Hometown ADvantage - Local Marketing

Ep 5: Your Complete Guide to Local Reels

• Nicole Eldridge

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In this episode, I break down my complete strategy for creating Instagram Reels that actually work for local businesses. I explain why we shouldn't chase views, introduce my 3T Formula (Type, Topic, Text) for creating effective Reels, and share how to leverage these Reels as cost-effective ads to reach thousands of new potential customers in your community.


Episode Highlights

  • Why local businesses shouldn't obsess over Reel views [02:15]
  • The 5 reasons local businesses should use Reels (the right way) [04:30]
  • The 3T Formula for creating effective local business Reels [08:45] 
    • Type: B-roll with music, B-roll with voiceover, or face-to-camera [09:10]
    • Topic: The BUS Framework - Behind the scenes, Uniqueness, Storytelling [10:35]
    • Text: Hook, Context, Call to Action [15:20]
  • Technical tips and app recommendations for creating Reels [18:40]
  • How to use Reels as part of your local ad strategy [20:15]


Resources Mentioned

  • Launch Your Local Ads Mini-Course: https://hello.nicoleeldridgemedia.com/minicourse-15
  • Hometown Advantage 3-Month Program $200 OFF FOR FEB 25: https://hello.nicoleeldridgemedia.com/course200
  • Hometown Advantage 3-Month Program: https://hello.nicoleeldridgemedia.com/course
  • Application for done-for-you ad services for LOCAL business: https://marketingcompany167327.hbportal.co/public/fbads
  • Application for done-for-you ad services for ONLINE businesses: https://marketingcompany167327.hbportal.co/public/66e24bfb082cc7002d012128


