My Instagram is Finally Growing Again After a 2-Year Stall

It's been an open secret for much of this year that Instagram Trial Reels are a powerful growth tool on the platform.

If you're not familiar: Trial Reels are posts shown only to non-followers. The idea is that you can test different video variations for engagement, then choose to publish only the high-performers to your main profile.

The 'hack' has been to endlessly post Trial Reels with no plan to publish and just fish for a small percentage to go viral with a brand-new audience.

All social media is advertising

One of the core ideas in my approach to social media is:

✨ Stop treating your page like a portfolio. Start treating it like advertising.

My account shouldn't be a dead end where people just admire my videos. It should be a funnel that leads people to hire me for production or learn from me through my resources.

So while it's not healthy to chase views for likes and follows, reach still matters from a business perspective.

For the past few months I've been reposting my greatest hits as Trial Reels. And it's working!

My account had largely stalled for the past two years (equal daily mix of follows and unfollows), but the added exposure to a new audience has brought in about 30,000 news followers and millions of views.

Free, passive advertising

Those numbers are great, but what matters is making each view count (even while I'm sleeping).

To do that, I've been pairing each Trial Reel with ManyChat automation. In the caption, I'll include calls to action that trigger ManyChat to automatically DM relevant links.

It’s a low-lift, high-leverage way to turn passive exposure into meaningful engagement.

Quality over quantity

Social media strategists have been framing Trial Reels as a quick way to 'get X followers', but I'm sharing this because it's part of the bigger picture to advertise myself as an artist for hire.

Instagram now gives me a free, built-in tool to reach millions of people who haven't seen my work.

That's powerful.

But if I can sidecar that exposure with a one-click call-to-action that converts views into paid projects or product sales?

Even better.