3 years and half a billion views later, I’ve understood how to go viral on Instagram. I haven’t done it just once, but over 15 times.

Gurus might sell you on the idea that behind getting viral is a big confidential secret. But being honest, it’s not more than understanding two fundamental things: the algorithm and a reel itself.

After reading this blog, you’ll understand what, why and how you can go viral with the reels you create. I’ll share tactical tips and overall knowledge. You can also download the accompanying pdf cheatsheet for creating reels that go viral at the bottom of the blog.

Note: I’m not promising that your next reel will become viral overnight. But what I can guarantee is that you’ll be putting yourself in that position every time you create a reel and hit post. And that is far more valuable of a target to strive for.

To your success,
Amir

Instagram’s algorithm explained.

Before I share how I create my reels, let’s first go over how reels actually go viral.

I believe it’s important to share this with you because, again, once you know how the algorithm works, you can start using it to create Reels that optimise for it.

Too many times, as you’ll read later, I see people posting reels that work against Instagram’s algorithm. The result is obvious: if no one is interested, no one will see it. 

Stage one: The Sample Batch

When you post a short video on Instagram, it goes through what I like to call The Sample Batch: a small selection of your followers who’ll see your Reel first.

(This is the period where you might hear people say “I’m stuck in the 200 views jail”) 

All it means is that Instagram’s algorithm is testing your reel. It checks to see if your content is good enough to show to a wider group of people.

These key metrics are analysed on Instagram’s platform: likes, comments, replays, and lastly—watch time. 

Personally, I’ve found watch time to be the most important metric across all social media platforms. Instagram’s algorithm tracks both total minutes watched and average watch duration per view for each reel you post.

As you can confidently guess: longer watch times signal relevance (this spells more importance). Hootsuite notes that Instagram even measures how often a video is watched to completion—shorter, fully-watched clips usually get more views.

Stage two: The Expansion

Once Instagram’s algorithm analyses your video with the Sample Batch, and finds results that make it happy (basically when the algorithm sees that this video is doing well), it will push your video out to more people to watch. This includes non-followers.

Then the cycle repeats itself. If your content is doing well, Instagram pushes it to more people. On and on until finally the video doesn’t perform as well any more. 

Then it’s time to create another reel. But how do you create a reel that gets big and bigger audiences? A reel that can go viral and reach millions of people?

I’ll be sharing my exact formula that I’ve built over the past 3 years. Plus, at the end, I’ll be sharing an underrated tactic I’ve used to get millions of views on a reel without having to create a new video. Let’s start!

How to create an Instagram reel that goes viral

When it comes to creating a reel, I urge you, moving forward, to obsess over making the reel perform well with the Sample Batch, a.k.a. the first people who see it. 

How do you do that exactly? Focus on these 3 components:

1. The hook

2. The story

3. The end

The Hook is the most important seconds of your reel.

A hook is used to grab your audience's attention. It’s the first thing your audience sees.

What counts as a hook? I got over half a billion views by using these 3:

1. Sentence hooks (question, statement that you’ll be discussing in your reel)

2. Visual hooks (image, or video)

3. Caption hooks (usually with a font that’s popular during a trend)

Depending on the type of reel you post, if it’s an announcement video or a non-verbal skit, the hook manifests differently. So it doesn’t matter if you use all 3 hooks. Just don’t go with zero. 

A hook is 2-10 seconds long, but it’s safer for you to place importance on the first 5 seconds of a reel.

Why? Because attention is grabbed instantly. Don’t put your money on your audience waiting 10 seconds to finally understand what you’re going to talk about. Attention has already disappeared by then, with the audience.

This might seem like common sense but I see beginner creators making this mistake again and again. A regular Joe is starting a reel as if they’re filming a 2016 vlog for YouTube. 

It’s not wrong to start your reel with “Hi, I’m x, and today…”. All I’m trying to say is that this way has the lowest chances of going viral. By then, your audience has already scrolled past your content 10 times.

Remember: the hook is the most important seconds of your reel. 

I know there’s a science behind creating a great hook. But for you, just list down on a notepad or Idea Boards all topics you want to and can talk about. Then, make sure they're straightforward and concise. That’s all you really need at first. Look up how news sites write their headlines to go the extra mile.

Tip: If you have trouble coming up with a great hook, use tools like ChatGPT, Docs; or social media specific tools like Bupple to get your creative juices flowing.

Keep the audience engaged

As a basic premise that you can practice, consider a reel as a story. You have the title of your story, your hook. Now, you have to tell your story in an engaging way.

