How to Actually Make Instagram Reels for Your Business (Without Losing Your Mind)

  Sam Vander Wielen: You know reels are one of the best ways to grow your business on Instagram. You’ve read the posts, you’ve seen the hacks, you’ve seen other people crushing it, and you’ve probably sat down to film one yourself, maybe more than once, and then you just didn’t post it. Or you did, and it flopped, and then you gave up halfway through one time because the whole thing just felt too complicated.

You want to be someone who posts reels consistently, attracts the right audience, and actually grows your business on Instagram without the whole thing taking over your life or you having to live on your phone.

But here’s what I think is actually going on. You’re drowning in advice that’s made reels feel so much more complicated than they need to be.

Hook formulas, trending audio, edit transitions, CapCut tutorials, it is a lot. And most of that advice is aimed at people who want to be influencers, not at people who run a real business and who just need reels to pull in potential clients, not millions of clicks.

So in today’s episode, I’m giving you the actual basics, how to script a reel, how to film it, and where to even get your ideas from in a way that’s genuinely doable for a normal everyday business owner like me and you. No dances.

Don’t worry, we don’t really do that anymore. No pressure to go viral, and just what actually works to get you more clients from Instagram.

I wanna welcome you to On Your Terms®®. If you listen every week, thank you so much. You’re the best. I appreciate it so much. I hope you’ve left a review. That’s for sure. But if you’re new here, I wanna welcome you to On Your Terms®. On Your Terms® is a podcast for online business owners who want to be as present in their lives, as profitable in their businesses.

And you can build a really profitable business thanks to platforms like Instagram and other social platforms. I mean, frankly, they are just free marketing tools. For all of our annoyances, that’s really what it is at the end of the day. And I do actually think there’s a way to be on Instagram but actually be really present in your life if you do it right.

It’s just that a lot of people don’t really have a plan or a strategy when it comes to producing Instagram reels, and that’s what leaves them doom scrolling on their phone all the time, spending way too much time on the app than actually creating the content itself. So hopefully today we’re gonna fix all of that.

I also am so excited to announce and let you know that I have got a huge, huge birthday sale coming up for the Ultimate Bundle®. So The Ultimate Bundle® does not go on sale very often, but it is going on sale on June 22nd for five days only. The Ultimate Bundle® is my signature program that offers you a package of legal templates and trainings.

It actually includes a series of 10 super easy step-by-step trainings that will show you how to start an online business from scratch legally. And of course it includes my signature legal templates, those fill-in-the-blank legal documents that you need to protect your website, have all your client contracts, and everything else you need to run a legally protected online business.

If you’re not on my email yet, if you don’t receive Sam’s Sidebar every week, you’re definitely going to want to click the link down in the show notes, sign up for my free weekly newsletter because my email list is the first and the only place you’re gonna hear about the birthday sale, so you definitely wanna make sure you’re on my email list so that you know exactly when that sale opens up on Monday, June 22nd.

All right. Who’s ready? Let’s talk all things reels. Um, reels are not as scary as everybody thinks they are. This is one of the things that I feel like when I am out and about, when I’m on the street, as the kids say, um, I I feel like this is something people are like, “You do a lot of video. Like, you do a lot of reels.”

And then they assume that you have, like, a big fancy professional video studio or that I’m just, like, recording video from, like, morning to night and all this kind of stuff, and I’m like, “No, no. We have, we have a very smooth process going on.” Like, we, we batch it, and I’ve gotten better at it over time, and it is something that I think is very doable, whether you work for yourself, you have a VA, or you have a whole team behind you.

So first up and off the bat, I’m gonna tell you that I want, I wanna invite you to listen to this episode and make these tips and tools and tricks work for you and where you’re at in your business. Remember, everything in business is a choice. If you wanna be on Instagram, be on Instagram, that’s fine. If you wanna make reels, you get to choose whether you wanna do that.

If you’re listening to this whole episode with, like, a death grip and resisting it ’cause you’re like, “I don’t wanna be on video. I don’t wanna show my face.” Well, first of all, I’m gonna give you some tips today that won’t require your face, so maybe we can work around that. But also, if that’s not what you wanna do, it’s okay.

If you know me, if you’ve listened to the podcast at all, if you read my emails at all, you know that what I’m not here saying is like, “You have to be on Instagram or else,” or like, “You have to make Reels on Instagram or else.” It’s not my style. There are so many ways to build successful business. I think that Reels can do a lot for your business, and I think it’s a great opportunity for growth, for audience growth, for so many different things, and that pays dividends many times over in terms of growing your business.

It’s what got me my book deal. Uh, I wouldn’t have gotten a book deal without it. Doesn’t matter how good your idea is, if you don’t have an audience, there’s no book deal coming. So there are all kinds of reasons why you can do this. You can get speaking gigs. You can, , grow and promote your podcast. So many reasons.

So with that all being said, let’s just kinda come at this from a fresh angle. Maybe you haven’t heard Reels talked about in this way before. I’m picturing some of my friends who are, like, super resistant to this idea and I have to, like, convince them, but maybe that’s not you. Maybe you’re, maybe you’re very ready.

So the first thing I would tell you about creating content for Instagram, and specifically Reels, is that just like everything I recommend to you when I teach you about how to grow your email list or how to create podcast episodes or anything else, is to keep a running list of topics. You need to come up with one place, wherever this is for you, whether this is a Notion page or a iPhone note, physical pen and paper, very analog of you, you know, whatever you like to do, there just has to be kind of this, like, one…

Like, this one centralized place where you keep all of these ideas. And I have said this many times here on the podcast that they don’t even have to be, like, fully formed ideas. Like, sometimes I just see something kinda funny or have, like, a little spark, or I just think of, like, a little bit of a story and I write that down.