Connect With Me

Welcome to episode four of Hometown Advantage, a podcast for local business owners, where we don't just focus on views and visibility. We prioritize turning social media scrollers into paying customers for your local business. I'm Nicole Eldridge, a marketing strategist that supported over 100 business owners with Facebook and Instagram ads. If you're an expert at what you do, but marketing feels like a second job, you're in the right place. Each week, I'm breaking down social media marketing strategies into simple, actionable steps that actually work for local businesses. No fluff! No techie setups, just breaking down real strategies you can implement today to get seen by your community and turn that visibility into revenue. Let's make your local business impossible to ignore. So today we're diving into reels. How important are they for local business? What should they say? How should you be using them as a local business owner? And even down to technicals like how we create them, what apps I recommend, etc. Let's start high level here. First of all, bear with me. I woke up a little bit sick today and of course I have a long, juicy episode for you. Not long in the sense that we're rambling on, like we are getting down to the nitty gritty details and you're going to leave this episode feeling super actionable. But, of course, my voice is a little hoarse. So just bear with me there. Let's start high level. Why do we care about Reels? First, I will mention that Reels are known to get the highest organic reach of any content type because of how Facebook and Instagram prioritize them in the algorithm and on the feed. But! My own account is telling a different story right now, just in the past 30 days, for reference it is late February 2025 as I'm recording this, I actually have some static photos and carousels that have reached more people than a lot of my reels are. Now, I'm not going to pretend to have a full understanding of the organic algorithm, nobody does, but I will just say that my carousels and static posts are getting worse. engagement as far as profile visits and link taps than my reels are and that's because I'm doing deep dives on those types of posts that are really speaking to my audience and you know I'm hard selling from those posts so it piques people's curiosity. Versus using like a 10 second reel that just has a couple lines of text and are maybe somewhat entertaining. But as a local business owner you have different goals so for you I want to stress this, it's not about trying to reach as many people as possible with your organic content. People tend to chase that and chase views when views truly mean nothing, when no one still has. Any idea who you are, because you are one of thousands of reels that they watched that week. I've worked with so many clients who are obsessed with checking their views and their likes, and I just want to encourage you, if that's you, to stop that right now. Those are meaningless. They would have reels pop off. Even go viral with hundreds of thousands of views and have no sales or anything else to show for it. I actually just did a whole post on this topic on my Instagram. If you go to my Instagram, it's like the purple background. It says like views and likes won't help your local business grow. I can't remember exactly what the hook says, but it only has 11 likes, but it has 300 views and 10 likes. profile visits, meaning 10 people read that and wanted to go check out my profile and learn more, which is what is turning to sales for me. So I promise you it's not about the views or the likes. Anyways, the point here is that if you're in my world, if you're listening to this or you're in my program, then you don't need to worry about views from your reels or your posts because your ads are going to get the views for you. And these are new views, not the same couple hundred people that see your post every single time. And when you're doing it my way, you only need a couple dollars a day to get these new views. As a local business owner, would you rather spend 30 to 60 minutes a day brainstorming, creating, writing, editing a reel to get those couple hundred views? Or, would you rather spend a couple dollars a day to get thousands of views a month of new eyes, and they are targeted eyes. People who actually live in your town and can actually do business with you. Of course, we're super strategic in the actual content of the reels, because like I just lectured you on, it's not just about the views, but we have to get visible first in order to move people through their own journey to becoming loyal customers and clients of yours. So that's where my entire strategy comes into play. Okay, so lesson one here, we're not using Reels to get more views like the rest of the world is. We're doing something different because we want to stand out and do something that actually works, not just follow the crowd and the influencers that are giving advice about posting more to get more views, they're not speaking to you as a local business owner. They're speaking to other people trying to make money from the internet. But I do still want you to use Reals just in a different way. So let's talk about the real reason of why that is. I actually have five, so buckle up here. Why, five reasons why local business owners really want to be using Reals strategically. Number one. They show the human side of your business. This is huge because we want potential customers to feel like they know you before they even step into your shop, studio, or call you. Because feeling like they know you, seeing what you look like, seeing a little bit of your personality behind a video, We'll get them to do those things much faster. So many local businesses are missing this. They're hiding behind their logo and their business name. And if that's you, send me a DM. We can brainstorm some super simple ways to slowly get more comfortable with this. But this is absolutely the most important part of your marketing. Humanizing your business and Reels help to do that quickly. Reason number two you want to use. Strategic local reels. Reels help create brand recall. People remember video content better than a photo or especially like a graphic that you make in Canva. So when we're showing up in this way consistently, we're not just showing up on people's feeds. We're planting seeds for people to remember we exist and remember that we're a great option for them or their friends or family when they need what we do. Again, it can't just be any old random video though. There's a process here, so we're going to get into that soon. Reason three, you can showcase your expertise without being salesy. Again, we're not creating reels to get instant bookings and sales. We're using them as a nurture tool. Of course, there's no actual rules with social media, so I'll never say You must do this and you must never do this. But I know some of my clients inside my program really appreciate having some rigid rules for just like taking the guesswork out of everything and when it comes to content