Instagram Reels is one of the most potent tools to improve your page engagement and grow your social media presence. The million-dollar question is, how can you make Instagram videos that set you apart from the sea of 100+ million posts shared on this platform daily?

Hint: Start with a theme that grabs the viewer’s interest and eyeballs, for instance, an Instagram Reel created around prop money from Strobeprops. Think of possibilities like a prank video or a magic trick video with prop or replica money. The correct theme is the first step toward creating your viral Instagram Reel.

According to statistics, video posts on Instagram get 38% more engagement than photos, which means you need to use video content if you want your Instagram page to grow.

Here are five easy tips to make killer Instagram videos that will impress your followers and boost your Instagram page.

Without further delay, let’s dive right in! 

1. Produce High-Quality Video Content

Audiences on social media, especially on Instagram, enjoy high-quality video content. Hence, your content must be liked and shared for high engagement metrics like views, likes, and shares. 

To get crisp and clear videos, you don’t have to get a professional camera if you don’t have the budget. Your smartphone with a good camera setting can work just fine. 

Yet, there are some basics you need to pay attention to if you want to shoot a high-quality Instagram video:

• Video Lighting 

First, avoid having the “burning” effect in your videos. To do so, ensure the light is in front of you or falling on the object you are capturing and not pointing at the camera.

You also need to ensure that the object you’re capturing is high quality. If you’re using prop money, ensure that the object you’re shooting (prop money) is high quality and looks real on screen. At Strobeprops, we use high-quality offset paper, the exact weight of an actual bill. Further, printing is done on state-of-the-art computerized printers using high-grade and waterproof inks. 

If the shooting takes place outdoors, pay attention to the time of the day you’re shooting the video. The best time of the day for outdoor shooting is the golden hour: one hour before sunset or one hour after sunrise. 

• Steady Shots  

Unless you’re aiming for a chaotic roller coaster experience, your audience wants to see comprehensible scenes. 

To avoid shaky shots, use a stabilizer or a tripod. As an alternative hack, you can rest your elbows on a flat surface or lean your camera into a fixed object to secure it.

You can also hold the camera or your phone with both hands, and pull the device against your chest slightly, locking your elbows in.

The stable footage and proper lighting will go a long way toward making your video content look like a professional effort. 

2. Choose the Perfect Thumbnail

We all love scrolling through our Instagram feed, looking for content that captures our attention and makes us stop scrolling. One of those things is the cliffhanger of the video. That cliffhanger makes for the perfect thumbnail. Think of a prop money trick where you make a bill levitate.

Choose a scene that intrigues the viewer and captures their attention, and make that shot your thumbnail.

Pro Tip: Sometimes, your chosen scenes look out of focus when taken separately. To avoid this, make a cover with the help of online video editor tools or offline software. You can then upload your video to Instagram and choose the relevant photo scene as the cover photo of your video. 

Good quality visuals with some color, glam, and relatable text will encourage your followers to stop and stare.

Besides grabbing immediate attention with a superb thumbnail for your video, your followers also need to stay and watch more of what you’re showing. 

Hence, you have to keep them interested for the first 3-5 seconds so that they watch the video in its entirety. Make it beautiful, make it relatable, make it informative. 

3. Keep Your Videos Short

Keep your Instagram video as short as possible because, unlike YouTube, people on this platform want to watch short videos and don’t want to spend too much time on one thing. 

Instagram knows it too, and that’s why they have the following video lengths for each feature:

• Instagram Stories can’t be longer than 15 seconds,
• Reels can’t be longer than 30 seconds,
• Video posts on your Instagram feed can’t be longer than one minute.

 It would be best to keep this in mind when shooting a video for this platform, so you only focus on taking critical shots of your story. But sure, if you want to post a longer video, you can share it on your IGTV or Instagram Live. 

The videos you post on your feed play on a loop. That is, they restart automatically once they reach the end. Hence you need to define the beginning and the end of your video. You can do it using music at the intro and outro or with a fade-out scene at the end.

 4. Add Captions

It’s not rare for people to watch Instagram videos on mute, especially while watching the video at work. This is one reason we love videos with captions in our feed. It gets people’s attention faster and enables the viewer to understand the content without sound. If the viewer likes the video, they may watch it later with the sound. 

Remember to keep the captions short since too much text can have the opposite effect of turning off the viewer’s interest. Still, you can create dynamic text effects if they suit the content and your page. Else, add some text stickers here and there. 

5. Use the Right Dimensions

Imagine that you ordered a pair of shoes online when it finally arrives; it’s the wrong size. Now imagine that you spent a few hours making an excellent Insta reel on making a dollar bill levitate, but when you post it on Instagram, it looks cropped or stretched. The dimension of your video is critical. 

You don’t want to leave an unprofessional impression on your followers by choosing an incorrect dimension for your video. 

Your video dimensions will vary depending on where you’re posting it. Here are some pointers for the best results. 

Most influencers and business pages prefer posting videos in portrait format. Remember that, unlike Facebook or Twitter, you can’t enlarge the Instagram video post with a click. What you see on your timeline is what you get. 

The videos posted on Instagram Reels or IGTV are another story. They can fill up the whole screen of your phone for a better experience. 

Summing Up

We hope these five tips will make your next Instagram video go viral and create a better social media presence for you. You can create an awesome Instagram video without spending much money and time on it. Make sure to edit your videos in the best way possible to make them look more professional and eye-catching. 

About Strobeprops

Strobeprops is a leading supplier of prop money to Hollywood productions, TV shows, Music videos, and Entertainment companies. Prop money is used in place of real money in all these productions. We also have a large following among YouTubers and TikTok creators who use our prop money to make viral content.

Our bills look real on screen, even in close-up shots. Our prop money is made in America to exacting quality standards. Check out this video for a review of our product.