.

All these extra people are finding your reels. Have you been able to translate that into more followers, leads, and sales of your products?

Yes. Whenever you get in front of more people, you have the opportunity to sell to more people. What I have found is that they come from Reels. They usually consume a couple of carousels because they are also flippable and easy to consume, especially if you are delivering small chunks of information along the way. They usually go to the podcast and then you are with them throughout the day.

You are a part of their daily life and then they become a client through those three ways. In those other platforms like in the podcast, in the carousels, it is always some sort of pitch, whether it is, “Download the free lead magnet, enroll in my program, join my Facebook group.” There is some action that they are going to take to move them onto the next step in my customer journey.

You have definitely been seeing all those extra eyeballs turning into leads, customers, etc.

Absolutely.

If you want to get to the right people, do a reel first.

As long as you have a clear call to action, you are seeing it happen.

You got to have that call to action. You got to be constantly making that invite. If you do not, what are they going to do? They are not going to know what to d, so you got to tell them what to do.

If you do not invite someone to something, they cannot show up.

It is like having a birthday party and then just hoping people to show up. They are not going to do that. You have to say, “Download my thing, do this, do that. Let me serve you in a bigger and better way. I can do that through this offer.”

Let’s dive in a little bit deeper for the readers who are getting really motivated and realizing, “There is this 1, 2 strategy. Put the Reel out there and then let them discover my other content and then become a customer or a client.” They have never made a Reel. They do not even know where to start. Maybe they feel overwhelmed. What would you say to the new person who is ready to venture into Reels and trying to figure out how to get started? What is the first step?

Doing very simple, hold your phone, look at it, and talk to your camera. Give them your best tip for achieving the change that you helped your clients to do. You say something like, “My best tip for doing X is Y.” It is super short. Make it seven seconds or less. You will capture their attention and then they will probably watch it a couple of times. Talk to the camera like you talk to someone.

You do not have to do the lip-syncing if you do not want to. You do not have to dance. You do not have to point if you do not want to. Just talk to the camera. There is a really amazing account. She is a parenting coach and her name is Dr. Siggie. She has this amazingly engaged audience on Instagram. Her Reels are literally her thing, “Do you have this pain point? Try this.”

I watched all of them because I am like, “My three-year-old is driving me crazy. What can I do to make this better?” I watched them and they are nothing fancy. They are just simple text, face to the camera. I love them. At the end of the day, what matters most is that you are meeting your person where they are and you are helping them. Whether that is you entertaining them or giving them a tip or you are just sharing what is going on, people like people. They buy from people. The more people-y you can be to them, the more likely they are to buy from you.

They do not need to be complicated. They do not need to have all this crazy stuff. It can be just simple little statements and you can succeed with just that. This doctor is the perfect example.

Maybe you did a Facebook live a couple of months ago and it was like, “Five ways to do this.” One Reel should be way number one. The second Reel should be way number two. You can batch those things and take old content and reuse it and turn it into a reel. That is simple and easy to do. It is an amazing piece of content that lives forever on your Instagram account.

Not everything needs to be created from scratch. You can piece apart and reuse old stuff.

Even if you do not want to record, I am sure you have some videos you can just splice up and make them into reels also. If you want to get real fancy into the reusing of content thing, that is what you could do as well.

Quick question, I have never tried this and I am curious if you can do it. Once you have made a bunch of Reels, can you save them onto your phone outside of Instagram so that you could then reuse them somewhere else too?

You can do that. You can download them. Once they are live, you hit the little three buttons and it says something to the effect of, “Save to camera roll,” and it will save it right there on your phone. It is a video file that lives there and then you can reuse it in other places. You could splice them together as a YouTube video or make them into a series in your Facebook group. You can do a lot of different things. You can totally do that.

Anytime I find a strategy where you can reuse repurpose content, like absolutely. For those people reading, I hope your creative juices are starting to flow here because already I am thinking about like, “If I took the time to create a bunch of Reels, I could download all of them and then use them as stories somewhere else, on a blog or wherever. Reuse this stuff.” That is fantastic.

