How to Use Instagram Reels as Part of Your Organic (free!) Marketing Strategy

Now, when you hear me say organic, I want you to also think about the word free because that’s what organic traffic is. It costs you $0 to use Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Clubhouse, all these different social media apps. And when you use them well, you can grow your organic traffic without ever having to spend $1.

I’m also a big fan of publications, paid advertising, and paid traffic. But that’s not what this blog is about. Today we are talking about how to use Instagram Reels as part of your organic marketing strategy.

Now I talk a lot about how to make reels and why you should make them. But today, I want to give you three ways you can incorporate reels into your marketing strategy without having to create lots more content. Because that’s what I hear from most wedding pros, business owners — we’re busy. We have a million things to do. And we don’t have time to create one more thing.

And guess what? What is exciting about using this reel strategy is that you’re not creating new content. You’re creating the same content in a new way! Because guys, you know me, come on. I’m not gonna do anything in my business that is not going to be efficient and effective! So I promise you I’ve tested these things. They are effective in growing your traffic, and increasing click-throughs to your website. It’s your responsibility to sell them once they’re there!

Repurpose Your Anchor Content

If you haven’t heard of it, I believe in using the “anchor” content strategy to make more content and spend less time doing it. So anchor content for wedding pros will typically be your blog. Now for me in my coaching space in my education space, it’s my podcast. Let me walk you through how I do both. 

My Education & Coaching Business

For my weekly podcast, it gets repurposed into two blogs.

One blog will be  a legit transcript for the episode and that lives on my website and on my podcast page.

So if somebody listened to an episode, they can go through a transcript to take any notes from it.

Then we’re also going to turn it into an actual blog later in the week.

Then we’re also going to make five Instagram posts out of this same podcast. One will be a carousel post, a few will be reels, a static post, and an audiogram.

So that’s how it works in my coaching space in my education space. And if you watch my Instagram, you’ll actually see how we do that each week.

My Event Planning Businesses

Now for my wedding planning business and for my event planning business — Blush and Eleven.

For Blush, you’ll see that our anchor content is a blog. So we write one blog a week.

We have a team that writes blogs, and we also work with other vendors to create blogs so that we can cross-promote.Then we splinter our content from there. 

Even if one blog a week is too much, you can write two a month or even once a month. You’ll still have plenty to repurpose.

Repurposing With a Small Team or Solo

So let’s say that you write a blog for your website. And the blog is an educational blog. And it’s going to be three things to pack on your wedding day for your photographer.

There are a million different ways you can use this blog. Maybe you’ll say to have a full invitation, perfume or jewelry, and their garter or their heels. Whatever it is you suggest.

And then you might put two or three images in that blog of detail shots the photographer has gotten of heels and invitations. Things like that.

Okay. So now you’ve made this blog. You can create a reel with the exact same topic. You’ve already written the content, why make more content, if people consume content in different ways?

So like me, for instance. I never read blogs ever, ever, ever, ever, ever.

I’m a skimmer in general. But I’ll watch a reel all day long. Everybody consumes content in different ways. So now you can make a reel with that exact same content.

It can be a simple pointing reel with the text saying “three things to make sure you have on a wedding day for your photographer.”

You can hold up an invitation, a garter, and a cute pair of high heels. Whatever it is that you said in your blog, you’re going to hold up in that reel.

Now another thing you can do is create a slide that says “three things to pack on a wedding day for your photographer.” And then you can write the text on it.

You can have a slideshow of pictures with all the different photography shots. You don’t even have to show your face if you don’t want to.

There’s no reason for you to be recreating new content. And that’s where a lot of people get stuck. You can repurpose what you’ve already done into a reel. So number one is to repurpose the anchor content that you already have created.

