How To Use Instagram Reels for Clothing Brands

OK, so now that you’ve seen what a Reel looks like, here are five quick tips, or four plus a bonus, tips to use when you're about to make your 1st or 100th Instagram Reel. 

The 3 Second Rule

So number one is the three second rule. 

You have three seconds to catch people's attention. But really, I think it's about zero seconds. There's actually a lot of people out there who believe that it's zero seconds because the thumbnail, if it is not good, people will continue to scroll. So the thumbnail that you choose is absolutely critical. 

But for this blog, we're going to take three seconds. So you have three seconds. As soon as the music starts or as soon as the people get into the video to catch their attention before they swipe on to somebody else.

Make an impact in the beginning of the video. If you don't hook them, they're not going to keep watching. They're going to just keep on scrolling. 

Hi, My Name Is…

Before we get into number two, I just want to say Howdy. That's Texas slang for Hello, my name is Aaron. I'm one of the co-founders here at BitBranding. 

We've been helping frustrated store owners just like you become impactful store owners through tutorials, tactics and strategies. 

If you find value in this blog or at any point of time, I would love for you to head over to our YouTube Channel, hit that subscribe button and support our channel. And don't forget to turn on those notifications. It's what really helps us grow the channel and create more content like this for you. 

Stay Illuminated

Number two is natural bright lights. 

This is key. So we do have lights here, right here in the front right here above us. There's some lights over here on the side. All of these lights are key to making a successful video. 

Think about the last time you watched a Reel and it didn't have good lighting. You may not have noticed, but if you didn't notice, it's because you just kept scrolling. Right. Most of them that you watch do have great lighting and they do a very good job. We're going to talk about the rest of those in this blog, but they did have good lights. 

As a side note, if you can't get natural light, like I mentioned, buy an LED light off of Amazon for like $50. We are using some LED lights. As I mentioned earlier, it's going to be your second best option, especially if you live in the Washington area or something like that or the UK where it's super cloudy all the time. 

Don’t. Ignore. Trends.

Number three is to jump on song and sound trends. 

Reels add fun to Instagram. It's that world. It's what brings everything together. It's more fun, right. It's just that's the best way to put it. If there's something that's trending, you have a much better chance of reaching more people because the pool is a lot bigger. It's really just basic math. More people equals more chances of reaching a larger audience. So jump on trends and songs and sounds and anything that is going on right now to reach more people. 

So a few ways to help you to figure out what's trending is that you can go to the search tab on Instagram and look there. But honestly, I think the best place to look is to go to TikTok. Most of the people who are creating good Instagram Reels get inspiration from something like TikTok. That's what they do really well. And you will see a good portion of people take their TikToks and just upload directly as Reels. I'm going to tell you later that you shouldn't do that, but go there, watch those types of videos, see what's on the trending tab on TikTok, and you're going to see what's pretty popular right now that you could use to create Instagram Reels as well. 

Once you get the hang of it, your time will be cut in half. It's not going to take you that much time once you get into the flow of things, especially if you can find a few accounts who are always on the trends and you can keep up with them. Just follow those accounts and mimic, steal, borrow whatever you want to call it and jump on those trends versus trying to go out into the ocean and search every single time. 

Hang On A Minute!

But wait, there's more. Make sure that you stick around until the end. 

This is where I'm going to share with you accounts that are already doing well with Reels, specifically in a clothing and apparel brand industry that you can borrow or steal from. And I'm going to point out to you what makes them work so that you can essentially copy and paste or repeat for you and your business. 

Beware Of Text Within The Border!

So number four is my biggest headache and the one thing that if I go watch your Reels, I'm going to be really upset if you do this. So please don't do this. If you do everything else correctly, but you miss this one, it's going to make a lot of people mad. Right. So one is just too much text, but number four is actually using text within the border. 

So there is an Instagram Reels line, there are dimensions. There are borders and if you put text where it gets cut off, it's just going to make people mad. 

So the last thing you want to do is try to convey a message and the text gets cut off. As I just mentioned, the easiest way to make sure you don't run into this issue is to create and edit the Reel on Instagram. 

