Use Instagram To Repurpose Your Blogs in a Creative Way.

How to use your blogs for reels and stories on Instagram to reach a wider audience.

As a creator and a creative, I am someone who has a business but has two different avenues and I have meshed them together under one business. This has left me in a unique position to market myself in the world of social media.

I am a writer and a holistic healer. It may seem a bit weird putting those two together, but this works for me. As I equally love both ventures.

However, I have struggled to create my niche as I wrestle with many things required from social media. Including, trying to catch up with what is current, considering the environment changes so quickly. The main issue is being in front of the camera. I am more behind the scenes, I struggle with live videos for both Facebook and Instagram.

As a writer, I look to find more ways to get more engagement on my blogs that doesn't involve me having my face be the first thing you see on my posts. The end goal is to bring more clients to my therapies and a way to be of service through what I have learned on my spiritual awakening journey through my writing.

I gently wade into anything new. I am not a jump-in kind of entrepreneur.

I want to look for the perfect medium and a social media tool I enjoy using before I devote all of my time. The aim is to have one audience for my writing and the other for healing, while also overlapping slightly.

There will be a crossover between clients that love the writing and the healing. I want to strengthen that and make it a bridge that you can easily cross over from one side to the other with ease.

And, while social media or business blogs are not my focus, as someone that loves to help other people, I felt guided to share my tips at the beginning of this new adventure. Will it be successful? I will leave that up to the universe.

I may write more detailed know-how, most likely later in the year. And, when I have been at it for longer than 5 mins. I will be able to show my insights on what has or has not worked for me.

I read a story a few weeks ago from Nick Nolan on combining two different social media avenues or two different types of content to communicate your message.

I loved the idea of it all. It makes perfect sense to someone like me. It has been percolating in my mind ever since, I want to try all forms of media. I looked into Tik-Tok for a few days and left it just as quickly. It was not the type of community I wanted to reach.

I concluded that Instagram and Facebook are to be my focus for the next three months. Then, I would re-evaluate based on the reach data, and either drop one of the avenues or both and try elsewhere.

I do envision using YouTube and medium of course. Twitter and Pinterest are on the list also further down the line. But I also don`t want to post across all social media and then spend hours creating batch content if I don't need to.

Having a presence in front of the camera is where I get anxious. I have been researching more on how to show your business off if you are not comfortable being the star of the show. I was happy to see that this was already a thing. Even on Instagram reels, this is beginning to occur.

Introverts rejoice!

This has been very useful to me, and there is a lot of information. Probably too much. I had to walk away from it for a short time. I became overwhelmed. I am like a kid in a candy store, I want to eat everything. But, If I do it all in one go, I get sick. It is the same with social media and trying my best to keep up with the influencers.

Plus, I was also putting myself under so much pressure trying to be seen by everyone, including those who were not my target audience. What was worse, I was posting even though I didn't feel right and was not come across as authentic.

In my industry, energy matters, and I can sense energy from others. I am sure, the people I want to reach think like me too. I did not want to lose followers before I even had a chance.

The gap I did find, was that while the behind-the-scenes type of posts was great for artists of all kinds of people who could showcase their work or sell products. Those of us, writers or bloggers, and most likely introverts did not want to be in front of the camera.

Nor do we feel what we do is exciting enough to share when we spend most of our time in the dark writing with cold cups of coffee nearby. I have found that there may be only a small area to explore. This is a good start. And, I am not talking about quote posts, there are enough of them already. To the point, they are overdone. It is important to me that my reels don`t come across that way.

We know that we can not expect people to buy or read from us if they have no idea who we are. Our work has to hook people in from the very beginning.

Our approach to social media showcasing our work is the same. Even though I know what I can offer my future clients, currently they do not know me. The realisation of this was a bit of an ego bruise, but a lesson nonetheless.

Now that I have waffled on enough. Let’s get to it.