And I usually write a little concept of, of like what was I thinking, like, when I saw the guy doing the funny thing at the farmers market. Like, how did I think that that related to business? ‘Cause I might forget later. So I’ll usually just jot down a few notes or words about what I was thinking. Not all of these things need to become a piece of content, but it’s really, really helpful to h- come back to when you sit down and you’re like, “Okay, I wanna do five Reels today because that will give me one month’s worth of content.”

If you’re going to post one Reel per week, for example, which would be great, um, then you’re gonna have this great list of things. On this list you can also add things from your customers, from conversations you have with customers. If you’re new in business and you haven’t worked with a lot of people yet, whatever the topic is that you’re gonna be talking about, I’m sure that this is a topic that you talk to people about in your everyday life.

Like, if you’re starting a money coaching business and, like, people are always coming to you with their money questions, what money questions are they asking you? Those are the kinds of things that I would write down.

The next thing I do is gather inspiration if either my list of topics isn’t long enough, or if the topics that I’ve all come up with are all kind of, like, one style of content. So for example, if on my list of content topics is just a bunch of questions from customers, they’re very, like, straightforward.

Like, what is an LLC? Do I need one? Like, what is a business bank account? When do I need business insurance? They’re all kind of, like, just educational topics, right? But I need different kinds of topics. I wanna present some things differently. That’s usually when I turn to a little bit of inspiration. Now, there is a right way to get inspiration and there’s a wrong way to get inspiration.

What I do not recommend that you do is go to your competitor’s profile, look at all the most recent things that they’ve posted, change a word or two, but… or, like, just take that topic essentially and just do your own riff on it. I don’t recommend doing that because for the one, we’re assuming that they’re doing it right, and we don’t know if what they’re doing is like that great of an idea. We don’t know where that idea came from. They could’ve just riffed it off the person that they saw who was in their niche, right?

And so, like, we have no idea. We don’t… We might not even know necessarily how it’s performing or whether the performance is even genuine, if, uh, it’s, like, a lot of bots or something like that. So we really have no idea. Um, what we also don’t know, if that will translate to working for your audience, even if it works for them.

It’s also really helpful, like we talked about in last week’s episode, for you to get your reps in. Like, you need to get comfortable learning how to talk about this topic in your voice. Let’s take your stories, your experiences, your take on things. I wanna hear what your opinion is. If I just wanted generic opinions, I’ll just look at the AI slop that everybody’s putting out.

I wanna know what you really think about it. So that’s my whole spiel about why it’s really not a good idea to get inspired by whatever everybody’s doing in your niche. I… It’s also why I recommend, amongst many other reasons, for you to not even follow them or look at their content at all, because truthfully, there’s no reason for you to, outside of just coming up with a lot of mental drama about comparison and imposter and what they’re doing, and then you don’t know whether to trust your idea of whether it came from something you saw from them, and is it different enough from them…

You wouldn’t know what they’re doing if you don’t look. That’s just really truthfully why I don’t recommend it. Now, then where do I recommend that you go and get inspiration from? Well, I actually think that the best inspiration, besides being out and about and living your life, and like I talked about last week, just coming up with enough of your own stories and experiences because you’re actually out living your life, is to look outside of your niche or your area and learn the art of flipping things.

Like, how can I flip that into what I do? So I went on Instagram for about literally 90 seconds and pulled three examples r- and within that period of time, flipped all three of these examples to be examples of something that I would do in the hopes that I would give you, um, a few ways that you could do it for yourself.

So the first thing I saw was a reel from someone that was so smart. It sa- it was a fitness, uh, coach or influencer, and it said, “Deadlift versus RDL: What’s the difference?” And I instantly in my mind thought, “LLC versus sole proprietorship: What’s the difference?” That’s how I would turn that into a reel for myself.

Now, think about the idea behind this reel, right? When she’s breaking down what’s a deadlift versus what’s an RDL, which are both killers, as we all know, they are th- two things that people often get confused or they don’t understand the difference between. So what are two things in your niche that people often get confused or that they don’t understand the difference between?

Or what are two things in your niche that people are constantly comparison shopping? So for me, for example, people don’t necessarily get LLCs or sole proprietorships confused with one another, but they’re choosing between them. And so I just instantly flipped this deadlift/RDL thing into being like, yeah, what is the difference? And so, like, explaining kind of the pros, the cons, how somebody might decide which one’s for them.

Example number two is a reel that I found said, “Why does the first 10 minutes of every run feel so hard?” You can see a theme here, the things I’m getting targeted for on Instagram. So I thought that this was such a good example because this one is so good at identifying a core pain point of the target person that they were trying to reach, right? The target person that they were trying to reach is trying to run. They wanna learn how to run, but they don’t understand why it’s so freaking hard for the first however many minutes, right?

And so that is something like if you’re a runner and you see that, you’re immediately like, “Yeah, why does it feel so hard,” right? Except for me, ’cause I freakishly love it. But as soon as I saw this, I thought, “Okay, how am I gonna flip it?” I thought, why do the first six months of business feel so hard?

Because that speaks to the pain that my ideal customer is feeling. The truth is that I’m sure my ideal customer, and like, by… I literally spent a nanosecond on just flipping this just as an example to kinda like even get the reps in to like work through this. Like, not all of these have to become content.

