With both Instagram and now Facebook shifting focus to Reels, the pressure for brands and marketers to jump on board the Reels bandwagon has been racked up, but it’s not always easy to know where to start.

Not all businesses automatically lend themselves to creating short-form videos, and not all marketers have that experience in their lockers.

However, a new announcement from Instagram could help because more users have been granted access to its Reels templates option.

Reels templates should make life easy

Reels templates lets you create Reels based on the most popular content trends on Instagram.

Instagram for Creators

“We 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.”

As you can imagine, templates could be a real-time saver for over-worked social media managers and an easy way to dig deeper into what’s hot right now.

Initially announced in April, templates are being opened up to more and more users. It works by taking users through a frame-by-frame process to let you replace the template Reel with your own content.

For Reels newbs, the latest update offers a handy way to hit the ground running, meanwhile, for more experienced video creators, it might offer up some fresh ideas on storyboard development.

Earn some time back

Marketers will also find it helpful if they want to jump on a sounds trend because templates let you manually edit each clip to sync up with an audio track. Doing so eliminates any guesswork and will let marketers perfectly match audio with vision.

As templates are being rolled out in stages, you may not have that option yet. But if you do, you’ll see a templates button in the video editor.

If you come across a video that has a template available, you’ll see a ‘use template’ sticker icon above the name of the creator. Hit that to get started. Alternatively, you’ll be able to see it from the three-dot menu.

Once you select a Reel to use as a template, you’ll be able to see the time stamps for each clip. Selecting the add media button will replace the original content with your own.

New music options

Furthermore, Instagram has also tweaked the relationship between music and Reels. Insta will show recommended songs for your Reel based on what you upload. Again, this makes the creative process a little more automatic and a little more algorithm-driven.

Of course, the recommendations may not always be correct, so it will pay to keep an eye on what’s being selected, but it could help trim down the creation process and make it quicker and easier.

For brands that are short on time, this could be a great help. But again, you run the risk of homogenising all of your content so that they start to blur together – which isn’t great and runs contrary to the ethos behind short-form videos.

Additionally, you can now import your own audio or add a sense of drama with new sound effects.

Instagram for Creators

“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.

“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.”

That’s not all folks

When it comes to Reels, there are a couple of other template tools at your disposal, especially if you don’t yet have access to the new templates.

Vimeo Create is integrated with Facebook Business Suite and helps brands create high-impact video ads.

Rich Bloom, Senior Vice President of Partnerships at Vimeo

“By integrating with Facebook Business Suite, we’re offering businesses expertly designed templates built and optimised for Facebook that can be easily customised with branding and existing assets, plus millions of choices of stock photos, videos, and commercially licensed music.”

Canva also has an integration with Facebook Business Suite. Canva’s integration gives marketing managers access to Facebook and Insta video templates, plus all of Canva’s creation tools.

Therefore, all in all, whether you’re using third-party or native tools, with each passing month, it should get a bit easier to up your short-form video game.