So, how do you as a writer/blogger use social media to get more reach on trending tools from Instagram?

Below is the simple version of the process. There are endless videos on YouTube to help you step by step. This is how I learned. For this purpose, we are discussing reels. You can apply this to stories also.

Note: Reels can only be created from your mobile phone. Stories can be from your desktop computer or laptop.

1. Have/create an Instagram account. In your profile settings, switch your account to a creator. You may already be a business account. I am not sure if the following will work with a personal account. If it does, let me know. I would love to know.

2. You can switch back to your business account at any time. As a creator account, it gives you more access to music. I switch to creator, design the reel, post and switch back. You don`t have to, you can remain in creator mode.

3. Add a video or image. Pixels have videos. Unless you are a professional photographer, I suggest using one from a free website. Otherwise, the quality may not be as good. I only discovered that both Pixels and Pixabay have videos. (Insert facepalm) Yup, as I said, social media is not my jam. You can also record straight from your phone and upload it.

3b. Reels and stories can also be put together in Canva. You will need to download it to your phone to share it within a reel.

4. Choose the blog from which you want to use. I am using short-form for my reels. And stories, I will use my longer blogs. It is important to note at this time, seven seconds is the sweet spot for reels. You can add more than one reel to your post at one time, but be mindful of the viewers. They tend to get bored quickly and like skimming through different posts. Ensure that each reel is different if you are going to post more than 2. 5. Next, you can add text in any pretty way you want to display it. You may even choose to use your voice, as a voice-over. I have not done that yet. Instagram has options to alter your voice if you do not like hearing your own.

6. After adding text, it is time to choose your music from the library, or search for something that has not been listed. Reels also allow you to save a song if you find it on another reel. Select the music you like, and preview the reel before you post it.

7. In the comments section of your post, write a short blurb. Include the link to the rest of the blog, or have your link tree set up in your bio. Make sure to include 8 to 10 hashtags. You can do a search easier when you are selecting your tags.

I feel adding the link to your blog in the bio or in the comment box as well as high-performing tags and a quality reel, can help push your content to a wider audience. It may not be a concept that is out of the box, but a good way to stay innovative.

Moving Forward:

For each week, I plan to post one reel as a minimum. If you have more time to spare, you could post several reels over a week. Once or twice a week is enough to start. You can add a story once a week and if time permits post 3 to 4 times a week for other content.

You can also share straight to Facebook at the time of posting to Instagram if you have both accounts linked.

It can be time-consuming if you are not familiar with it. But it does get easier.

Each week I will re-purpose the one short form over a few weeks. I won’t be sharing the entire post. If there are some juicy parts that I feel will be what my audience needs to hear or if it can help them, then I may spread it out over two weeks or longer.

I credit the image back to the creator, just like we would do here on medium. I also make sure I share to my feed for my audience that may not see reels, allowing me to save it to re-share later.

Final Thoughts

Don`t rush putting content together and just putting it out there if it is not of good quality. It is okay to do one for a test to see how it is after you have created it. I did this and deleted it soon after.

Clearly, I am no expert on the three posts I have done. They are not perfect, and some may fall into the ethers with little engagement. That is okay. All part of learning about what works or does not over the next three months.

I am a very visual person. I love watching and learning this way. I like that stories and reels are here for me to explore. It helps me keep on track with my goals. I know this will be an area that I can add to my self-taught repertoire.

You can employ a Virtual assistant. Or a social media creator to do it for you if you prefer to concentrate on other areas of your biz. Any task that allows me to be creative helps me keep my channels open. And personally, it leaves space for more ideas in my consciousness, for me to write about topics that interest me.

Social media can be daunting for introverts or those who want to use these mediums but find it overwhelming. Take the time and find out what is right for you. You never know where it can lead you. Researching other reels from others in your field helps a lot too.

Thanks for reading.

Let me know if you found this helpful or have any tips you can share with me or others. Comments welcome.