Military PA Specialists can Leverage IG Reels to Increase Reach up to 10x in 2 Weeks

As a social media manager who produces content for the U.S. Navy, I understand the pressure to produce content that can be easily pushed out on all social media channels at the same time. While this megaphone approach to social media may seem appealing for broadcasting command information, effective public affairs is about strategically communicating messages to target audiences to achieve intended shifts in knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors. Instagram Reels is a new way of communicating to a broader audience with opportunities to engage with little more effort than we already use for social media content production.

The United States Naval Community College, the official community college of the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard, is a start-up organization, and as such, efficiency and time management are critical to accomplish strategic command goals. While press releases, photographs, and graphics are still the go-to means of communicating information about the school, video content tends to have the biggest impact on our reach and user engagement. The USNCC has the benefit of having an easily tangible metric of determining effectiveness of public messaging – the number of student applications and student interest forms filled out.

Quick Summary

• Instagram Reels are short looping videos that use a different algorithmic approach to reach audiences that are more likely to engage in the content; this is not dependent upon whether or not the user is following the account.
• The use of Instagram Reels does not require a heavy time investment or production value to be effective; a simple 30-second single-shot video can have a higher impact of reach and conversion to action than a heavily produced video.
• The results from the use of Instagram Reels can be the same day; this does not require a long time investment to start seeing the impact.
• Instagram Reels is useful for targeting the 18-29 year old demographic.

What are Instagram Reels?

Instagram Reels are Meta’s version of TikTok – a full-screen repeat-playing stream of vertical video content that shares the content with audiences based on algorithmically-driven interest rather than followership. What this means is that Instagram Reels do not operate the same way as other Instagram content or most other social media efforts. Each Reel is limited to 60 seconds in content and loops upon completion of the video. The user may, at any time, swipe up on the video to watch another video. Reels also includes the ability to add Stickers, on screen text, captions, hashtags, popular audio and filters. Additionally, it includes an integrated, although limited, video editing capability.

Most of Instagram’s content is pushed to the followers of an account. Posts, IGTV, and Live videos show up in the users feed, which focuses primarily on pushing the content to people who have already begun following the channel. Stories and Live videos are posted at the top of the Instagram banner providing prioritized distribution, but again, this is to those already following the Instagram account. Reels falls outside of this norm in that the prioritization of viewership is not based on followers, but rather on what kind of content users engage with. This means the potential for your command information to be seen by the audience you want is significantly higher using Reels than it is for any other content on Instagram.

How effective is it?

Using the USNCC Instagram channel, which made its first post in August 2021 with zero initial followers, we’ll look at the growth of the channel during the last seven months of its existence. To better understand the effectiveness of the channel and the content, let’s establish the terminology used for this discussion.

Definitions

An impression is the number of times your content was seen. Repeat views from the same account count as multiple impressions. This is different from reach in that reach is the number of unique accounts that have seen your content. This is an important distinction for two reasons. The first is that content that is seen multiple times by the same viewer doesn’t mean as much for increasing awareness as content that is seen fewer times by more users. The second reason is that accounts that are linked and crosspost between Instagram and Facebook, having the same person view your content on both platforms counts as two impressions; however, if they have their Facebook and Instagram accounts linked, this only counts as one reach unit. This is why reach is a better metric than impressions for determining awareness.

A profile visit is the number of times your profile is visited by a user. This requires the user to take an action beyond seeing your account and requires them to click on your profile. If you’ve got the URL to your command website in your profile (since Instagram won’t embed links in captions and most other content; you need at least 1,000 followers to embed links in your Stories) this is a way to determine if your content is creating a shift in attitude and behavior. These profile visits can convert to either a follow or a visit to your owned command information (social media is earned media, not owned media).

Engagement is the unit measurement of the different ways your audience can interact with your content. Whether this is through a like, comment, share, follow, or profile visit, each of these types of engagement increase the algorithmic calculation on what content you will see, and more importantly, who will see your content. Each type of engagement is weighed differently, and social media channels are constantly updating the algorithm to avoid social media managers like yourself from “beating” the algorithm.

With all of this in mind, let’s look at the USNCC’s growth and effectiveness using these metrics and how it has impacted the change in behavior for the command. We’ll view the progression across three phases. The first phase – initial growth – goes from the inception of the USNCC Instagram account to Nov. 30, 2021. The second phase – stagnation – covers the period of time between Dec. 1, 2021, and Feb. 27, 2022, when the Instagram account was not being regularly used for communication. The third phase – introducing Reels – covers the period of time from Feb. 28, 2022, to Mar. 12, 2022, when Instagram Reels were used as a tactic for command messaging.

Phase I - Initial Growth

With the establishment of the USNCC Instagram account and its first post on Aug. 20, 2021, this account’s presence and audience was starting from zero. Every engagement was earned initially through word-of-mouth and sharing with family, friends, and colleagues. This meant that the use of this account was highly experimental, allowing us to try new things and see what was effective while we were growing our audience. Everything was cross-posted from Facebook, which means the audience wouldn’t see any new or different content on Instagram that they wouldn’t already see on Facebook.?