And so maybe I would flesh this out a little bit more, but the idea here is like I thought about how my, my ideal customer, what are their first six months? Like, the idea of this- Why do the first 10 minutes of every run feel so hard thing is, like, speaking to the person who is probably starting out their run, and it- they, they have that moment, right?

There’s that moment where you’re like, “Do I stop running, or do I keep, keep going?” Right? And everybody who knows, uh, anything about running knows that there is, like, this weird breakthrough moment. There’s this, like, shift jess, uh, King on Peloton calls it the shit shift, which I think is so true, where she says, “The shit shifts,” and it, it’s so true, right?

Whether you’re on the bike or you’re running or whatever you’re doing, it’s like, you’re like, “I don’t wanna do this today. I’m tired. I have other stuff to do,” and then the shit shifts. And you’re all of a sudden like, “Okay, I’m actually kinda liking it,” and, like, things broke, right? So what is it that actually, I don’t know, makes that happen, and, like, how do we get there?

That’s what’s behind this question, and, like, I know enough about running, I guess, to, to understand what they were getting at. So I can think about that from my perspective of, like, I bet you most people quit pretty early on in the business stage if they even get it off the ground in the first place because it is really hard, and because people probably don’t have realistic expectations through, you know, and, like, no fault, fault of… through no fault of their own. There’s a lot of, like, hubbub online of just not understanding about how difficult it actually is.

And so they see all these people and all these influencers touting their 10K months and their G-Wagons and how easy it is, and how they’re, like, on the beach just making money, and then they get their businesses started, and they’re like, “Wait, why is this so hard?”

Right? And so I’m sure that if I create a piece of content like that, that would speak to a certain subset of people that I’m trying to attract.

The third example was one that I found that I thought was so good that said, “I quit the 6:00 AM club.” And I was like, oh, that’s such a good one because anybody who is, like, into that kind of stuff of, like, the productivity culture and, like, morning routines and all that stuff, like, they know what she’s talking about right away of, like, how, you know, basically only the best and, like, most successful people, like, wake up at 6:00 AM, probably even 5:00 AM, and have this, like, insane step-by-step, like, three-hour routine where they, like, journal and cold plunge and sauna and swim and bike, and they, they, like, do everything all at once.

And so I immediately was intrigued by this idea, and I understood that this kind of, like, the structure of what she was saying with, like, “I quit the 6:00 AM club” was telling us that she quit doing something that was really trendy, and she quit doing something that everybody says is supposed to be really good for you.

So that’s kinda, like, the trigger, right? So I thought, for me, if I was gonna do it, I would be like, “I quit the hustle club,” or like, “I quit the girlboss era,” or something like that. Like, something along those lines where, like, people are familiar with what the kinda, like, phrase or tagline is, and that it’s typically associated with being really popular, productive, makes you a better person, like, something like that, and that you quit it.

Because then everybody’s gonna wanna know why’d you walk away from it. I mean, obviously I thought of examples of, like, I quit being a vegan. You know, like, there’s all those kinds of options too of, like, where you’re just gonna get people’s attention of like, “Wait, why? Why’d you do that?”

This kind of content also does really well on other platforms. If you’re posting things on, like, Substack, for example, like, I quit Instagram content does really well. Um, or even on Instagram, people will post about, like, I quit social media. They’ll post it on there, right? And people… Like, it’s kind of ironic.

Like, we talk about that a lot, but any of those kinds of things that get people’s attention to be like, “Wait, why’d you leave?” Something like that. Another thing you can do for inspiration is to just start with your frequently asked questions. I bet you if you sat down with a piece of paper, you have 10 basic frequently asked questions that you can sketch out.

Uh, this is actually how I started my website. Like, before Instagram was really that popular, I guess, this is how I started my website and, like, really dug into SEO, because when you know your frequently asked questions, you can make what’s called cornerstone content. And so I’m essentially stealing that s- strategy for myself that I used for my website, and that i- initially brought so much Google traffic, and s- still does, to the site, um, over onto a platform like Instagram.

So if I were just starting out, I would probably sit down and make 10 reels about the 10 things that people ask you. Like, what- each one was its own reel, right? So you’d come out with 10 pieces of content. We’re gonna talk in a second about how you’re going to structure those things, because you’re not literally going to sit down and be like, “So people always ask me, what’s the difference between an LLC and a sole proprietor?”

So, like, that’s not how we’re doing it. That’s just the topic that you’ll focus on.

The other thing I wanna encourage you to look for when you’re looking for this inspiration outside of your niche, is to look for style inspiration too, because they’re… V- Instagram is a visual platform, and so the way that something is visually represented or presented to your audience makes a big difference.

And so just like if you’re going to have a podcast, you should work on having the best audio that you can, or if you’re going to have a YouTube channel, you should work on having the best video that you can, and that should be a skill that you develop over time. With Instagram, your editing, the cuts, the visuals, like, all of those things, they don’t need to be perfect off the bat.

Definitely not saying that. But it’s something that it’s good to start learning upfront and getting better and better at.

If there’s any creator online that you like, all you gotta do to make yourself feel better is go back to their early stuff and look at it, and you’re gonna be like, “Oh my gosh, they have come so far.” And you just have to realize that you’re, you’re at their chapter one. You’re just seeing their ending, right?

Or you’re just seeing them, like, further along in their journey. And so it doesn’t have to be… You don’t have to be like that now. It just has to… I think you can use that as some inspiration to take some pressure off of yourself that you can get there, but we’re never gonna get there if we don’t start.