Going back to those five tips of example, so you could do part 1, 2, or 3 of this thing, and you could turn that into blog posts or podcast episodes. There could be so many different ways that you reuse that type of content that also helps you to keep your messaging really consistent because you are constantly talking about this one thing. It can also be a great starting off point too, for bigger pieces of content. A lot of times, we make a big piece of content and then we break it down. It can be the opposite. You can start with a bunch of little pieces and then chunk it up into this big hearty piece of content if that is what you wanted to do as well.

I imagine anyone who has any checklist or top five ways to do this or whatever, immediately, you have five Reels. Already, you have a pool of content, not just one Reel but you have the idea for five now. Now that people are starting to realize how easy it might be to repurpose and reuse the content as a Reel or for a Reel, is there a certain frequency that people should be sharing reels? How many times a day should they be putting these things out there?

Instagram suggests four Reels a week.

Whenever you get in front of more people, you have the opportunity to sell to more people.

A week, not even a day.

I feel like you are like, “That is not so bad.” For other people, they are like, “That is terrible.” The frequency has to work for you. I am always a fan of pushing and challenging yourself to do more but if it is just not possible right now, do not do more. It is quality over quantity all the time. Also, there is the other side to it. Are you letting yourself off the hook? Are you really committed to growing your Instagram account? What is it going to take for you to get to the next level? Is it going to be more Instagram followers? It might make sense for you to dive into more reels. If it is something else, do what you can. It is a matter of what is possible for you. What does Instagram subscribe to? What do they recommend and then where do you fall on that?

Even for a week, that is one every other day.

It may seem a lot but it is really not. Especially if you are just doing the breaking down of the five things or you find a viral song and just do a quick clip syncing. It is not that much but for someone starting out, it could be a little overwhelming. Do what you can.

If you think about it, it is anywhere from 7 to 15 seconds every other day.

Sometimes it is like, “Do what you can.” What if you did an experiment? I am always a fan of this. If you get curious and you are like, “For the next 90 days, I am going to post four Reels a week. I am going to listen to Instagram and do what they say.” Track it. See what happens inside of your account. You have insights now. See what reach you are getting. It might prove to you, to someone else or whoever you got to prove it to that this is a good use of your time.

If your goal is to grow your Instagram account and then you see that it is growing because you are posting four Reels a week, that is some good data coming back to you. It also depends on your goals and all that good stuff. I would recommend four. If Instagram tells you to do something and you want to grow your Instagram, you should probably do it.

You did that. You started leveraging Reels. You started tracking your results. Clearly, you had some success there. To help the readers understand what this looks when it starts to scale, do you happen to have any stats off-hand or can you ballpark let the readers know when you first started? What did that growth look like? Have you had any Reels that have gone viral?

My very first Reel got 3,000 views. I remember being like, “Holy crap, what magic had I arrived on?” It is a terrible Reel. It is still up. I bring it up every now when I do things like this. It is a terrible piece of content. It was bad but it got 3,000 views. I was like, “Maybe this is something I should do.” It did not have music for a while or sound. None of them in the early stages have sounds like this very strange piece of content. It is not even good but it got 3,000 views. Consistently, I was getting around 2,000 to 3,000 views. Sometimes it will go up to 5,000. I posted one and it is still at 140 views.

I do not know why. I cannot really figure it out but it happens sometimes. My very first viral Reel for me was 11,000 views and then I had one go 30,000 views and then the other one is around 50,000 views. From that, you see a spike in followers, engagement, and DMs and comments. The possibilities become endless. The reason why those couple of Reels went viral is that I used a popular sound. If you see a sound over and over again, it might make sense even if you have bashed a couple of Reels to replace one with this viral one and move that one around so that you can take advantage of that viralness but also, it spoke to my ideal client.