Between Aug. 20, 2021 and Nov. 30, 2021, the USNCC Instagram posted 55 different pieces of content, including photos, videos, graphics, and animations. This does not include the few Stories that were posted to name the USNCC’s Learning Management System Nautilus. During this more-than-three month timeframe, the USNCC Instagram account gained 103 followers, had 350 profile visits, and reached 1,063 unique accounts.

Phase II - Stagnation

During the months of December and January, my attention was more focused on a combination of personal leave and a complete refresh of the command website. While I do not recommend a strategic communicator to stop posting to social media, social media is also a demanding job requirement that requires significant time bandwidth to manage effectively. As such, during this timeframe, we only mad three posts made during these two months – one on Christmas, one on New Year’s, and one on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. It was a week into February before the USNCC Instagram account started to become more regularly updated with 15 posts made over the course of three weeks. Additionally, there was a series of seven Stories released in one 24-hour period. This led to a total of 38 new followers, 108 visits, and a reach of 360 unique accounts during this three month period.

Phase III - Introducing Reels

On February 28, we released our first three Instagram Reels. They were highly-produced videos with specialized lighting and edited using Adobe Premiere to include captions, voice enhancement, and timing to ensure the videos looped seamlessly and achieved maximum saturation of command information while also maintaining the level of humor and creativity to be considered engaging content on the platform. The first three videos answered the questions of “What is the USNCC?” “What makes the USNCC different?” and “How do I apply to the USNCC?”

We released all three at the same time to provide our audience with at least three initial videos to view in Reels. This was to allow our audience to have another option of content to look at if they sought out more Reels content, and also provided the sense that this was a series that would include the possibility of more in the future. On that one day, we had a reach of 2,414 unique accounts, 54 profile visits, and 22 new followers. Additionally, and most importantly, this led to 53 new student interest forms filled out that day, compared to the 58 new student interest forms filled out over the four previous days combined.

That Friday, Mar. 4, 2022, we released a different style of video that was a low-production value, hand-held, naturally-lit video of me walking into the command senior enlisted leader’s office asking Sergeant Major Mike Hensley what he was doing at the USNCC. This video itself had a reach of 4,003 unique accounts.

With the release of two more videos from the highly-produced series – “What degrees do you offer now?” and “What is the Military Studies degree?” – and one more Sgt. Maj. question Reel, combined with the two uses of Instagram Live engagements, 13 Posts (two of these being IGTV posts on the feed being the saved Live videos), and 12 Stories, the USNCC channel was able to gain 111 new followers, 403 profile visits, and a reach of 12,304 unique accounts in less than two weeks.

The introduction of Instagram Reels was able to do in two weeks what took more than three months to accomplish in terms of growth and profile visits, and surpassed the reach by more than ten-fold what had been accomplished in six months. This also significantly increased both our student interest leads and applications. We have earned 373 new leads and 229 applications in the last two weeks. It took the six weeks prior to earn the same number of leads. Looking at the data across the lifetime of the Instagram channel, the explosion of reach, new followers, and profile visits can be traced to the individual days that we have released a new Reel. The days we release a Reel, we have a noticeable spike in all three areas, followed by a sharp drop on the days we do not release a Reel.

For reference, our Facebook account was established Feb. 12, 2019, so it has had 30 months more opportunity for growth than our Instagram account. On the day our Instagram account was established, our Facebook channel had already 823 likes, with almost a third of those (240 new followers) liking the page two days prior. In essence, it took our Facebook account 22 months to get the same number of followers, and 30 months to earn the same reach as the Instagram account has reached in less than seven months. Additionally, the Instagram channel is more effective at reaching our target demographic, which we will cover more in the next section.

How can we use it for command information?

Effective strategic communicators will look to use the channel that their audience is already using. Communication accommodation theory presents that when the communicator adapts their communication style to meet with their audience, this communication convergence develops the propinquity to establish trust in the messenger. For the purposes of command information, this means that your audience is more likely to both find your information and believe your information if you present it in a way they are used to consuming information.

While Facebook continues to be the second-most popular form of social media amongst Americans generally, Instagram is the more popular amongst the demographics of 18- to 29-year-olds. Additionally, persons of color are more likely to use Instagram than white Americans. This means that Instagram can be used to more effectively communicate with younger and more diverse audiences than Facebook.?

Understanding who your audience is and how they prefer to engage with content means you can create effective command information on a channel that is more likely to reach them. If your command is looking to shift the knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors of these demographics, Instagram is a better platform to communicate with them. And with the rising interest in video platforms such as TikTok and Instagram Reels, creative social media managers can quickly develop short and engaging content that will far exceed in reach what you can with other channels. While the Department of Defense is still hands-off on TikTok, Instagram Reels is another effective method of reaching this audience.

Conclusion

Any uniformed communicator that has spent time developing American Forces Network spots overseas or creating Army-navy football game spots has the quirky sense of humor and capability required to create Instagram Reels that convey command information. While there may be a hesitancy to jump into the medium, our strategic mass communicators and public affairs specialists cannot afford to avoid it. Command messaging, talking points, and a cell phone are all that one needs to be able to quickly produce content that will far surpass in reach and return on investment any other social media tactic being used right now.