I want to pause here for a second and tell you that that is a key point for being successful on Instagram. So how they do it, I don't know, but Instagram knows if you take it away from TikTok, so don't make it on TikTok and then bring it over Instagram Reel, you should create and develop and build everything that you're going to build for a real inside of Instagram. I know it takes a little bit more time, but it will help you reach more people. 

So the text continues the stories and allows you to follow along and engage longer. Don't skip this step if you want to make this a hit or reach more people. I've seen Amazing Reels where if they would have just added a couple of words or even a little bit of text, it would have brought people into it. A lot of times people are not watching with sound. So if you can pull them in with text and good fast movement, as we mentioned earlier, the three seconds you have, they'll turn on sound, they'll watch it. They want to know what the sound is. So then they stick around and watch longer getting you more views. 

Facebook Ads

So if you like organic and you want to drive or dive, whatever you want to do, drive or dive into Facebook ads, then you have to check out one of our favorite videos on Facebook ad strategies. You guys have liked it. Maybe you've seen it already. If not, and you want to jump in to Facebook ads, make sure to click this video right here and go check it out. It's going to be super impactful for your clothing brand. 

Make Your Audience Feel Something

Number five is to add emotion. 

I guess that's something I'm working on, too, right? You can’t just yell at the camera. There is emotion that goes on, whether you're angry or whether you're happy, whether you're sad or whether you're enthusiastic. 

But we've talked about this before. If you're not excited about the video, then no one else is going to be either. It's just as simple as that. If it's a boring video to you, then why would anybody else watch it either? Don't skip this step. It is very simple, but it matters. 

Oh Hey WAIT!!!

Hey, OK, so hold up one second. 

Are you a clothing boutique or apparel brand who wants to grow? I'm just assuming this since you stuck around so hear me out. We created a free master class training that will walk you through the five pillars that need to be in place for your online clothing store to consistently scale profitably. No matter what's going on in the world or whatever else is happening. You need to be able to do those two things. This training goes over exactly how to do that. So make sure you check out the description in the How To Video here (please insert link for this video). 

Let’s Look At Some Shops

OK, so the moment that you've been waiting for it. Hey, thank you for sticking around. I know this is a lot to get to this point, but I hope there is a ton of value. I know this is where you are going to get a lot of value. And for me, this is where I get the most value, when somebody shows me what to do. I'm going to share with you three accounts and what I like about them, what they're doing well and how you can copy them. 

Shop Number 1

So the first shop that we have here is Shop Lexie’s. 

So Shop Lexie's, she's done really well on TikTok and has moved them over to Instagram. What she's gotten really good at are these clothing hacks. So let's just jump over to the Reels that she has here. So this one has 11,000, we’ll check that out, it’s the most recent. Let's look at one with a few more views and kind of see what the breakdown is. 

So this one right here has 579,000 views. 

So what worked about this video? It's short, it's quick, it's informative and it's like something that you can do right away. So for her brain, it's like, OK, these hacks, are they things that are super complicated that you're going to go try and then you're like, it just takes too much time or are they something that the viewer would actually want to try?(9:43 mark...i added this last part b/c the sentence/question seemed incomplete) In this video, which was probably fifteen, twenty seconds long, she showed us exactly what to do. I'm pretty confident that I could do the exact same thing she's talking about. It's a simple hack. It's a simple tip and it's something that's relatable. 

So I can't necessarily see how many shares that she got, but I'm pretty sure it was shared a lot, especially to get 579,000 views. 

So think about that, maybe something you could be doing are some fashion hacks. Make sure that it's easy, it's actionable, and then make sure that thumbnail creates curiosity. I think the main thing for hers is that in the first three seconds, she gets right into it and tells us exactly how we can benefit from watching her video. 

The Second Shop

Number two is a pretty large brand. The reason I want to use them is because they do Reels really well. They do have a lot of followers, but they do have some Reels that I think are some standouts, especially for the clothing and apparel brands.

For those of you who are wondering, OK, how can I reach that many people, too? So for Lexie, she has maybe 15,000, this page right here, the Pink Lily has 1.5 million. And some of Lexie’s videos have just as many views as this one does here. 