Recreate a Reel Into Your Anchor Blog or Social Content

Okay, so this is a lot of fun, too. For wedding pros, especially, we have an unlimited amount of content. I created a content plan for you guys called, Making a Reel Plan. It’s a content calendar with prompts, goals, captions, things like that which you can grab here. And it’s 101 ideas for wedding pros to create reels in five minutes or less.

So one of the ideas that’s on there is to capture iPhone footage from a wedding. It can be fun, an emotion, a party, behind the scenes of a vendor set up, a groom crying at the first look, it can be whatever.

But it’s going to be 15 second iPhone footage you’re capturing from a wedding. So let’s say, for instance, you’re a DJ and you captured great iPhone footage of you behind your DJ booth with a party rocking out on the dance floor. So you can turn that into a reel and say something like “We bring the party.”

The great part about reels is it will last forever and ever and ever. And people keep tagging it. And if it’s a great one, and it’s got great hashtags, it’s gonna get reshares too.

But there’s still no reason to only use a piece of content once. So let’s say you had this iPhone footage and made it into a reel. Why not make a blog out of that? Or if you’re like Brandee, I cannot write a whole blog, I get it. I hate writing blogs too.

Why not make that into an Instagram, graphic, or make it into an IGTV? Or you don’t even have to use the footage. You can make a post about how you bring the party and what you do to make it fun.

It’s the same mentality or the same thought on what you already had for that reel and repurposing it into other pieces of content. There’s no reason that you have to make every single piece of content unique. Because people need to interact with you seven times before they’re ever going to buy from you.

If you do have an email list after you created a reel you can download it as a video and put it into an email newsletter. Then you can tell your brides and grooms about how you brought the party for this event. So there’s a lot of different ways to reuse it. 

So on your socials, blog, and email list, you need to keep saying the same thing over and over and over again. So you can make it your anchor piece of content. Okay, so that’s number two. Number two is that it can be your anchor piece of content, and then you can make other things around it.

Use Pinterest to Share Reels as Video Pins

This is probably one that very few people do. The Pinterest strategist for my team started doing this and my traffic has gone bananas. If you don’t use Pinterest, that conversation is for another day.

But if you use Pinterest, here’s a fun thing that you can do with your reels. Video pins are sah-laying it on Pinterest right now. If you post a video, you’re going to get way, way more engagement than you would on a static post.

So after you post your reel on Instagram, at the bottom of the post you’ll see three dots. Click them and it will give you an option to “Save to Camera Roll.” Then it will save that reel with the text and everything on it to your phone.

Then you can upload the video as a pin over on Pinterest. You can direct that pin back to your website, a blog you wrote, or even back to Instagram. But that pin is going to get an incredible amount of traffic.

So don’t recreate something new. Post the same exact thing over to Pinterest and I promise you’re going to get an incredible amount of traffic.

Grow Organic Traffic and Show Different Sides of Your Brand With Instagram Reels

I hope that you have heard from me by now, how important it is to use Instagram reels as part of your strategy. I know a lot of you have said to me, even if you aren’t using reels yet, that you love my reels and that they’re so fun. 

And that’s kind of the thing I want you guys to see. If you’ve known me for any length of time, you know that as a professional, I’m a buttoned-up human. But as a human in general, I’m kind of quirky and goofy.

With reels, I get to show that side of my personality more. I get to show my McDonald’s habits or silly things I like to do or how much I like to dance. And you can be a little bit more kitschy.

So if you guys learn anything from me, it’s that you can show both sides of your personality when you use reels as part of your strategy.

If you’re not already using reels and you’re stuck, head over to my Making a Reel Plan guide. It comes with exactly what to post, caption ideas, links to different reels I’ve made for my brands, so you can use it as inspiration and use the audio from it.

The cool thing about reels is that they’re meant to be copied. That’s what makes them go viral. Don’t worry about being a copycat, because that’s what you’re supposed to do! Recreating trends is the fun part. 

So feel free to copy me! Go over to Making a Reel Plan and grab the 101 prompts so you can use reels as part of your organic growth strategy.