What are Facebook Reels? (How I Grew My FB Page from 1K to 30K in 3 Months)

In this episode, Jenna dives into FB Reels! She gives an overview of what Facebook Reels are, why bloggers should care, plus best practices for creating them.

Resources

• Show notes
• See my FB Reels: The Urben Life FB Page
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Transcript

Welcome to The Bloggerbytes Podcast. I'm your host, Jenna Urben. This is a podcast for bloggers, influencers, and content creators. Here I'll share transparent advice plus emerging tools and platforms to empower you to establish your brand, serve your audience, and monetize your influence. I'm so happy you're here.

In today's episode, we're gonna be diving into Facebook reels. I'll be covering the basics of what they are, why bloggers and influencers should. Sharing how I grew my page by over 30,000 followers in three months. Plus tips for you to keep in mind as you add Facebook reels to your blogging strategy. Let's start off with what Facebook reels are.

They're similar to Instagram reels, however they're housed on Facebook and posted two year Facebook business page. In short, there are vertical videos that can include music or a voiceover. Text stickers and more. You can post an Instagram reel and allow for it to be shared to Facebook. However, that will not benefit growth for your Facebook page as it's connected to your Instagram account and will link back there.

Because of this, I recommend posting directly through the Facebook mobile app. If you do this, you'll be able to respond to comments, see insights, and hopefully gain new page followers. All right, cool. So where do Facebook reels appear? Well, you'll see them in your home feed on pages, as well as housed under the shortcuts on your menu tab.

From there, you'll be able to scroll reels and create your own. In my opinion, that's the easiest way to navigate to where all of your Facebook reels live. and where to create a new reel to publish. New features are continuously being added and tweaked and rolled out, but the general idea has stayed the same.

So you can upload a video clip or multiple clips or even record recording the app, piece it together, add music or a voiceover. From there, include a caption, then share it with the world. So a couple things to note: Currently captions don't allow a clickable link url, so I suggest dropping that link in the comment section.

Really reserve your caption for describing what the real is and include any relevant hashtags when you're posting on Facebook reels or really any platform for that matter. Remember the four ease of social media. Your content should either. Educate, entertain, engage, or encourage. You want your content to be shareable, thus making it reach a larger audience.

All right, so why should bloggers, brands and business owners care about Facebook reels? I see the biggest opportunities being organic discoverability. So not having to rely on ads to reach a wide audience. Additionally, reels are still heavily being pushed on Facebook, so it's still a great time to jump in and grow your reach and gain new followers.

Plus chances are you probably already have an abundance of short form vertical video content from posting. Instagram, TikTok, YouTube shorts, et cetera, and the list goes on. You're just gonna wanna make sure that those platforms logos aren't watermarked onto your content. Then simply repurpose it on Facebook reels, give that content a new life by using a new song or recording a fresh voiceover.

A little bit of background about me and Facebook reels. So I jumped on the Facebook reels bandwagon right as they were rolling out in the fall of 2021. My food blog's business page had been stuck around a thousand followers for years with minimal growth and engagement.

So, I decided to post a minimum of three FB reels a week for about two to two and a half months. This was brand new content that I eventually repurposed and recycled throughout all the social platforms I'm active on. Plus web stories! I used trending or popular songs, sometimes with a voiceover. A majority of the reels were recipe focused with step by step directions and the recipe left in the caption, or if I had a blog post that link in the comments.

In that time, I was able to grow from a very stagnant 1000 page followers. To over 30,000 followers. The engagement was incredible as well. Across the board, from real comments to standard post comments and arguably most important clicks to my blog, I think three main components played a role in this growth.

First, I was early to posting reels, so there wasn't as much competition. However, this isn't to say it's too late. Facebook is still pushing reals hard, but the key is really posting consistently. Second, I engaged with nearly every single comment I received. I know that's not always feasible, but. I saw a direct correlation to growth and engagement when I dedicated time to respond to comments.

Third, I made content that was shareable. I leaned into seasonal recipes and holiday food as a food blogger, and if I wasn't sharing seasonal recipes, it was. Super simple recipes that led viewers to share my reel on their own pages, which then led to increased reach. I believe that all of these factors played a role, but truly out of all of them, posting consistently and engaging with comments made the biggest impact.

In my opinion, my top tips for Facebook reels include, Those two factors, posting reels on a consistent schedule, whether that's weekly, daily, trickled out throughout the week, whatever you can manage. As well as engaging with comments you receive, even if it's just an emoji or a quick note. Also determine a timeframe you can commit to.

I suggest at least two to three months, if not a full quarter. And during that time of experimentation, you can see what type of videos and content works best for. Then after posting consistently for that duration, evaluate if it's something you want to continue pursuing or not. Something to note as well.

You can schedule reels in Creator studio, but as far as I know, it still has pretty limited capabilities. I assume it'll get better over time. That is something that could help with consistency. Check it out and see if that tool might work for you. That's it for this episode. Please reach out to me if you have any questions about Facebook reels or if you need further clarification on something I touched on.

I really encourage you just to dive in to the Facebook mobile app, Find reels. Just start posting. Really just have fun with it. Start experimenting. See what can happen for you, your page, and your blogging business as a whole. Meta also has a handful of resources to dive in deeper, learn about their bonus program to earn money based on the amount of views your reel receive, and much more.

Thanks so much for joining me this week. Before you go, make sure to subscribe to the podcast so you can receive weekly episodes, right when they're. And if you're enjoying the episodes, I'd love to ask you to please leave a review. It takes just a few seconds, but makes a huge difference and means a ton to me personally.

Thank you again for joining me, Jenna Urben, and this episode of Bloggerbytes. Next episode, we're gonna be chatting all about additional ways to grow and maintain your Facebook page. See you then.