Everyone can learn to tell great stories. But on the topic of increasing your reels watch time, in order to go viral, I suggest you to use these 5 visual and audio candy to increase your reels engagement:

1. Showing multiple images

2. Changing video visuals

3. Caption font changes mid reel

4. Audio sound changes (adding a robot sound)

If you can subtly show new things (evolve your story so to speak), with a new visual or a new clip of your product, your audience will stay engaged because there’s new information to look at.

Keeping the story going is key to a successful reel. Practice makes perfect here.

Tip: AI content creation tools like Bupple, CapCut, VEED or Captions create optimal reels templates within minutes. Most let you edit the video further to make the video really personal.

Reward the audience at the end

By the end of your reel, a viewer should feel like they’ve been rewarded for watching it. This is the final step of your reel.

Let’s say your hook is “Instagram Notes Explained”. By the end of your reel, you should’ve explained Instagram Notes. If not, then your audience will either become frustrated or dismiss your reel. The result is an audience member who will scroll past your next reel.

(An example of a reel where reward is given)

Link to video is here

It’s not mandatory to ask your audience to subscribe or like. If you post valuable content, people will naturally want to see more of it. Usually they either like or follow you right after.

Making your reel go viral

This might seem that we’re jumping ahead, but stay with me here. What I’m going to share now is important to your goal of creating a viral reel, one that has millions of views and tens of thousands of comments. I’ve simplified it into 3 steps.

(If you just started with Instagram, I highly encourage you to have a read on how to get your first 500 Instagram followers. This gives you a great starting point to start practicing what I’m about to share.)

Step 1: When your reel does better than your previous posts, do it again.

You just found out that one of your reels has done way better than your previous post. It’s a clear winner in your eyes. What do you do?

You might think that you’ll just post more. But that’s not entirely correct. These moments of standout performers are make it or break it types of moments for your social media account.

Here’s what I do when I find this trend with my content:

I copy the format, theme, and visual style, and make another post with a different topic.

I don’t copy the winning post word for word. I find another topic within that main theme to speak about. Then, I just take what made the first video successful and paste it to my new reel.

This might sound weird, but when you do this, your new reel will perform up to 10x better. It happened to me.

A personal story:

I made a skit a few years back about financial gurus. This was a new idea that I had never posted before. I didn’t think much of it but it performed better than previous posts. In fact, this video got a million views.

Link: https://www.instagram.com/reel/CqEtnTQoyb8/?igsh=MWJ3b3R1NjJwMnFpcA==

Wasting no time, I released a similar skit reel. That video got 10 million views.

Link: https://www.instagram.com/reel/CrcMeyoAq8f/?igsh=MTY5ZWcwYWE1b2xscA==

Tip: whether just starting to post on Instagram or not, try new types of content ideas for your page. If you want to quickly test new reel content to find your winner, use an AI reel generator like Bupple’s to generate a reel, edit it to fit your style and then post it on your social media.

Step 2: repeat step 1 until it doesn’t work.

After I got 10 million views, I continued to post the same reel with different gurus for 3 months straight. Each reel performed in the millions. 

By some point, the reel concept got outdated and performance slowed. I knew then that I had to test and find a new concept. 

I hate to say this as a creator, but Instagram’s algorithm doesn’t favour creativity. It favours posts that do well. By repeating your reel format, you ensure that the algorithm pushes your content to more people.

It’s common, but true: social media really is about consistency. Your reels won’t stay viral. You have to keep on finding new winners that perform well on social media. 

Step 3: If you can’t seem to post successful reels, do this.

One way to get the algorithm to favour your next reel, whether you have millions of followers or just 500, is to these 5 steps:

1. Go to Instagram

2. Search up other creators who are similar to you (if you’re a business owner, this means searching up your niche)

3. Find posts that are doing well (even going viral)

4. Make your version of that reel

5. Post that video

How to keep posting viral videos

To end this blog, I’ll say one thing that has helped me post viral content after viral content:

Consistency.

Sometimes the fault isn’t your content, it’s the algorithm's inability to match your reel (fishing tutorials) with the favoured audience (aspiring fishermen). 

Not everyone will like fishing videos. So give the algorithm time. Keep posting until, at one magical moment in time, a reel of yours goes viral, or just more successful than the rest of your posts. Then, repeat the steps I shared.

Bonus tip: repost old content.

Like promised, an underrated tactic to get viral videos without having to make a new reel:

Repost winning videos (or viral videos) 2-4 months after you first posted them.

Most who saw it have forgotten about it. To everyone it’s new content. What a joy!

Download the complimentary how to create viral reels worksheet here.