Instagram has officially begun rolling out its trial reels feature designed to help creators test new types of content. Essentially, trial reels allow a creator to publish content that will only be seen by non-followers. If the content performs well, a creator can then choose to publish it to their profile and share to their typical followers.
In a December article, Instagram says it had been testing the new feature with certain accounts and has so far seen positive feedback. "Now, if you want to try out a new genre, storytelling format or topic, you can easily get a gut check on how your content might perform," Instagram says.
Let's look at how to post trial reels, who might benefit from this new feature the most, and a few unanswered questions.
How To Post Trial Reels
The option to make your post a trial reel appears in the "Audience" section on the last page before you hit the share button. When you toggle "Trial" on, you'll see a dialogue pop up explaining, "In feed and Reels, your reel will only be shown to non-followers at first and won't appear on your profile. If it performs well, you can also choose to automatically share it to everyone in trial settings."
People who see your reel won't know if it's a trial reel or not.
In addition to your followers not getting your trial reels in their feeds, the post won't show up on your profile, either. However, there's a chance a follower could still see your reel if somebody who isn't following you sees it and shares it with them. Within 24 hours you'll start to see trial reel performance through metrics like views, likes, comments, and shares.
You can manually choose to share a trial reel as a regular reel at any point — you do this by clicking the "view trial insights" button and then tapping "Share to everyone." There's also an option to automatically share a reel to everybody if it gets "a lot of views within the first 72 hours." However, Instagram doesn't immediately clarify what "a lot of views" means in order to trigger the trial reel's publication.
Instagram does caution that "trial reels can take longer to gain views because we're finding non-followers who will enjoy the content. They are treated separately from your other reels in our ranking systems, so shouldn't impact the performance of your regular reels content."
Why You Might Want To Use This Feature
While it may sound a little odd to want to create content that your followers won't see, there are a few specific use cases specifically for this. A lot of creators who have built up a significant following can sometimes feel like they have painted themselves in a corner. They become hesitant to branch out or create new types of content because they're worried it won't resonate with their followers — and then potentially never have a chance to resonate with other people.
There's plenty of truth to this, though we do generally tend to caution against this concern. After all, success of content, particular short-form vertical video, can have a lot more to do with just being consistent than cracking any particular code. In many cases, we advise you to just make stuff you enjoy and crosspost it as much as you can.
But there's also plenty of value to the idea of just wanting to try something to see if it sticks without worrying about whether or not it messes with your overall vibe. Especially if you're the type of creator who relies on having a clear and concise brand for brand partnerships and other content. Being able to easily test a new reel without it potentially clouding your profile can be really helpful here. And if it does do well, then you can populate it on your profile anyway.
For newer creators who are still trying to figure out their vibe, trial reels really may not be that big of a feature. Especially since so much of reels goes to people outside of your audience anyway, and there's really not much harm to just throwing stuff out there and seeing what sticks. Once you're rocking and rolling with a consistent and monetized brand, though, you'll probably appreciate a feature like trial reels.
One other reason? Testing potential ads. Trial reels could be a great way to see what may perform well as an advertisement without having to spend money on it. In the past, the only way to test content like this was to run it as an ad through the platform's ad backend. Now, you could potentially test a lot of different ad concepts without actually spending money on it (though spending money at least guarantees you'll get some decent data; we're not suggesting trial reels could completely replace your old ad strategy, but it could be a nice addition).
A Few Questions About Trial Reels
Alright, so while the trial reels function seems like a pretty cool, if not harmless addition to the Instagram toolbox, there are still a view questions around them. For starters, do these reels use the same general algorithm as others? Instagram mentions that because they're trying to find non-followers who may like the content, it could take longer to get stats. But at the same time — the vast majority of reels don't hit your followers anyway.
This leads to more questions on how much your initial following really determines the success of a reel. The trial reels feature suggests that your following matters a lot to your content. Because if you post something they don't recognize and immediately like, it could tank the content — even if it would otherwise perform really well with people who aren't yet in your audience.
We know that unless your content goes very viral relative to your following, most of your audience just isn't going to see it. However, if you have a piece of content blow up to say, 100 to 1,000 times your following size, then your entire audience almost certainly will see it at some point. But why does something need to perform so well with strangers for it to get in front of people who have already indicated they want to see what you make?
And that raises another question Instagram doesn't really answer. What does "performing well" mean to an individual account? The feature that allows Instagram to automatically publish trial reels to your profile if they perform well suggests Instagram has a specific way to determine what they consider good performance...but they're not willing to share what it is with you.
For now, we definitely recommend experimenting with trial reels and making your own conclusions about whether or not it's something you want to regularly incorporate into your content routine.