507: HOW TO USE INSTAGRAM TRIAL REELS

·37 min·3 clips

Taylor Bradford reveals how Instagram's trial reels can help you reach non-followers without going viral.

In episode 507 of the And So podcast, host Taylor Bradford focuses on Instagram's trial reels feature. She begins by sharing personal updates about her garden planning, reading habits, and a video editing challenge involving sunglasses reflection. Bradford then transitions to discussing social media growth statistics, comparing her YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram performance from January 27 to February 24. TikTok showed 184% growth, YouTube nearly 20%, while Instagram only grew 0.37%. This leads into the main topic: trial reels as a way to reach non-followers. Bradford explains how she discovered trial reels through the Good Influencer community after avoiding a paid course. She details her method of creating a reel, saving it to draft, duplicating it, publishing one version normally, and setting the duplicate to trial only—disconnecting it from her profile and Facebook. The host then shares insights from a Buffer blog post by Kirstie Lang, which outlines trial reels as a content testing ground. Buffer's experiment tested three identical videos with different audio: voiceover, ASMR, and trending audio. Trending audio garnered the most views but tied with voiceover for average watch time. Bradford lists Buffer's ten suggested testing areas, including best posting times, hook effectiveness, caption styles, and reel length. She questions whether creators should get overly focused on testing variables, arguing that content should ultimately be educational, entertaining, or informative. The episode concludes with encouragement to use trial reels strategically without overcomplicating content creation, given Instagram's already challenging algorithm.

As heard by us

A grounded look at trying Instagram trial reels when growth is slow and the content workload is already heavy.

Instagram trial reels come across here as a practical answer to a problem Taylor Bradford is tracking, not just venting about. She reports 0.37% growth from when she started watching the numbers to today, including 0.2% in a week, then walks through the move from making two…

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Why you'd press play

You want Instagram traction, but you are not eager to turn short-form content into a twice-a-day endurance test.

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