Okay, the next thing that we do now that we’ve have this running list of topics, we’ve gotten inspiration, maybe we’ve thought about our frequently asked questions, is that I lock in on my concepts. Like, whatever I’m going to do, I now have, let’s say, a list of five concepts, um, five reels that I’m going to record.

Here’s exactly how I structure them and script the whole thing in order to make this process super easy. The very first thing that I do is come up with a hook. So hooks are essentially the first sentence or the f- like, the little quip, little intro part that you say at the very top of a video. It should be something, as its name intends, that hooks people.

It just gets them right away, and typically it does that by getting their attention, so it’s either a little spicy, um, or it’s about them, right? It’s something that it really taps into, like, some problem that they have or some mistake that they’re making, or it positions you as an expert that they’re going to want to listen to about something that they’re struggling with.

For example, when I had my, uh, big launch back in February, we left a little space in the reel schedule for me to be able to produce reels, like, on the fly during the promo in case anything timely was going on. And I guess we got lucky, but per se, that TikTok was having all sorts of problems, and there were also, um, there were also, like, a host of ADA lawsuits going around.

This was kind of becoming a thing that people were talking about a lot online. So I literally sat on the floor in my office where I’m sitting right now, and… Well, no, I’m not sitting on the floor. I’m just in my office. I mean, where I’m in my office right now, and where I am most of the time. And I, I sat on the floor and I just said, I’m a lawyer for online business owners, and I’m really worried about these things that I see going on online.”

And that was it. It was like, so using this, like, authority right off the top, which is not always how I recommend doing it, by the way, but in this case, it was kind of a like, “Hey, listen to me.” Like, “Pay attention. This is important.” I was, in this case, though, speaking about something that required authority to speak about, right?

I’m speaking about a, a law change. I’m speaking about terms of service for an app. I was speaking about, like, what was going on in the government. So there, you know, not technically anyone should be speaking about it in terms of really understanding the ins, ins and outs of what’s going on. So in this case, I leaned into the authority, and I stated maybe like, “Here’s why you need to pay attention to me.”

And that reel really took off, for lack of a better term.

A few examples for you positioning yourself as an expert in a hook would be like, “I’m a stylist, and I hate when I see this in people’s closets,” or like, “What I’d tell you to buy at Trader Joe’s as a nutritionist,” or, “Unhinged things I’d do to save $100,000.”

Or I saw somebody the other day posted, like, “Unhinged things I did to become a millionaire.” Well, in saying that, you’re telling me you’re a millionaire, so now I wanna hear what these unhinged things are. So, like, that’s kind of a way to, like, loop yourself into it.

Otherwise, I typically recommend making the hooks about them.

So some of the things that you can do to make it about them are to say things like, “Keep watching if you struggle with X,” right? And then, like, really identifying the struggle that you know that your ideal listener struggles with.

“Everything you’ve heard about blank is wrong,” so that’s a great way to loop in a topic and just, like, pique their curiosity. “Don’t blank until you hear this,” so that’s where you would fill in some action. Like, “Don’t buy any more jeans until you hear this,” right? It’s like if you were a stylist, that’s what I would make it.

Other ones you can do are to lean into kind of like the honesty truth thing of like, “If we’re being honest,” and then you say the thing that’s like, I don’t know, the thing that’s like no one’s saying it, but somebody should. You’re kind of giving, like, the big sister truth that they need to hear, like the tough love.

Um, maybe that’s just the Philadelphian in me, but those tend to work pretty good.

I also like when people say, like, “I don’t know who needs to hear this, but,” like, “Stop buying plastic bottles.” Like, I don’t know. You can make it whatever it is, but that sometimes that’s just even a way where it’s not, like, technically about them, but you’re just saying like, “I don’t know who needs to hear this, but,” and then you say it.

Another one I like playing with is number of signs, like five signs that it’s time to stop blank and start blanking. So like, to stop doing whatever it is that you think they need to stop doing and start doing something differently. Um, that’s a really good one, too, when you think of it from, like, a psych perspective, because when we’re saying, like, five signs that it’s time to stop, people often…

You know how, like, when you read your horoscope, and then you’re like, “See, I knew I should have broken up with that guy,” or like, “I need to break up with that guy,” like, you’re looking for confirmation? So I think that this is, like, a way that, that… This is essentially tapping into that, of like, like, “Oh, you’re- they’re right.”

Like, it’s five signs it’s time to quit my nine-to-five and start my own business. Like, that’s probably what mine would be, and you’d be like, “I do wanna quit my nine-to-five, and I knew I was supposed to start a business.” Like, that’s probably what people… It’s like the Cosmo quiz effect, you know? That’s, I think that’s what people are essentially looking for.

But honestly, this part should take you the longest. Sometimes this part is the part I do last if I know the content, like the structure that I’m actually going to focus on, then I kind of reverse engineer and think about the hook. Other times, I like to be really clear about the hook up front and then design my content around it, because you wanna make sure that the content matches.

Like, if I’m saying, like, um, signs that it’s time to s- quit your nine to five and start an online business, for example, I need to actually speak to quitting a nine to five and starting a business, like, in using that language in the reel itself for it to, like, match up. So it’s not like you would just film a reel about, like, starting a business and then just, like, pop this hook ’cause it sounds good.

It really should dictate, then, like, what comes after and the structure of it.

You’re gonna have to play with it and just honestly get good at it over time, because sometimes it, it really is that I’m like, “Oh, I have this story. I know what I’m gonna tell.” Like, if maybe I’m doing a voiceover reel, for example, which I’m gonna talk about, like, all the different types and, like, kinds of reels that you can do.