It was very much so me with my three-year-old usually, talking to the camera or doing a silly sound and she is being silly in the background. Showing my ideal client that like, “I got it. I am in the trenches with you too. I know you got your three-year-old at home because you have not gone to school in eighteen months. Here we are together doing Reels and it is cool.” It is speaking to your ideal client and helping them to understand like, “I do get you. I get it. I understand but I know you are here and you want to go here. I can help you do that. Here is how we need to do this together.” The sound and/or the messaging to the ideal client is important in going viral.

That is so inspiring and I am sure the readers are inspired now, simply realizing you do not need a perfect background. You do not need a totally silent house. You do not need to be perfectly done up. In fact, if you are living real life and you got stuff everywhere and your kid on your hip and are doing whatever, that is real and that is what people connect with.

The beauty of Reels also, if that is a concern of yours, is that they are only 7, 15, 30, and 60 seconds long. You could get it together for that amount of time too. We went up here in a somewhat polished way. You want to appear to be a professional but it does not have to be this big orchestrated thing. You can have real-life going on in the background and it is just a short piece of content that is easy and fun to make and can impact people. That is what we are all about.

Not only impacting our audiences and making a difference in our industry but having fun. Reels are fun. They are funny to make. They are fun to watch. They are fun to consume. They are a great tool to add to your arsenal if you want to grow your following, your engagement, your leads, and your customers. If people reading this are ready, they are ready to start making their first handful of Reels, maybe trying to get their own viral reel out there to feel what it feels like when they get that lift of all these views.

Imagine 11,000, 30,000 or 50,000 views and eyes on your stuff. That is what we want. How can they go about trying to figure out how to make their first couple of Reels or maybe the first couple of viral Reels? Do you have a certain formula that you could teach them or an easy button that you could help them with?

I have a freebie for you. It is called the three viral Reel strategies. Those three Reels that I just mentioned, 11,000, 30,000, and 50,000 views, I break it down for you. I show you the example. I show you the strategy and the psychology behind it and some pro tips to make it easier for you to implement. I have that as a lead magnet. You can download it.

The two factors are viral sounds and relatability, so when you can capture both of those two things, it is when your content has a better chance of getting more views. I also think posting consistently is important and doing what Instagram wants you to do like posting four Reels a week, can really help with that too. Part of it is like playing to the algorithm. Another part is messaging.

What an abundant gift to share with our readers. I hope you guys all scoop this up. This is going to be super helpful in getting you started, whether you are brand new and you do not even know what to say or whether you are further along but you are ready to start finally having some viral content. The fact that Allison is going to break down her three most viral Reels for you and not just exactly what she did but the strategy behind like, “Here is why you put this type of content or here is what you want your audience thinking when they see your stuff.”

I know she does a fantastic job at this because I had scooped up one of her Reels training. I wanted to get in there and see what was inside. It is genius the way she breaks this down. For her to share her top three viral ones with you is a superabundant gift. Thank you so much for sharing that, Allison. They are going to love it.

I am happy to help.

I hope after reading this, you feel inspired to bring Reels into your strategy specifically on Instagram, as a way to get more eyes on your stuff, who will then go look at your posts, your stories, your Instagram TVs, click your bio link, do all those other things. It is the perfect way to entice people in to get to know you. It is fun for them. It is fun for you. Allison, we are so blessed to have had you with us here. Thank you so much for sharing all your knowledge about Reels and how to get started with Reels.

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About Allison Hardy

Allison Hardy helps busy mompreneurs set up launch systems that run in the background, designed to help them sell their products/offers/services, daily, so that they can scale their business without trading dollars for hours.

Allison is the creator of The 6-Figure Mompreneur Podcast, a Huffington Post Contributor, have been featured in YFS Magazine, and was named one of Washington, D.C.'s most influential professionals under 40 by Washington Life Magazine.

She's also wife to Teer, and mom to eight year old Camden and three year old Nora.