Using Instagram Trial Reels to Gain Hundreds of New Followers with @niki.puls

(upbeat music) You're listening to an episode of the Abigail Pew podcast with, you guessed it, Abigail Pew. I'm an introverted momo took my online business from zero to seven figures in 15 months, selling my own digital products on social media. And guess what? I did it all with my three-year-old daughter no less than three feet away from me at all times. Now, I'm bringing you everything I've learned about building a wildly profitable online business that supports your life while allowing you to truly live it. Get ready for raw, honest conversations with entrepreneurs making thousands per month selling their own digital products and people just like you who ditch self-doubt to create the life they've always wanted. If you're ready to make more money, have more impact and still have time for the things that matter most, you're in the right place. Grab your sneakers, head out on your hot girl lock and let's dive in. Today's guest is a marketing coach who literally writes content for celebrities and she has cracked the code on using trial rules. Which if you don't know what trial rules are, don't worry, we're gonna dive into that today. But basically, it's a new feature on Instagram that Nikki, my guest today, has been using to gain hundreds of followers on Instagram a day. So let's dive right in, Nikki. Thank you so much for coming on the show. - Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. - Yes, we both showed up wearing our colors. We both got our colors done, which has nothing to do with this. But if you have not gotten your season or your colors done in your content creator, 10 out of 10 recommend it, you will look so much better in your content when you are wearing colors that like compliment you in your skin tones. But I love it, we both showed up wearing like, I'm wearing blue and she's wearing bright pink and it's, I love it, me here for it. But that's not what we're here to talk about today. They were gonna talk about trial rules. Which first things first, Nikki, I'd love to kind of just talk about what they are. Cause I know not everyone has them on their account yet. I didn't have them when they first came out. I do now and kind of what they are. Cause it's still a very new feature that a lot of people have not figured out how to use yet. And they don't even know where it is on Instagram. - Totally, like you said, trial rules is a new feature. And I would say this is one of the first new features that Instagram has launched in a long time. We haven't seen something like this on Instagram. Probably since they launched Reels. And this is one of a kind feature. TikTok does I have this? Thread says I have a no other platform with how it's a feature like this. Which is why I was so excited about it that this was a new feature in IJovin. I said, okay, I'm gonna crack the code on this. I'm really gonna dive in because what the heck is this. And like you said, it's new. Not everybody has trial rules yet. So if you listen to this episode and you're like, I don't have that, keep checking your account because they're slowly rolling it out. And unfortunately, there's no grammar reason. I have a client with less than 1,000 followers who has it. And then I have a client with 60,000 followers who doesn't have it yet. And then I had a client who had it for a while. And then she didn't have it. And now she has it again. Typical Instagram fashion. There's no grammar reason that they're slowly rolling it out. So definitely listen, even if you don't have trial rules because you could wake up tomorrow and have access to this new feature in New York could hit the ground running. Because I first had this feature around Christmas talking a couple of months ago with is when they showed up on my account and they didn't really know how to use it. And they actually failed miserably when they first started using it because they didn't know how to use it. And as an entrepreneur and a mom to two toddlers, you know our time is so limited. So I even said, I don't really have time to tinker with this new feature but I kept revisiting it because the potential there is so big. Essentially what it is, it's a toggle right before you post a reel. So if you're listening to this and you want to follow along, you can open up like you're gonna post a reel. Ready when you put in the caption and you can put in hashtags and all that there is a toggle option. You can toggle on trial rules. If you have this feature, if you don't have it, it won't appear there yet. So I wanted to dive in and just really crack the code to it. So I started testing it and the more I tested it, the better I got. - Shocking. - Practice, practice, practice, go. - Yes, I was like, it's a new feature. There's so much potential because what it does is it only shows your content to non-followers. So your followers will not see this content at all. It sends it to a totally separate algorithm and a totally separate group of people. And how it works is it in screen picks who it's gonna show it to you based on people's interest and their habits on the app. Basically it's an interest based algorithm, which is kind of new for an Instagram because typically an Instagram that shows your content to your followers. - Yeah, well then it interact with you. - It feels very much like the TikTok algorithm, honestly. - Yes, I'm gonna say, which is why I love it because you know me, yeah, I love TikTok. I have 300,000 followers on TikTok and I love it, I'll grow them over there. So with trial reels, it did remain a lot of interest based algorithm like TikTok. And so that was making my, I was like, I'm gonna go all in, I'm gonna figure it out. And since it's so interest based, you can really highly target it who you and your content shown to. So if you know your ideal follower, you can really call them in with this new feature. - That's amazing. And you guys, it doesn't, also I wanna add, it doesn't go to your feed. So you can try multiple things and it's not like all these reels with like 10 views if you're used to getting way more than that is gonna show up on your feed. It doesn't