creation and social media. So if you're one of those people that wants a hard and fast rule, follow this one. Two reels a week that don't sell but show who you are. We're gonna talk about specific topics coming up. And then one graphic or photo that hard sells your services or any promos you're doing. That can be your rule to follow if you need that. That's my advice. Take it or leave it. Reason number four. Some people may be shocked by this, but they are actually so easy to create and quick. They're much easier than camera graphics, in my opinion. It may just take some practice. And take this with a grain of salt, because I've probably made like thousands at this point. Like two, three, four thousand, honestly. But the type of reels I recommend local business owners create are easy. You don't have to do like crazy editing or anything like that. There's just a couple steps. And if you're recording B roll on a weekly basis, You have the video footage already, and then if you're in my program, you have the exact words to put on the screen. You just need to tweak them for your business. And so then it's just a matter of actually opening whatever app you're going to use and typing the words out. Okay, last reason is that Reels creates super cost effective ads for local business. If you've taken my visibility ad mini course, you know we set the ads up for video views, which means for just a dollar or a couple dollars a day, we're getting in front of people in our town that are actually watching our Reels. Remember, this is a local business only strategy. This does not work the same if you own an online business where you're trying to provide a service online or sell something online. Okay, so hopefully now you understand the why and the importance of using Reals as a local business. So let's go into the how. I teach Reals strategy and creation using my 3T formula. This is how you're going to choose what kind of Reals you're going to make each week. And these fit the bill for great visibility ads. So we're killing two birds with one stone here, right? Posting to our page for our nurture content and building up our digital storefront. And having reels we can use for our visibility ads all at once. So the three T's stand for type, topic, and text. You've got three decisions to make each time you make a reel. What type of reel is it going to be? What topic is it going to cover? And what is the text going to say? So let's start with type. Your choices here come down to three different choices. B roll with music, B roll with voiceover, Or face to camera talking videos. I see some local business owners just do a slideshow of photos with music. This is like a side rant. Let's not do that. If you just want to post photos, post them in a carousel. Not as a reel. Just think about the user experience and someone who may If you want to just look through photos on a video, they have to wait like several seconds, however long you choose to go through them versus a care of carousel photos. They can just scroll on through. So get some actual video footage. There's just no getting around this in 2025. Okay. So a B roll with music is simply a video of you doing something behind the scenes or a video of your space with music over it. B roll with voiceover is the same, but instead of music, you're talking as the sound. And then face to camera is obviously you talking straight to the camera. I love to see a variety of these on a page, so try to switch it up when you can. That's T1 of my 3T framework. The next T is Topic. This is the most important one. And here I use what I call my BUS framework. B U S Just to easily remember what topics we should be posting about. B stands for Behind the Scenes. U stands for Uniqueness. And S stands for Storytelling. Behind the scenes, what could that be? You could show us prepping for your next client. Show us opening the store. Show us delivering something. A workout class. You delivering your actual service. This is where we want to get in the frame of mind of propping our phone up somewhere and recording ourselves a couple times a week. I personally don't even use a tripod or anything fancy like that. Ahem. Ahem. I just find a table or a surface where I can stand at my phone, turn the front camera on so I can make sure I'm in the frame, and hit record and go work for five minutes. Don't look at the camera is the trick while you're doing this. The actual reel will just be like ten seconds of that full clip, right? And the trend is to speed it up or make a lot of cuts so that it's extra ahem. Engaging, but I don't care too much about all that. Just get the footage to start. So that's B, behind the scenes. The next one is U, which stands for Uniqueness. We need to be talking about what makes us different than the other businesses in our niche and in our area. This could be values based, this could be client experience, this could be technical things like do you, go to people's houses. Do you deliver? Do you have special parking? How do you make things more convenient, more enjoyable? It can be the simplest things. Do you offer water or coffee in the waiting room? It doesn't have to be anything profound. Just show us how you take care of your people that other businesses may not be doing. That's you. Now, the last one is S. The S stands for storytelling. We want to know why you started your business. How long have you had it? Who works with you and why? We want to hear client success stories. Again, these don't need to be novels, but when you're sharing things about clients or yourself, let's write it in a storytelling format. Where did you start or the client start and where did you end up and how did you get there? This is huge on humanizing your brand and I'm telling you people eat this up. They want to support real humans who are supporting other real humans, not big brands. They want to know more about you, I promise. Okay, so that's where the topic comes in. The BUS framework. Behind the Scenes, Uniqueness, or Storytelling. So now we've covered two of the three T's. We've covered the type and the topic. Now the last T is text. What do we want to write on the reel? What do we want the text to say? This is the last thing you need to decide. Because yes, we need to have text on our reel. We do not want just a video and music. We need text there. I have three things you need to write on every reel. I'm noticing a pattern here with everything being in threes. I'm trying to make it as simple as possible, I promise. Those three things are your hook, some context, and then a call to action. Let's start with the hook. This is the absolute most important thing. When you're in my program, you get ten locally optimized hooks. a month to use on your reels that are specific to that time of year. If you're listening to this and you want to peek at those hooks, by the way, for whatever month we're in right now, send me a DM on Instagram. Just let me know you were listening to this episode of the podcast and you'd love to see some hooks for this month. I'll send them to you and you can use