But if you’re doing a voiceover where it’s going to be more story-oriented, it’s like, well, the story is the story. I know I’m gonna tell the story in a certain way, so then maybe I would write out the script for a story and then later think, like, what hook really relates to the story. It’s just that the hook always has to be true and, like, representative as to, like, what you’re actually talking about.

You don’t wanna do a bait and switch. After I’ve come up with the hook, and like I said, that usually takes me the most time, I personally design just a light structure after that. I am not a script person, and there is no right or wrong here, people. I have friends who are, like, they write every single word that they’re about to say.

I have people who do nothing. Um, and then there’s people like me that’s kind of somewhere in the middle where I like to have, like, almost, like, a little cue card where it’s like it reminds me of the main touch points that I wanna hit. Something that I used to do in reels that apparently is not as popular anymore, is not, not really working very well, but I used…

And I’m saying this because you might still be doing this too, is that I used to be like, you know, let’s say, like, five ways to start an online business, and then I would do, like, all the five, like, one, two, three, four, five in the reel. Apparently, that’s out. We’re done with that. We’re not doing that anymore.

So I did not know this until more recently, and it caused me to shift my content, and the content has been performing better. So the idea now is to maybe talk more about a topic versus, like, a three steps to, or five steps to, or five ways to, or whatever. It’s more of, like, a topic of, like, this is your sign to start an online business and quit your nine to five.

I don’t need to make a numbered step thing. I can give them a couple of signs and then say, “To get the rest of them, read the caption down below,” or, “To get to the rest of the reasons why you should start an online business, like, make sure you comment ‘sidebar’ to get my weekly newsletter.” Like, everything doesn’t have to be within the video itself, and you can lean on the caption.

You can lean on the call to action. You could even lean on the freebie. Let’s say, like, if you were driving them to one of your freebies, maybe you talk about the first couple of points, and then use that as an opportunity to say, “This is actually what I’m gonna dive deeper into in my freebie, so click here or comment here, and that’s where you’ll learn more about this thing.”

Right? So I think that’s, like, the big trend or shift that I’ve seen in the last several months, is just us moving away from giving it all away in the reel itself versus, like, taking them somewhere else, whether that’s the caption or off the platform.

This is, to me, the thing that… You know, coming up with this, like, light structure, or if you wanna script the whole thing, of course, like, be my guest. But that’s the thing that helps keep you on track the most. As a rambly person who likes to ta- Like, I find tangents everywhere I go, I find it really helpful because it, it will try to keep you on track.

I mean, part of this is kinda, like, accepting your personality. I was talking to a friend about this the other day, and she was just like, “I don’t care how much more popular it would make my reels or my following or anything. Like, this is how I talk, and, like, I’m casual.” And, like, I remember this one lady wrote to me one time.

She was, like, so mad that I go off on tangents about things, and I was just like, I don’t… Like, you know, sorry, lady. I- Life’s too boring. I’m not gonna read like a robot, and it’s just, it’s me. So I think that you… There’s a balance here between, like, you finding your style and also remembering the playground that we’re playing on.

Like, the playground we’re playing on here is noisy. It’s full of people with a declining attention span, and they’re constantly being hit with other pieces of content. Like, what I hate so much about Instagram, or other platforms like it, is that, like, it’s like, I don’t know, it feels like as if you had a store.

Like, let’s say you had a bakery And it was like the equivalent of, like, all the other bakeries on your street were able to, like… The owners were able to come in and be, like, screaming at the person who’s trying to buy a croissant at your bakery being like, “Mine are better. Come over here. Try mine. Try mine. Try mine.” And, like, you’re so… Like, what a weird platform to be on, where they’re, like, being literally sh- served other people’s content.

I think it’s so funny that when people buy my Ultimate Bundle®, they’ll always tell me they started getting competitors’ ads after. And so I always think that’s so funny, and I’m like, wow, that’s hilarious that I’m paying so much money to run ads, then you bought my thing through my ad, and then they have the nerve to start showing you the ads for a competitor?

Like, what a weird… Just, like, what a weird platform, right? What a weird time to be alive. So I think that because of that, and this is what I was saying to my friend, who, you know, I understand, was, like, understandably frustrated that she feels like she has to be fast and quippy and, like, have these perfect hooks and, like, everything has to be so, like, I don’t know, clickbaity or whatever.

She doesn’t want it. She wants to be rambly, and she likes doing that. That’s how she is, and it’s great. That’s her, right? But I remind her lovingly of the playground we’re playing on. And so, like, you have an option. You can continue to do that, but you can’t continue to get mad if it’s not doing well. You have to be like, “This is how I wanna keep doing it.

I don’t really care. F the algorithm. I’m gonna keep doing it,” right? That’s fine. We just can’t have it both ways. And so there are times, uh, I will be very on script because I’m like, “I actually think this is a really good one that could do really well, and I’m gonna be on my best behavior and, like, really follow this to my best because I think I can get a lot of people to sign up for my newsletter.”

And to be honest with you, oftentimes when I do that, it goes really well. So it’s really annoying, but it is also true. And I do respect and understand the fact that people are overwhelmed, and there’s just, like, so much, so much content, right? So much content. So maybe people don’t have time for our rambles all the way to say.

So the structure part kinda keeps us from being like, “These are the main points I wanna hit.” I’m gonna link to something down below. Uh, my social media manager, Natasha, just posted a YouTube video about YAP content and how YAP content is trending right now on Instagram. And she said it’s really funny ’cause, like, the name is misleading, that people think YAP content is the opposite.

