As I’ve stated on this blog a number of times, Instagram Reels are the hottest, most popular and trendiest feature on Instagram. And because they’re the most effective kind of post for growth and engagement, knowing whether or not you should share them to your Feed is crucial.
For years I’ve been teaching — along with my son, Brock — to share Reels to your Feed.
Keep in mind, I never talk in absolutes in regard to social media (because things are always changing). However, this happens to be ONE area we felt was, basically, as close to a rule as possible.
And now we’re suggesting NOT to share Reels to the Feed.
Gasp!
But, hold up. In the event you don’t know the process for posting Reels… let’s walk through it for a moment.
On the very last step before you post your Reel you’ll find a Share button. And right there is a tiny on-off switch. A little toggle, if you will.
It says,
Also share to Feed (which it’s automatically selected to do).
So, this means that when you share your Reel, it will, as a matter of course, also share to your Feed.
(It’s important to keep in mind, though, that all Reels, no matter what, are shared to your Reels page.)
Hence, if someone goes to your profile and taps on the Reels button, they’ll see all your Reels right there.
Side note: All Reels are shared to the Reels Explore page, too. This is where they have the opportunity to rank highly (whether they’re shared to the Feed or not).
While your followers can still see your Reel when not shared to the Feed, sharing it to the Feed:
- increases the likelihood your followers will see it
- ensures it’s pushed to more of your followers
- gives your Reel an initial spike in engagement
And that makes sense because instead of just hoping that Instagram’s algorithm picks it up and shows it to the right people, you’re betting on — at the very least — your followers catching your Reel and engaging with it.
Recently though, things have begun to shift.
We’ve started to notice comments from our audience and messages from our InstaClubHub members that went something like,
Hey, I didn’t share my Reel to my Feed, but only shared to the Reels page and it performed a lot better!
And so, we — Brock, my team, our social media managers and I — decided to take a step back and run even more tests (on the 20 different Instagram pages we manage).
Hence, we have very a thorough, amazing and unique ability to survey and test things on a plethora of very niched-down IG accounts.
After we began testing this new theory of posting Reels exclusively to the Reels page, we started to experience far more views and engagement!
While this strategy is certainly not conclusive or full proof just yet, it’s definitely something to pay attention to.
But why do we believe this is going on?
For THAT and much more related to this topic, you must check out this episode of Build Your Tribe:
And don’t forget to subscribe to BYT for weekly episodes dedicated to your social media growth and dominance!