go to your feed at all. In fact, when I posted my first one, I couldn't figure out where it went. Mine now go, like when I go to my drafts, it's connected. So now when I go to my reels drafts or any drafts, when I click that button, it gives me the option. There's like a slide up bar and it says drafts or trial reels. So if you do have it and you can't figure out where they went, that's where they go. I was very confused at first. Okay, I'd love to know what type of content is working for trial reels. And maybe you could give them a few hooks for them to try as well. I feel like my audience really does well learning by trial and error and practicing things. So what's kind of working there? - So with trial reels, like I said in the beginning, I feel miserable, and I've heard this from a lot of people where they're like, I posted to trial reels and got 10 views because it's new. It takes a lot of trial and error. And over the last couple of weeks, I've been posting to trial reels five to six times a day to figure this out. So I did the testing, so you guys didn't have to see one. Because since it goes to non-father's, there is a very specific type of content that works on trial reels. So taking your normal content from your feed and just throwing it out there on trial reels doesn't always work the best. What really works on trial reels is what I call top of funnel content or tofu to keep it short. - Tofu sounds more fun. I know, tofu content, because really, when you go to make your content, you think of it like a funnel, there's top of funnel, which is very broad, a middle of funnel and bottom of funnel. And that middle of funnel, bottom of funnel, is where you're selling, you're pitching, you're talking about your offers. But that top of funnel content is broad content that appeals to a wide audience. And if your account is not growing or you're stuck or your views just seem to be stuck in any area that you can't break out of, it's probably because you're not posting enough top of funnel content, because we get it very familiar with our niche, very familiar with our offers. And we kind of get in this habit of posting middle of funnel content, bottom of funnel content, you know, come by my offer and you're nurturing your current community, which is amazing, but you're not bringing in new people to your community. So trial reels works best with top of funnel content, which I also like to describe as, this is the handshake for people meeting your brain. And this is your elevator pitch. This is people's first impression of you, like, I love that. And like you said, I feel like it's so easy to stop doing that. Once you've gotten comfortable and you're like, oh, everybody knows this about me. I shared it once. No, they don't remember it. Or if they do maybe like 2% of your audience does because your whole audience doesn't see everything all the time, right? Like we post a real, like I post a real. And then the next week I'm like, wow, I can't say the same thing because everybody saw it. No, they didn't. Not everybody saw my content. People may not remember it, right? So top of funnel content is really about creating content for someone that has no idea what you do, right? Especially somebody that is like scrolling and they literally they don't know who you are. They don't know much about your topic. Maybe they want to learn more about your topic. So I do feel like it's something that, even myself, I forget to do it sometimes. I'm like, oh, nobody knows what a digital product is. I need to tell them what it is, right? So do you have maybe like a hook or something, an example for them that they could go try? Yes, totally. And exactly like you said, we have to remember top of funnel content, especially for trial reels. These people do not follow you. They've never heard of you. They have no idea what you do. So you really want to avoid like jargon or really niching down your content because that's where people go to trial reels and they post something and they're like, it totally flopped. And typically that's because they mean it too specific. They need to down a little bit too much because a total stranger on the internet is seeing your content, which I feel like we forget sometimes this content creators have. These people, like you said, they have no idea who I am. They have no idea what I do. I need to do a little intro. So top of funnel content is just that it's an introduction. So you want to introduce yourself. You want to pretend you're walking into a room full of people that you're about to present on stage. What would you say? What would your little intro be? So hooks that work really well for this are, of course, storytelling hooks. This is who I am. This is what I do. This is what I teach. You're not getting it into that middle or bottom of the funnel of combing my course. You're simply introducing yourself. You bring in new followers, bring them into your world, and then you can convert them with that middle of funnel content or your stories or the DMs or with a more specific call to action. So hooks for this, if anybody is taking notes, you can read these. As you should be, guys, I'm taking notes. Everybody get out your notebook. I'm going to go try this one more then. Introduction posts are amazing for this. So your personal story transformation, I went from negative situation to positive situation in this timeframe. And then you can add without doing xyz or by doing xyz. So I went from being laid off my nine-to-five corporate job, tubing an online entrepreneur in three months without spending all my time online, having me face my phone all the time, working 21st, 7, working 60 hours a week. So telling that personal story, I was here. I did this and that one here. So telling your story, it's an introduction pertaining to walking on stage. This is what I am. This is what I do. Also, like putting yourself back in the beginning because there's new people who have no idea who you are. They haven't learned from you yet. So they don't know this girl that you teach. So remember what I was like to be a beginner. I was blank and I felt blank. I was laid off my job. I felt stressed. Then I