Like, it’s like what I was just talking about, that people are just, you know, popping their phone up and going off about a topic with no rhyme or reason. She’s like, “No, YAP content’s like curated rambling.” So it’s like you have a really strong hook. You have, like, maybe one to three strong points and a very clear, uh, kinda like summary tie wrap-up at the end.

And so she goes into depth about how YAP content can actually work really well for your channel, and I’ll link that down below. Um, but if you’re somebody who does like to be, like, just a little more casual, like FaceTime energy with a friend kind of situation, that kind of content might speak to you.

You’re just gonna have to meet it somewhere in the middle and do a little bit of light structure.

Last but not least, so okay, we’ve already designed your hook, and we’ve said that maybe you come up with this light structure to keep you on track. Your call to action can be engagement, right? It could just be like, “Tell me what you think. Do you agree?” Or like, what, you know, whatever. It can be something like that. It can be to click a link, to download something, to comment a certain word, um, if you’re using ManyChat or something like that.

It can be whatever you want, to join your newsletter. But really, every piece of content should have one. My friend who had asked me about this kind of yappy content the other day was frustrated with the performance, and she sent me the reel to look at. And I got done watching it, I was like, “This is, this is good,” right?

She didn’t have a hook because she didn’t, she didn’t feel like it at the time, but we, we fixed that part. But at the end, she just stops talking. And she was, like, saying to me that she was frustrated that these pieces of content haven’t been working well lately. And I said to her, “What does performing well mean to you?”

And she’s like, “Well, comments and likes and follows and all these…” “Did you ask them to do that? ‘Cause that could be your call to action, is like, ‘Drop something down below,’ or, “Like this post,’ or, ‘Share it with a friend,’ or, ‘Follow this account for more tips about X, Y, and Z.'” Right? But instead, she literally just got done her, her yap content and just stopped talking.

Um, and so that’s why, you know, people are busy. Like again, people are busy, and they’re probably just onto the next, the next thing. And so we have to make it very, very easy, very clear for people exactly what we’re asking them to do next. And that’s why every single one of your reels should end with a clear call to action, as well as the caption for that post.

Okay, now when it comes to actually filming your reels, let’s talk about filming reels for a moment, because I know these might seem like simple tips. Perhaps you’ve heard them before, but these are a couple of really important things that have helped me, um, to make better content over the years. One is to use a tripod, ’cause using a tripod is so helpful because it stabilizes your phone, so you’re not moving all over the place like, oh my God, I remember when I used to FaceTime with my mom.

It was like half the time I was seeing the ceiling, and then, like, her toothbrush, and then up her nose and everything. It was like, use a tripod. So use a tripod to make your reels. Um, you can also do some really cool things with tripods with angles if you have more than one tripod by any chance.

Now, this is definitely more advanced as we go further along, One of the things that I usually do when I film reels is I keep an old iPhone for this very reason, but I’ll usually put that, or I have a DJI Osmo. Um, I’ll put that on a tripod from one perspective, and then have my current phone or camera or whatever on,, probably a tripod that’s a little bit closer to me, and so I get a couple of different angles, and that makes some… for some really fun cuts.

I did this with a reel a couple months ago, where we were trying to pretend like I had just cooked up a new Ultimate Bundle®, and so we put my camera in my refrigerator, but then I also set up a tripod to the side of my refrigerator so everything was out of view of one another.

And so we had an angle of, like, me pulling it out of the fridge, plus we had the angle of me reaching into the fridge from the outside. I just think it can, like, kinda elevate your reels from that perspective. And I know when I’ve done my batch content days with my social media manager, Natasha, she also will talk about this kinda, like, Vogue style, like, interview style of reels, where you can even have the tripod and the camera, like, further back and away from you, and it, it does add some, like, kinda cool perspective.

It also gives you a lot of ability to cut. Um, so these are, like, very simple things you can just do in your home. Doesn’t have to be in some fancy professional studio or anything like that.

Keep in mind, by the way, as we’re talking about this, if you are a Kit customer… So I use Kit for my email list. Um, I’ll drop a link down below in case you don’t use Kit or you’re looking for something.

Um, that’s what I use for building and managing my list, all of my funnels, my landing pages, lead pages, like, forms, everything. Um, I love Kit. But they have studios in Chicago. They have studios in Boise, and soon to have, by the time this episode airs, very, very, very soon to have studios in New York City.

And if you’re a Kit customer, you can, for free, go and use these studios. These studios are absolutely stunning. They’re beautiful. They’re, like, plug and play. Just bring your own external hard drive. And they are super, super easy to just, like, have all what you need and have a beautiful space, and perfect lighting, and perfect audio, and all of that.

Like, if you’re looking for a way to elevate your content, I would certainly lean on that if you’re near any of these cities, or if when you’re traveling to one of these cities, you can set aside a couple of hours and you could go to their studios.

Okay, so we’ve already talked about a tripod, but in terms of filming, I’ve also found that obviously having good lighting is really helpful. If you have natural lighting, that’s fantastic. Obviously, that’s very hard. I understand it’s, like, depending on where you live, you live in a city, like, there’s all kinds of reasons why people don’t have good lighting.

You know where it always has good lighting? Your car, ’cause it has a giant window in front of it. So I really recommend that people use their car as much as possible or go to a local park. I do this all the time. I take my phone and my tripod with me. I even take it to the beach. Like any kind of open area that you can go to, you can get really, really good natural lighting.

