How to Develop an Instagram Video Strategy that Scales

From video Stories to Reels to Instagram Live, there’s no doubt that video rules on Instagram. It keeps the audience hooked and engaged on the platform, especially with short-form videos like Reels becoming massively popular. In fact, the latest Instagram Reels stats reveal that the platform is number one when it comes to engagement compared to other short-form video apps. On average, users spend about 53 minutes viewing Reels per session.

Considering all this, it’s only natural for brands to create an effective Instagram video strategy to boost their marketing efforts on the platform. At the same time, scalability should be a top concern when developing your strategy so that it can grow (or shrink) with your business needs. Let’s find out the 10 essential steps to creating a scalable Instagram video strategy. 

How to Develop an Instagram Video Strategy that Scales:

Step 1: Identify and Define Goals

Like all marketing strategies, your Instagram video strategy must start with a few key goals outlined for the month or for a specific campaign. For example, perhaps you want to produce X number of Reels this month and you want to see a 5% increase in interactions with your video Stories. The idea is to make sure that you’re specifying exactly what you should be working toward.

When you define your goals, it’s easy to give your strategy a better sense of direction. This will ensure that you’re focusing your efforts on something specific instead of just trying to do everything all at once. Moreover, you can better measure your progress because your goals tell you what success looks like to you.

Since you want your strategy to be scalable, it’s best if you keep your goals short-term instead of rigidly sticking to one goal for an entire quarter or year. That way, you can quickly adapt and make adjustments to your goals based on changing business needs.

Step 2: Create Style Guidelines for Consistency

Even as your strategy scales, it’s important to ensure that the video content you produce is still cohesive so that it looks professional and on-brand. This is why it’s important to clearly outline the style guidelines that should be followed consistently in your video productions. With a close consideration for Instagram video size requirements, come up with a comprehensive guideline specifying the rules to follow for style and visual consistency.

If you already have a social media style guide in place, you could review it to include additional tips and rules specific to Instagram videos. For example, you may include details about which fonts to use when including text in your video Stories. Similarly, you may also include information about how your auto-generated captions should be styled.

Step 3: Map Out Your Content Calendar

Next, it’s time to map out a calendar for your Instagram content, where you’ll specify what types of posts will be published as well as when and how often they’ll be published. This could be anything from two to three Reels per week to one video Story every other day. It will largely depend on your campaign or monthly goals and your resources. 

Not sure how to fill up your calendar with content ideas? Check out these interesting content calendar ideas for inspiration. You could use a combination of how-to videos, demo videos, customer videos, and behind-the-scenes tours depending on what you want to achieve. For instance, Cult Beauty mixes up their Reels between product promo videos, how-to videos, and relatable videos from beauty creators.

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Having a content calendar in place allows you to organize your video creation efforts since you can plan ahead instead of creating last-minute videos that don’t really help your Instagram marketing efforts. You can use anything from a physical calendar to a spreadsheet to map out your Instagram content calendar. Alternatively, you can also use the content calendar templates offered by leading social media publishing tools. 

Step 4: Develop Video Ideas 

Using your content calendar as a guideline, it’s time to come up with ideas for your Instagram videos. While you could plan out video ideas for the entire month to save time, you might want to consider weekly or bi-monthly ideation instead to make it more flexible. That way, you could easily update your content calendar based on new events, trends, and ideas. 

For example, if everyone’s suddenly creating Reels based on a new trend, you can easily plan your video ideas for the next week based on that trend. See how Ford jumped in on the “How it started vs. How it’s going” trend in the following Reel. This is a great way to stay current and on-trend and be a part of the ongoing conversation. 

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Make sure to consider certain annual or monthly events to keep your videos relevant. For example, you could create videos related to St. Patrick’s Day or videos celebrating Women’s History Month. This is a great way to come up with relevant ideas when you’ve run out of them.

For each video idea, make sure to specify the ideal length you wish to target. You’d also need to clarify the intended tone and the mood you wish to create through the video. This will give your production team plenty of guidance in their video creation process. 

Step 5: Create a Script for Your Videos

Once your video ideas have been developed, it’s time to solidify them with a script for each idea. This is a crucial step even if the video doesn’t actually have a dialogue. You need to plan out how the video will be played out, how the scenes will transition between each other, and so on. In other words, it will give a chronological run-down of the different scenes and actions that will be portrayed in your video.

While it may sound intimidating at first, keep in mind that the script for your Instagram videos won’t necessarily be a full-fledged script for a movie. You can briefly lay out the sequence of scenes and dialogues for your video. In other words, you’ll be developing a blueprint of the video, which is essential no matter how short the video may be. 