tried blank and now I'm blank. Then I tried online buses, building my brain, creating content, and now I'm a full-time content creator. So really going back to that beginner story, which a lot of us forget, especially if we've been doing whatever we've been doing for a couple of years now, we forget to go back and tell that transformation story. But that's your little intro for people to meet you. I love that. And you guys, if you have intro posts that you've done like this before, just repurpose them there. Go back, get them, download it, take the caption. Now, four captions. Are you using a call to action like follow me for more of XYZ? Is that kind of your goal and all your captions on trial reals, I should say? - Exactly. And like you said, a really simple trial real strategy to get everybody started. Take your top of final post and just repose them to trial reals. Cause like you said, it's people I've never seen them before. Something that you can actually do is post the same real on trial reals every single day. You could post it into intro post on trial reals every single day, because it's going to be on followers every single day. So I can get on and be like, here's my intro post, here's my little, you know, handshake. And then I can post the same one every single day, especially if I have found a hook that works really well on trial reals and really calls in new people. What I've been doing is posting the same hook every single day on trial reals. I just put a new video with it or I put a new sound with it and then in the caption, like you were asked about, remember this is top of funnels or not? Necessarily going to say, by my core, straightaway program, get this, get this. We really wanted to be just that introduction. So it is follow for more about what to x, y, z, whatever your expertise is in. You know, come follow, come play more. - Yeah, are you using it for freebies as well? Are you just sticking with follows? - Yup. So I've been using it for freebies. Any sort of lead at generation, lead magnet, growing your email list, growing your community, a good call to action freebie, because that's a great intro. My freebie has followed up an email sequence of, as a 3am, this is what I do, this is what helps. So that's an excellent intro to my community. And then follow for more, because to my feed, I'm posting more of them. They'll love fun a little bit of a fun little content and they convert them. Once they become a follower, they get into my community, they watch my stories, they'll follow for more or grab this freebie is an excellent call to action on trial reals. I love that. Are you focusing on trying to find trending audio? Have you noticed a difference with trending audio or with just a regular audio with these trial reals? - I do. So an easy thing to switch out on trial reals is audio. Like I said, I can post the same hook every day and just put a new trending audio on it and it's a different reel. And it keeps it fresh, especially if I'm pulling content from a year ago. That's a good top of funnel piece of content. I'm gonna update it a little bit within trending audio. And those are really easy to find on reals. That's a really easy way to repurpose content to trial reals is put a current trending audio on it. It makes it fresh and repurposes it. - I love that. Okay, you guys, something else that I learned from Nikki and like I feel like my brain knew I could do it, but I totally forgot you could do this and she was telling me yesterday and I was like, why am I not doing this? You can duplicate your drafts. So literally go in there, find your top of funnel reel. Right, go back, find an introduction reel, something that worked well, create a draft for it and then duplicate that multiple times. And I would say like on one do one audio, on the other one do a different video. Maybe just like switch it up a little bit to get the data because really with trial reals, this is data. You're able to see what people like that are new, don't recognize you, don't know who you are, literally know nothing about your story and see kind of what sticks with them. I know when trial reals first came out, I was like, oh my God, something else for me to learn. But honestly, Nikki's right, like it is a new thing that no one else has really done and it's so fascinating to me. So your homework for today, I want you guys to go back and find a old video or an old carousel, something that you can turn into a new reel, like the concept, let's say you did my story or an introduction one, make sure you start with not a hook that people have to know you, right? Like you're not going to just be like, assume they know anything about you, right? So find an old one, go in, duplicate it a few times and test it out, something else that I've noticed too, and I don't know if you've noticed this as well, Nikki is that these take a lot longer to get pushed out. Like it's not like you're obviously because it's not going to your feed, but have you noticed the same thing? Like it does take longer to get pushed out to the right audience. - For sure, which is why when I first started doing trial reels, I was like, this is such a waste of my time because you know, I check in a couple hours later and it's still a zero views and I'm like, what the heck, this is not worth it. But we have to remember, trial reels is its own algorithm. If you post one or two times to trial reels, you're not going to pick up the momentum and you're not going to start going viral in trial reels. You're going to, you know, kind of stay stuck. It's a like, you're starting a new platform, you kind of have to teach that algorithm. So the more you feed it, it's the better it does. So post consistently to it every day and like you said, just duplicate, duplicate, duplicate, switch out the hook, switch out the sound and like you said, it's amazing protesting. If you're stuck on the Instagram, go and make six trial reels a day, all with different hooks and see which one took off, which one performs better because something tricky about trial reels is it won't give you insights into the video until after 24 hours. - Got it. - I don't know if you've