Instagram has started rolling out new features that help you engage more with your audience and help you express your most authentic self on Reels. These new features include a new maximum duration and stickers for Reels, along with new audio features for the short-videos platform.
Instagram says that over a 60-day period, public accounts with over 10K followers that posted at least five reels over 60 days gained over 2.5x as many followers as those within the same category who didn’t post reels. And so, the company wants users to post more reels using the new features.
New Features on Instagram Reels
Instagram has introduced fresh sound effects from air horns to crickets to drums and more. ”Our refreshed collection of sound effects can help you inject humour into a reel or help your audience get in their emotions while watching one”, said the company.
Read More: Instagram announces ‘1 Minute Music’ Tracks for Reels in India
Further, you can now import your own audio directly within Instagram Reels. Use the import audio feature to add commentary or background noise from any video that’s at least five seconds long on your camera roll. In addition, many of the interactive stickers you know from Instagram Stories are now available on Reels, offering more opportunities to engage with your community. Following stickers have been made available for Reels:
- Poll: Making a two-part reel? Poll your audience on what should happen in your next video so that they can help shape the storyline themselves.
- Quiz: Put your audience’s skills to the test with this sticker.
- Emoji slider: Let your audience share how your content makes them feel with a sticker that makes the heart-eye Emoji even more powerful.
Lastly, Instagram is giving you more time to play on Reels, by extending the length to up to 90 seconds. The company also recalls that it recently launched Templates, which allows you to easily create a reel using another one as a template. It pre-loads the audio and clip placeholders, so all you have to do is add and trim your unique clips.