Let's jump into these. Theirs is a little bit more consistent. Almost 100,000 views per Reel. I will tell you, that is not typical. Even if you have a million people following you, it's not really typical to reach that many people. They're doing something correctly. 

So let's go to this one right here. 

All right. So this one right before we get into it again, they're doing a little bit of hacks for this. So one of the hacks that they have is to help you with your jeans. And you can see it right there on the very beginning. The thumbnail tells you four ways to cuff your jeans, so you already know what you're getting into. 

Let's click into it. They have it sped up so it doesn't take forever to watch the video. And they literally show us all of these within a few seconds. It's awesome. So four ways to cuff your jeans, and they did it in like 15 seconds. 

So a couple of things here. We knew exactly what the video was about. We knew exactly what was going to happen in the video. They were going to teach us those hacks. Second, they did it very quickly and easily. I feel like I can do all of these things like, oh, OK, fold it a different way, and then pulling in a hair tie to make it even better. That's pretty cool, innovative there. But at the end of the day, it's super easy, it's informative, it's quick, very similar to something like Lexie’s. So you can see some of the trends here, especially for the clothing hacks. 

Now, let's look at one other thing, which is probably something a lot of people believe you need to do for Reels or for TikTok, which is you have to dance. You don't have to do that. But they are jumping onto song trends. So if you could hear the song you’d hear that it’s a popular song, popular trend right now, or at least when this video went out. Something I don't like about Instagram Reels is it doesn't really tell you when something was posted. 

So let’s see here. 220,000 views on a more recent one. 

It has a trending song, two different types of people, I haven't seen this done before. Pretty cool. So there's a Sam who's 5’6 and a Christina who's 5’5. One is 2XL, one is a size small, appealing to two different types of audiences. Very quickly changing outfits so you can see if this is for me or not for me. 

Pretty cool, but right at the beginning of the thumbnails, the same outfits, different sizes. So right away, you know exactly what you're going to get. You know that, hey, there's two girls that are wearing the exact same thing, and I'm going to be able to resonate with one of these two people. So right away you're drawn into it. They're using a song to make it enjoyable, right? Without the music, it's not really that fun. They're just dancing and wearing new clothes, but you add in the music and it takes it to the next level. So it's just so crazy how much music changes things. 

All right. So very cool to check out Pink Lily.

And Onto The Third

The last one that we have here is somebody we've talked about before. So Wrldnvsn, completely different role. 

They are not a clothing boutique. They are not using Reels to this way. They're more of the entrepreneurial behind the scenes explanation. So I think they have one here that has 952,000 views. Pretty cool. Their story, the reason that people like them is because they started with 12 shirts and just grew from that. And it's inspirational. 

So that's what they did here. This thumbnail, it has tons of clothes. The background is tons of clothes, as you can see here. And then the caption says, started the clothing brand with only 12 shirts. And then the curiosity comes in because you're like wait, they started with 12 shirts? But then you look here and it's like they have literally a wheelbarrow full of clothes that are getting ready to ship out. So you're talking about thousands upon thousands of shirts which might make you go, hey, how can I do that? How can I do something like that? And even if you're not in the clothing world, it’s still inspirational, you're still wondering what's going on. 

So you click on it. Trending song, they just moved into a 10,000 square foot warehouse. Tons of people working, they didn't know that this vision could be a reality. 

Again, just showing behind the scenes, super simple, and then the Reel is over. That's it. 45,000 engagements. 809 comments and almost a million views at this point just showing behind the scenes. 

I think at this point, it's the visuals that matter more than anything. So they do have texts that keep you going through, which I mentioned, and they do stay within the bars or the borders or bumpers, rather, so you don't have to wonder what's going on. But just so impactful to see what's going on in this story in 15 seconds. So just think about that as you're scrolling through. You can check out their pages as well. 

So three different types of brands that you can go and check out and get some inspiration. 

All right, guys, thank you so much for reading. If you’d like to watch the How To video for this topic, you can find it here.If you like this blog, you're going to love this video. I mentioned earlier about using Facebook ads for your clothing brand. To watch that video, make sure you click right here.

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