I film outside of my public library all the time ’cause they have like these great like brick wall patio situation where there’s like really good natural light coming in, but no direct, uh, sunlight so that I’m not getting fried at the same time. So just even looking for some like free public spaces around you.

It doesn’t… You don’t have to have like a perfectly aesthe- aesthetically beautiful office or anything like that, anything in your home. Like you can go out and about and do this too. Always, always, always use the back camera on your phone, not the front camera. A lot of people don’t know that the back camera is much more high-powered than the front camera.

Also, the front camera can kind of distort things since it turns them around. Um, so that’s really important. The amount of reels I’ve seen on Instagram where it would’ve been a perfectly fine reel had they just cleaned the lens. So when you go to use that back camera, just give it a little quick swipe of your shirt.

I am constantly every… for every picture I take, every reel I shoot, every video I take for B-roll, I am always cleaning that lens. It makes an insane difference.

A really hot tip is that right before you go to start speaking in your reel, in your video that you’re recording, do a still shot. In other words, just literally sit still and smile, like an awkward photo that you’re taking for school or something like that.

Literally just sit still and smile because that will become your cover photo. So if you’ve ever tried to do YouTube videos or, or reels or anything else, you know that it’s so hard because you do these videos and then you get done, and then you go to edit it and post this video and you’re like, “Oh shoot, we need a cover for the thumbnail,” or on Instagram for what they just call the cover photo.

And so the best way to do that, as Natasha told me, is just sit still and grab that when you’re already sitting there.

The next thing you’re going to do in terms of actually filming this thing is that you’re going to give yourself breaks or pauses in between the sections that we talked about designing earlier. So for example, when you say your hook, you’re just gonna stop speaking for a second and you’re just gonna let it hang, right?

It doesn’t necessarily have to go like immediately into the thing. When you edit, it should. There should literally be like zero, zero space in between you talking. It should move very quickly. But it really helps in the event that you misspeak, right? So you can like say the thing and then just stop, and then you start speaking again.

Like that’s okay. I even do that with the podcast all the time. When I flub a word or a sentence, like you just stop, and then you start speaking again. So it’s a good practice to get into. I think it will also… This is kind of a selfish tip from me that like as somebody who gets like really excited about what I’m talking about and then starts thinking of all these funny stories along the way, it does give me a moment to just be like, pause, okay, the next thing I’m saying, okay, pause, the next thing I’m saying, right?

And it does help me to stay on track a little bit better.

So like I said, you would do the hook, you’d pause, you’d do maybe tip one, pause, tip two, pause, right? Do the call to action, pause. If you’re someone who runs Facebook ads, I always recommend that you record an alternate ending that could potentially be used for ads if you’re recording a piece of content that is ad-worthy, right?

So if you’re doing kinda like an evergreen piece of content that leads to your freebie, your webinar, your newsletter, whatever it is. Um, I, I d- I use ManyChat on Instagram, so oftentimes my call to action will end with like, “Comment ‘class’ so you can sign up for my free legal workshop.” But then I will pause and I’ll say, “Click below to sign up for my free legal workshop,” because that’s what we have to use for ads.

So that’s just a huge time-saver that gets me out of having to record these things like many times over. And whenever possible, I recommend that you batch this content when you can. Uh, in other words, you want to make this process as streamlined for yourself as possible. So if you can batch, for example, batch ideate, right?

So that’s like doing research, looking for inspiration, um, kinda mining your data around your business to figure out what topics you’re gonna talk about. And you do that like all in, I don’t know, let’s say a day. However long it’s gonna take you. Maybe it takes you a few hours, something like that. On another day, I typically set aside the time to script out these things.

So that’s where I’m drafting the hooks. I’m drafting kinda the meat, the middle of these, um, reels, and then I’m drafting the calls to action. It also might be where I’m taking the time to write a little bit of like… I’ve started creating like almost little like director’s cut things of my- for myself of just being like, “Okay, so like this part I wanna be standing here like doing this.

This part I’m gonna cut to like a different thing. I’m gonna be doing this. Part three I wanna be like holding this prop, and I’ll be standing differently, or I’m gonna get real close to the camera and whisper.” Like, I kinda just give myself little notes. Some of them are not that serious. Sometimes I’m just sitting on the floor and yapping, so there’s no notes.

But if you’re gonna do that, that’s where you would do it. And then of course, there should be a- another day, a batch day. This is typically the only day people think about batching. They don’t think about the other days, but there should be a batch day where you then record The idea here is that this is sort of where you get yourself together.

At least for me, it feels like a whole event. I have to get all the hair, and the waxing, and the nails, and the whole thing and I just feel like Sandra Bullock in Miss Congeniality, and it’s exhausting, and I hate it. And so I really just wanna do it one time, and then be done with it and go back to, like, wearing sweatpants.

So I, I just… It’s really, really helpful to just, like, get all dolled up and then go and do these videos all in one shot. I will tell you, it takes up a lot of energy, and I don’t think that’s something I fully appreciated earlier on in the business, as I didn’t really see it as work, ’cause it doesn’t feel like work, it feels like fun to me.

And I think that it’s really helpful for you to really treat this as like, this is a lot of energy. So, like, plan accordingly, do it early, maybe. Like, don’t- I- This is not a 4:00 PM on a Thursday thing that I would set aside. That sounds horrible. Um, and I would probably give it to yourself when it’s, like, high energy time, you feel good, um, you’re just ready to do it.

Yeah, so there’s that. Okay, now last but not least, let’s talk about formats, because you’re… now you kinda understand, you know, where to get this inspiration from, how to structure it, some of the filming best practices. But it’s also important to know that there are a number of different options available to you when it comes to the way you actually structure this reel.

