Your questions for Georgia about Instagram Reels

What would help you to know about Instagram reels? Is there anything you find confusing or that you’d like us to cover in future workshops? Let us know in this thread.

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That last workshop was so useful! I am now struggling with the soundtrack editing, I don’t find it very intuitive or easy so any tips as to what the sound editing tools actually do would be much appreciated!

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Oh my goodness, I wish I had the I.T skills some sellers have. I feel very old and arckaic, I am the older generation who didn’t grow up with computers. What I know is all self taught so far! I get so confused and I just don’t understand the I.T vocabulary!

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And while we’re at it… being able to add text/subtitles to reels is brilliant but I’m struggling to figure out what all the controls do for that part too, so could we please have an idiot’s guide to the text tools as well?

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I simply don’t know how to create an animated reel, they are engaging so would love to learn how. I can post a reel with music but they are always static if that makes sense

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I’m so pleased you found it useful! With regards to soundtrack editing, are there any specific settings you’re confused by? In our previous workshop, we added an audio from Instagram. The main adjustments you can make to that are ‘adjust’ which is to select which part of that soundtrack you want, and ‘volume’ which comes in handy when you’re also adding a voiceover - something I am sure we will cover in a later workshop.

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A great suggestion for future things we can cover in workshops, so thank you!

Meanwhile, when you want to add captions to a Reel, you can do this using the ‘sticker’ option when editing your Reel (it looks like a smiley face post it note) and under that you should see ‘captions’. It will automatically create captions for the audio it can hear.

If it has got any words wrong, just tap the word that is wrong and you’ll be able to write over it.

There are three things you can edit here:

  • Font - you can choose from a variety of fonts, usually along the bottom of the screen.
  • Colour - you can choose what colour you’d like your text, usually an option at the top of your screen.
  • Background - you can choose if you want your text to have a block of colour behind it, or whether you want the text surrounded by a black outline, usually an option at the top of your screen.

You can adjust where the captions appear by holding and dragging the text to where you want it.

I hope that helps until we cover it over video!

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There are so many settings and options within Instagram, it’s easy for anyone to struggle to wrap their head around it all! I hope you find the workshops helpful but if there is anything specific you’d like to ask, please don’t hesitate to let me know.

Hi Binny, did you attend our workshop? I hope that would give you some inspiration to record a video that is simple yet engaging. Reels tend to always perform better if they use video content, so that could be picking up, using, making or even packaging up one of your products. I’d suggest having a go at filming part of your process and adding some audio. Let me know if you have a go, I’d love to see!

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I find it really fiddly to choose the part I want at the beginning, I haven’t really wrapped my head around how to do it, it seems a bit hit and miss as to whether I get the right section and then it seems very fiddly to edit the sound to the same length as the video. I just feel I must be missing something! Or maybe I just need more practice?

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THANK YOU that is massively useful - I don’t think I’ve used the Sticker option at all, ever. I’m not too sure about how the other text functions work either so if we can cover those in a future workshop that would be brilliant!

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Quite honestly, it isn’t easy to choose which bit of the audio you like on that initial page after choosing audio! It’s just a slider without much precision. There are a couple of ‘spots’ which are where key bits of audio start and are most commonly used sections of the audio. However, once you’ve picked your audio, and you can see it when editing your reel in a bar along the bottom, below your video clip, you can then adjust it more precisely. A little hard to type here, but hopefully, we can cover it in one of our sessions soon!

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Stickers are such a great way of adding some interaction to your reels (and stories too, as stickers are also on there). Captions is definitely a key one, so please do have a play and see how you get on with that sticker. We will definitely cover adding text in the future too :slight_smile:

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Hi all, if anyone is trying to make reels in the lead up to Christmas but are struggling with any aspect at all, please don’t hesitate to pop me a question on here - I’d love to help.

Our next workshop is tomorrow Tuesday 3rd December at 11am, hope to see some of you there. :wave:

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I hope you all found today’s workshop useful! Please have a go and use this space to ask for any help - I’m here to answer your questions.

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Thank you @georgiadelotz (and Folksy) it was another really useful workshop with lots of helpful tips… I am definitely going to give it a go very soon… just looking at tripods :grin: as I think for me particularly it will help!

My pleasure. Thank you for your kind feedback. I’ve had a quick glance on Amazon and something like this would be my suggestion as it can go to full height and tilt backwards and forwards and therefore you can have full flexibility with it. (This is unaffiliated and I don’t own this exact product so can’t vouch for its quality!).

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Oh thank you for looking that is so helpful.:blush:
I will go and have a look at that one, it does sound exactly what I need with the flexibility.

No problem at all. If you find anything else and want my opinion on it, please let me know.

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This is very neat and portable.

Must retrieve mine from the drawer in the caravan !! It’s tricky filming myself soldering with one hand on the phone and the other on the soldering iron :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

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