noticed that. So when you go into your trial reels tab, you can see the insights on your video only after 24 hours. So you kind of have to let it sit in there in my, - They'll post it in there. - Yes, yes, so you put it in there and then you can check back the next day. But after it has 24 hours, you can see the insights and then you can see which one brought in the most followers which one had the most views, which one had the most comments because things like mini chat or animations still work on your trial reels. - Okay, that was my next question. They do work. - Yes, awesome. - So I am a mini chat hooked up to trial reels. It still works just like normal. - Do you have to do something additional to hook it up to trial reels? You just use your keywords that you already have set up as long as obviously they're applied to every reel. Like if you set up your keywords where it's a specific reel, it's not gonna work for trial reels, but if you have your automation set to apply to every reel, then it just works like normal in your trial reels. - Yep, exactly. Which is amazing that you don't have to do anything extra. It's already set up for success. - Oh my gosh, that's amazing. Okay, look at me. I'm like about to close my laptop and go try 27 different ones because it was so discouraging at first. And I'm like, wow, I will say I posted one, I repurposed one like 100%, and it is definitely more top of funnel content. And I got 12 followers in the first 24 hours, which is nothing crazy. But I was like, oh, this is kind of cool. Oh, right, like this is fun. I like this. And then I kind of just forgot about it, but I've been seeing Nikki talk about it. And I was like, oh my gosh, we have to learn more about this. I'm obsessed with things that take very little effort to get data, right? It's always so cool to be able to reuse things, repurpose and see what's working, what's not working. And they just want to say, yeah, I want you guys to use and abuse trial reels, especially when it's in the beginning phase because we know Instagram favors early adapters. One thing that I will add about trial reels is since it's not going to followers, you can post by the six trial reels all at the same time. You don't have to space them out like you would on your feet because you're not spamming your followers. These are going to completely new people. So I'll literally get on and then I am in post by trial reels, right? And then I don't have to worry about doing it throughout the day. I can get on their spam trial reels, check off my box for the day that I posted. I'm reaching new people, bringing people into my funnel and then I'm good for the day. - That's literally genius. Do you think it matters what time they post at? Do you just like get it done in the morning and then move on? - It's kind of interesting because it does take a while for trial reels to push out the content. So time literally doesn't matter. Like I'll do it right before a bed, I'll do it for a single morning, I'll do it while I'm having lunch. But the nice thing is you can post five at the same time, like back to back to back because you don't have to worry about spacing them out. And like could you just do five of the same exact reels, same exact caption, everything the same and just test out five different ones, right? 'Cause I would just go to five different audiences. - Yeah, exactly, you could tweak them a little bit. I would tweak them a little bit 'cause I-- - For data. - Yeah, I've just to see, you know, test a different B-roll, different caption, different audios are so easy to switch out and then it's quote unquote a different reel. But you can post them all at the same time, which is so nice, you don't have to worry about spacing them out or anything like that. - Literally genius. So Nikki, do you have a resource if people want more information? I'm sure you have like more hooks and more details about all this. Do you have a resource on this if they want more? - Absolutely. In my link to my bio of the top link right now, it is a viral trial reels guide breaking down my specific method. I'm trial reels that has been getting me and my client's hundreds of followers a day plus 50 top of final hooks that people can go in trial reels today. It's amazing and I will link that in the show notes for you guys as well. I would highly encourage you to just have some fun with this. The cool thing about trial reels is that nobody sees it. There's literally no, you know, even for me, sometimes when I post something that I'm like testing something, I'm always worried. Like are people gonna think I'm a fraud because one of my posts flopped and I know that's not true. I know part of social media, like my brain knows that part of social media is testing things and seeing what works and what doesn't work. But the nice thing about trial reels is that you literally can just put out hundreds a week and just test things and see what works and see what doesn't work without this fear of like, oh my gosh, my profile is gonna look like a hot mess. There's all these different things going on. Like you don't really have to make it cohesive at all. Like you don't even have to worry about your cover image because it's a reel that is never going to be on your reels tab. Like they're literally never gonna see that. All you have to worry about is the actual reel and the caption and you can just keep duplicating. Like duplicate, duplicate, duplicate. And just try different things with that. So let me know if you guys try this. Send me a DM over on Instagram. I'd love to hear kind of how it's going. So I can let Nicky know that you guys tried this. And Nicky, thank you so much for sharing all this with us. This was so much fun. - Yes, this was awesome. Like I said, this is such a cool new feature. So I can't wait for more people to start using it. - Yeah, absolutely. Okay, you guys, I love you mean it and I will see you next week. Thank you so much for hanging out with me and my guests today. If you learned anything from our episode, I would love it if you could share it over on your Instagram stories and tag me at Abigail Pew. Until next time, love you mean it.