For example, I think the one that most people are familiar with, and the m- most people think, like, is the only option, and therefore they’re really resistant to reels, are what we call talking head videos. That is where you literally just see me on camera talking. You know, like, in my office, in the car, whatever, right?

It’s a face to camera talking head video. That is just one kind of reel, and that’s great, right? If, like, that’s what you wanna do or that’s what lends itself. I do think it’s helpful if you can get to a place where talking head videos are sprinkled in throughout your menu of options of types of reels.

Like, you don’t have to do all talking head. I don’t love when there’s none, on the other hand, but there are plenty of people who do a really good job with not having any, too. So it’s really up to you.

The other two formats that I really enjoy when it comes to reels are B-roll with text over it, because B-roll with text is just flat out the easiest one to do, right? And so it’s great for those of you who are maybe a little camera shy, short on time, don’t have the ability to go out and film all this stuff, and, like, don’t feel like getting Miss Congeniality’d and all that kinda stuff.

So B-roll are short clips or- Or long clips, I guess. But clips of little parts of your life. So maybe this is, um, a clip of, uh, you out on a walk. It can even be your feet. Your face don’t have to be in it, right? So it might be, like, a little clip of a walk. Um, it might be a clip of you playing a sport, or it might be a clip of you drawing and painting, but all we can see is your hand, right?

There’s all kinds of B-roll. Maybe clip of you making coffee. There’s all kinds of B-roll that we can come up with. But essentially, it’s a video, and then we throw the text over it. I’ll drop a recent example of a B-roll reel that we’ve done for me, um, with just text over it. I just saw that we just did one, uh, yesterday, but it’ll have been a couple weeks when we, when we air this. So we’ll drop a link down below just to show you what that looks like.

So if, if B-roll with text is the easy and talking head is probably the hardest, um, the, the middle option in terms of difficulty is audio over B-roll. So a voiceover over B-roll.

That’s where we have those same B-roll either clips or one long clip, and instead of just having text on the screen, you are actually talking. So it’s laid over an audio file of you talking, usually telling some sort of story. That’s, that’s typically how they’re used. Or it could be, like, a clip from, like, a podcast episode, either that you were on or that you host yourself, or from a YouTube video or a voiceover you did for a Substack article or something like that.

I would say, like, the AP Calculus level of difficulty of formats that I haven’t mentioned yet is what we would call the kinda, like, skit or scripted type of reel. So this is a reel that generally has some sort of, like, plot concept. You know, I did… I’ve done one about a ballerina, for example, that wrote to me about another ballerina that had stolen from her.

That was really fun. I mean, it was a good story for her, but it was, it was fun for me to make, and, like, I pretended to be the ballerina. I pretended to be the person who got the email and, like, was so angry. I’ve done one where I’ve chased Ryan around the kitchen with a frying pan. Um, I’ve done one where I’ve tossed all ingredients from, like, my work bag into a pot, and then, like, stirred it around out came the Ultimate Bundle®. Like, I’ve done little skits like that. Those are difficult because they take a lot more creativity in terms of, like, really thinking of, like, a little storyline. A- and I’m not good at these. I just… I, I enjoy doing them, but I’m not necessarily good at these. But there are people who really, really do these.

But essentially, you have to have, like, these little moments, and they have to follow a storyline. There’s a lot of cuts and a lot of different scenes. So essentially, this thing is moving pretty quickly. It’s not like, um, it’s not like talking head, where you’re literally just sitting there and talking. So- It’s a little bit more difficult from that perspective.

Um, I think it’s a place where you can get a little bit more silly if that’s your personality and if you’re kind of cool, like being silly and being funny and like maybe people don’t get it sometimes. Some of them I’ve had have not gone very well, um, and we thought would go great, and then other times ones have taken off.

So it’s like you never really know. So I always recommend to make things that you like to make at the end of the day, ’cause you really are- it’s out of your control how it’s all gonna go. But to me, that’s kinda like next level. It’d be something fun to experiment and play with. I would kinda get these three formats down first, um, and add those in, especially if they sound fun to you and if they make sense for your audience and your niche.

So with that, that’s kind of from my perspective how to actually make Reels as a business owner. Just a very light overview. I’m curious what questions you still have for me about making Reels, or are you hearing all this and you’re like, “Now that I’ve heard this, I definitely don’t wanna make Reels”? I would love to hear from you.

Um, hit Reply to my email or send me a DM on Instagram, @samvanderwielen. I would love, love, love to hear from you. And don’t forget that I have that Ultimate Bundle® birthday sale coming up on June 22nd. It’s a five-day sale only. The Ultimate Bundle® is not gonna be on sale again for a long time, so if you’ve been thinking about it, if you missed our sale earlier this year, we have some really cool exclusive bonuses coming for you starting on June 22nd.

That’s why you gotta make sure that you get my weekly email, Sam’s Sidebar. Click the link down below in the show notes before you go today to make sure you get my emails, because my email list is gonna be the only and the first people to find out about this sale. So th- with that, I’ll chat with you next week.

Thanks so much for listening.

Thanks so much for listening to the On Your Terms® podcast. Make sure to follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. You can also check out all of our podcast episodes, show notes, links, and more at samvanderwielen.com/podcast. You can learn more about legally protecting your business and take my free legal workshop, Five Steps To Legally Protect and Grow Your Online Business at Samvanderwielen.com and to stay connected and follow along, follow me on Instagram at samvanderwielen and send me a DM to say hi.