How to Improve Instagram Reels Engagement? An empirical investigation of content strategies

Abstract: Introduced in August 2020, Instagram Reels have been used as a new alternative to elevate popularity by leveraging broader viewers while ignoring the audience's status as followers. This could have a massive contribution for creators in engaging the public by infusing messages through Reels content. However, the formulations on what aspects need more attention for designing Reels content are rarely concluded within previous literature. Taking the digital rhetoric perspective, this study attempts to contribute to extant knowledge of effective strategies (figurative language, framing, third-parties endorsement, interactivity appeal, audio-visual presence, nature imagery, caption length, and dimension format) for improving the engagement of Instagram Reels. Acknowledging the post-positivism paradigm, the paper examines and explores possibilities of different plausible claims for a specific context of Indonesian non-profit environmental organizations. The quantitative analysis of 301 Reels contents reaffirmed the presence of audio-visual as the strongest determinant of engagement score among other predictors. Interestingly, like the majority of predictors, it correlates differently across different social media. Anchoring to the experiment results, a new framework regarding factors affecting Reels’ engagement score is introduced.