Even a 30-second video needs a script if you want to make sure that the message gets across clearly. This will allow your creative team to know exactly what’s needed of them when they’re producing the video and editing it. In addition to the script, you’ll also need to write copy for the video if you’re including dialogues, text overlay, and/or captions.

Step 6: Create and Edit Your Videos in Batches

When it comes to Instagram, most of your video content will be short-form considering the platform’s maximum video duration. This gives you an advantage since you can batch out your video production and editing processes. That means you can create multiple videos at a time, which will allow you to save time and streamline your content development.

When creating new videos, the whole process of arranging schedules, getting into the content creation mood, setting up, and starting your shoot can take up a huge chunk of your time. So having to develop new videos regularly can be time-consuming and sometimes even frustrating. Instead, when you batch out your video creation to shoot multiple videos at once, you can reuse sets, plan out a whole time slot for your production team, and stay in the creative mindset.

The same goes for your video editing process. Since you’ll have a bunch of raw footage for multiple videos, having your editing team put the final touches on multiple videos can help to streamline the work. This will also allow you to “stock up” on videos, so you always have something ready to publish. 

Step 7: Use Templates to Your Advantage

Templates are one of the best Instagram tools to save time on video creation. When creating a Reel containing multiple media files or combining footage from several videos, Instagram will turn it into a template that you can keep reusing for future Reels. It will essentially save the different time slots assigned to each scene, which will automatically be applied when you reuse the template. Additionally, you can also reuse Reels templates from other video creators.

Whether you create your own template or reuse a template created by someone else isn’t what’s important. The main point is that you won’t have to manually adjust the duration and transitioning for each Reel. This helps you save tons of time and makes it easy to come up with well-timed Reels every time. As such, you can effectively scale your Instagram Reel creation process.

Step 8: Make the Most of Instagram Scheduling

When scaling your Instagram video marketing strategy, time savings should be a priority. That’s why having to manually publish your video content isn’t necessarily the best option. It distracts you from other important tasks and increases the risk of missing important publishing deadlines. In other words, you might have a hard time following your content schedule and publishing content consistently.

Instead, scheduling your Instagram videos in bulk will allow you to save plenty of time. If you’ve created videos for the entire month, for example, you could set aside some time in your day to schedule all of them so you can relax or focus on other important tasks for the rest of the month. This will also allow you to take advantage of optimal post timings since you can schedule your videos according to the best time to post on Instagram.  

Instagram has even introduced the option to schedule Reels for those using a Creator or Business account. All you have to do is tap on “Advanced Settings” before publishing your Reel and then turn on the “Schedule this reel” option. You can then select the ideal time and date you want the Reel to go out. 

Alternatively, you can also streamline your content creation and publishing efforts by using a social media publishing platform. These platforms typically come with built-in editing and content calendar tools. Plus, they offer Instagram scheduling tools that you can use along with your content calendar.

It’s important to note that some videos will have to be published in real-time such as certain Stories and Instagram Live broadcasts. But for the most part, you’ll be able to schedule your pre-created video content to save a significant amount of time.

Step 9: Find Ways to Repurpose and Maximize Value

Scaling your video marketing strategy is also about getting the most value out of the time and resources you’ve invested in creating videos. That’s why content repurposing should be a crucial part of your strategy. This would involve reusing your existing videos and creating something different or new with them.

For starters, you could turn your video Stories into themed Highlights. Let’s say you’ve shared a bunch of videos in your Stories with customers trying out your products and sharing their experiences. These videos could be added to a Highlight about customer experiences. Jessa Kae did something similar with an “On You” Highlight where they shared videos of customers wearing their dresses.

Similarly, you could repurpose your Reels for Stories by including an external link to a relevant page. Or you could include interactive Stickers such as polls, emoji sliders, and quizzes. The options are virtually endless as long as you get creative with it. 

Step 10: Analyze and Optimize as Needed

Finally, scalability should also be about learning from past performances and optimizing your strategy. So make sure to keep a close eye on your Instagram analytics to see how your video Stories and Reels are performing. Check out which Stories managed to engage your audience, which ones got skipped the most, and which ones resulted in additional actions such as profile visits and website taps. This will then give you an idea of what’s working with your audience.

Similarly, you should also look at the level of engagement that different Reels managed to drive. One key metric to look at is the number of saves to see how valuable people are finding your Reels. Use these insights to inform and scale your future Instagram video marketing strategy.

Creating Impactful Videos for Instagram

Now that you know the key steps to scaling your Instagram video strategy, it’s time to put these tips into action. Start by outlining the main goals you wish to achieve and create videos that deliver an impact.