Video: Amie Tollefsrud’s guide to Instagram Reels for course creators
The following is a video from Teachable creator and entrepreneur, Amie Tollefsrud. Amie is a full-time online course creator who transitioned out of her 9 to 5 job and teaches NTPs, Health Coaches, Nutritionists, and Wellness enthusiasts how to create, launch, and scale their own online practices through her free trainings, blog posts, and online courses. As a social media pro, Amie has grown her audience immensely with Instagram Reels. In honor of Teachable’s Creator Month, in which we celebrate and share the expertise of creators everywhere, check out Amie’s guide to Instagram Reels for course creators.
Amie Tollefsrud’s guide to Instagram Reels
Video transcript:
Hi everyone. I’m Amie from Rebelle Nutrition. And this is the online course creator’s guide to Instagram Reels. Over the past year, my online course business has really exploded thanks in large part to Instagram Reels. And through a lot of trial and error, I’ve really found that there are three types of Reels that work super well not only to grow your Instagram audience but to also increase the number of students into your online course.
So number one is the educational or how to Reel. This is a really good place to start if you are new [or] if you’ve never created an Instagram Reel before because you don’t really have to do any heavy editing any transitions. You don’t have to do lip synching or dancing if that feels awkward to you.
These types of Reels are really just you speaking and teaching something to your ideal audience. And I found that the key to getting these types of Reels to be really engaging is to really poke your audience within the first three to five seconds. So tell them what they’re going to learn or pique their interest somehow. So here’s an example of one of my Reels using this format. And I actually turned it into a series called, ‘Things you didn’t know you could do on Instagram‘.
Voice within Reels:
‘So you probably already know that after you post a photo, you can go into view insights and see how many likes comments, shares, and saves that got right. If you swipe up from the screen, you can even see how many profile visits you got the overall reach you got as well as the amount of website clicks. And from here you can see how many accounts found you from your hashtags. And even if you made it on the Explore page. You want to know if people are finding you from your hashtags. And if you made it on the Explore page so that you can create more content like that and reach more accounts.’
Number two is edutainment—that’s a mixture of education and entertainment. This is your chance to educate and entertain your audience at the same time. To create an edutainment real effectively, take a few minutes per day to watch Reels yourself and see what kinds of trends music themes are coming up over and over again, and then jot down some ideas about how you could apply those trends to your niche or your online course topic. So here’s an example of an edutainment Reels trend where the premise is to share something that makes you really happy. So there’s a lot of different ways that you could take this and apply it to your business. I use this as an opportunity to show some of my favorite student testimonials.
Music plays
And here’s another example of a Reels trend where the premise is to share something unbelievable that happened to you. Again, you want to take this and apply it to your business or your story. So here’s an example of what I use for that.
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And I know you might be thinking, well, there’s no way I can apply certain Reels trends to my knees or to my business. And I’m here to tell you, there was always a way to apply a trend to your business. You just have to get really creative—think outside the box. Think about your personal story as it relates to your business. Think about your ideal client and student what they want to know. And don’t be afraid to look a little bit silly because some of these Reels trends are kind of awkward to do.
I’ve really found that relatable Reels—the types of Reels that you see and you just automatically think to yourself, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s me,’ or ‘OMG, I thought I was the only person who felt like that.’ Those sort of relatable reels are really, really shareable. And those are the ones that are most likely to go viral. So think about your own experience of watching a Reel and being like, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s so me—I have to share it right now.’ Those are the types of Reels that you want to create in your own business because they’re going to help you reach not only a larger audience, but an audience full of the right people that are eventually going to become students.
So to give you an example of what a relatable Reel looks like in action, I’m going to show you one of my most viral Reels ever. And to give you some context, my audience is a lot of nutritionists and health coaches who want to create their own online course. So I also used to be a nutritionist, and I know the types of thoughts that are going through a nutritionist’s mind. So with that being said I’m going to show you this Reel where the premise is to share something that is kind of partially true, followed up by how you actually feel about it.
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Thank you guys so much for watching. If this was helpful, be sure to come follow me on Instagram @RebelleNutrition. I share tons of online course creation and Reels and Instagram tips on there and I would love to have you on.