them in your reels. So in your hook, we almost always want to put our location. And if it makes sense, our ideal client, So that we're establishing relevancy right off the bat. When people are scrolling and they don't know that you're a local business to them, they tend to keep scrolling because they don't know. They are interested in you if they know that you're in their community and local to them, but you have to let them know ASAP so that they actually watch your video. So this may sound like, hey Seattle moms, as like part of your hook, like you're calling them out. I would definitely write something else after that, depending on what we're posting about. Or maybe it's something like, POV, you live in Denver and are looking for something fun to do with your girlfriends this weekend. See how I have the location and the audience, like it's obviously women saying girlfriends, all in the hook. COUGH The hook is the most important part of your reel because it's what makes people decide if they're going to watch it or not. Basically, if you have a shitty hook, people aren't watching and you created and posted a reel for nothing, so that's no fun. After your hook, you're going to provide some context on that hook, or who you are, or basically whatever topic or prompt you're using. Let's say you're doing a reel telling a story about something that happened today and how it has to do with why you started your business. Your hook might be, this is exactly why I decided to open a med spa in Kansas City. Then the content part might be something like, my patient today told me she's never felt so good about herself, and that she's finally I don't know. Auditioning for Broadway like she's always dreamed. That's dramatic, but whatever. You get what I'm saying. That's the context part. Maybe you even have a screenshot of a review. That's even better. But a side note there, don't just post the screenshot. Write like a couple words summary above it, because a lot of times people won't read the screenshot. Okay, so you have your hook and your context. And the last piece of text is the call to action. Definitely don't overthink this part because going back to planting seeds here, right? We're not exactly expecting five people to book an appointment straight from a reel. Just because our reel said, go to the link in my bio to book. But we're planting the seeds so they know what to do when they're ready. So your call to action might be, visit your website, give you a call, send you a message, come into the store, etc. Okay, so in summary here, when planning and creating our reels, we need to first decide on our three T's. What type of reels are going to be, what's the topic going to be, and then what's the text going to say. And now that you know the overarching strategy of how to plan them out and create them, let's talk technicals. When it comes to which app to create with them, I recommend either using the Instagram app, CapCut or Canva. Now, at the time of this recording, Meta is supposed to be coming out with an app called Edits soon. I think it's like within the next couple weeks. I have high hopes for this app, but also I don't because all of Meta's things are buggy and never work the way they're supposed to. But, I think there's potential for this making things simpler for creating Reels and then being able to use them as ads and such. Because here's the deal, when you use a trending audio inside Instagram like many people teach on, you cannot use that post as a reel. So here's my personal opinion on trending audios. I don't think it matters for local businesses to use trending audios. And by the way, when I say use trending audios, I just mean songs that are trending on the app. You can figure that out by when you're creating reels and you get to the music part, there's like a little up arrow that shows they're trending. So all the advice says that when you use that, you're likely to get more views. But if you remember what we talked about at the beginning of this, that's not our goal. If that's important to you, I do understand it because it's been so deeply ingrained in some of our brains for a while. Just know that when you do that, you can't use the post as an ad. So it's just going to come down to personal preference. You can create the reel in Instagram, use trending audio, and then if you want to use it as an ad, you can download it to your phone and then use one of the other apps Like Canva or CapCut to add music that doesn't have the copyright or licensing on them. Or you can just always create your reels without trending audio so that you can always use them as ads if you so choose. I'm hoping that the edits app that's coming out soon helps make this whole part less complicated someway, somehow. Alright, and then lastly, I wouldn't be me if we didn't talk a little bit more about the ads side of all of this. So if you haven't taken my Launch Your Local Ads mini course yet, there I walk you step by step through launching a dollar a day local visibility ad using the whole real strategy that we talked about today. So I'll put a link to that in the show notes, but visibility ads are only one step in using ads the best and most profitable way possible when it comes to supercharging your local business growth. Seriously. So if you're like, yes, visibility ads sound great, but I want the full thing. I am all in on using your local ad strategy to install a social media marketing strategy in my business that doesn't involve posting every day or spending thousands in ad spend and allows you to just feel empowered and successful Because you'll be able to actually see the ads working and know exactly why they're working or why they're not working and exactly what to change to get them working. That's exactly what I help you with inside Hometown Advantage, my three month local ads course. Now, before I dive into the details on the program, I also want to note that I do still run ads for local business owners completely done for you with the support of my team. So if your business is doing multiple six figures and you just want the experts to come in and do it all for you, I'll leave the application for that in the show notes as well. I'd love to support you there. I also do this for online businesses. But back to Hometown Advantage, if you're still building and don't want to pay an agency fee every month on top of ad spend, this is the perfect place for you. I take you step by step through each ad you should set up based on your specific business and give you support and feedback every step of the way to make sure that you're getting the most out of your ad spend. If you're listening to this and it's still February, I'm running a promo right now for 200 off, which I do not plan to ever do again. It's only lasting till March 1st. So you can grab the link to jump in, in the show notes, or send me a DM on Instagram or an email. If you have questions about what your results or experience might look like there, I would be so happy to chat more. I will see you next week. Thank you so much for listening.