3: Should You Post a Reel or a Photo? Here's How I Think About It

Not every post needs to be a Reel—but knowing when to use video versus photo can make a real difference in who sees your content and what they do with it.

In this episode, I break down how to think strategically about format and share a simple habit for capturing both in the field so you're never stuck with just one option.

In this episode:

• When Reels work best and when to reach for a photo or carousel instead
• Why lo-fi often outperforms polished—and what that means for your phone
• A simple field trick for capturing video and photo at the same time
• Three content ideas you can post this week using both formats

https://www.instagram.com/p/DMYZicgO0JZ/?img_index=1 

https://www.instagram.com/p/DVyJtdAkfmj/?img_index=1

https://www.instagram.com/p/DVrciFukb4j/?img_index=4

https://www.instagram.com/atllovesmo/reel/DZh1Sy8xwpd/ 

https://www.instagram.com/atllovesmo/reel/DZnrSXyxGZN/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Tapped In, the Craft Beer Marketing Podcast for brewery teams who want to turn their followers into regulars. I'm your host, Stephanie Grant, and today we're going to talk about when to use video versus photo. I actually started thinking about this when I was at the Minnesota Craft Brewers Conference. Someone asked me how do I decide between a carousel or a photo or video? And I will first say that I prefer sticking to two, either a reel or carousel, and I'll tell you why carousel in a second. So the way I typically think about this is, and then I think this is part of the answer that I gave the person who asked me this question is I think about what is the best way to tell this story? What is the best way to share this information? And I also think about what would be the fastest way to get this done without sacrificing quality. And that is how I decide whether I'm doing a real or carousel. I'll give you an example. I did a beer release post for a client on their beer releases on Fridays, like many of you guys. And on Thursday, I went up to the brewery to get a picture of the can. And I wasn't really sure. When I stepped into the brewery, I wasn't really sure what I wanted. I was leaning towards a reel because I find that reels are can be very easy for me to put together versus carousels. I usually spend a lot more time on them. And I was like, I'm gonna do a reel. And then when I saw what was going on with the guys, they were having trouble with the candy line. Surprise. And I was like, oh, I'm gonna document this. Like I want to document this and make it funny and just also show what all goes into canning a beer. Because I think a lot of people might think you can the beer and you move on. But sometimes you can have issues with canny lime. And I wanted to show all the effort and work that went into it because the guys were in it. And you know, I've told y'all many a times that it is so important to just document what's already happening, and so I took my own advice and that's what I did. But if we want to get a little more strategic, we can think about what are reels good for and then what are carousels good for. Reels are really great for reach, and while carousels also are great for reach, reels specifically are great for reach because reels have a reels tab, and they have a tab where you can scroll and look at all the reels that have ever been created in the history of humanity on Instagram. You can look at tons of reels, and you're gonna see a bunch of reels from people who you don't know, and that is what's great about reels. That is what when I think about reach, that's what I think about. Now for carousels, the reason why I don't just post a static photo is because carousels are great at serving up your content more than once, so they'll do it twice. This actually happened to me today. I'm following this account. I saw that they posted something, but I was going to go do something else. I don't know if any other social media people who are listening to this have this issue when you go into the app and then you see something and it catches your eye and you want to see it, but like then you got into the app to check a stat or you got into the app to respond to or you were going to post something and now you're completely distracted and trying to keep focused on the task. And so when I got back into the app to I think just leisurely scroll, I can't remember, it was this morning, so I wasn't leisurely scrolling. I don't do that until the afternoon, but I saw the same piece of content again, except it was on the second slide. So the first and second slide of your carousel matter a lot because they're gonna get served up twice. So you want to make sure that you are careful about what content you put on the first and second slide, making sure that it is going to be attention-grabbing, it's going to hook people in. So when you think about it like that, you can sort of divide content up into those two categories. Oh, also add for carousels. Carousels are also great for serving up information in a digestible way where people can slide back and forth at their leisure. They can with a video, you are at the discretion of the person who created the video and how fast or not they talk to me. Of course, you can do two times speed, I do that all the time, and you can speed things up, but for the most part, you are sort of limited on how you digest that content with carousels, everything is in your control as the audience. So for reels, you're reaching new audiences, it's like an introduction to new audiences. You can do a time lapse of your brew day and show what it takes to go from grain to glass. You can do a beer pour and then talk about the origins of the story, like show the beer being poured. I would stick to something that's a flagship or a year-round beer that you're serving so that they can easily connect your beer with what they can find in stores or what they're gonna find on tap. You can do a fun meet the brewer, meet the staff video, like a quick 15-minute introduction, make it fun, make it interesting. If your tap room is a production facility, and around three o'clock, they would transition the space from a production facility into a tap room, and that'd be really interesting to capture, do a time-lapse of that. You can show the vibe of your space, and I have some great examples of this, and then add some trendy audio. I find that these videos are really great and easy to put together and can go a long way, and you can do like a quick did you know, like did you know? I oh gosh, that actually makes me think. I I think I did a lot, I think I did a did you know series back when I was at Monday night. It just came to me, I totally forgot about that. You can do that, you can do something sharing surprising facts about your brewery, and then for carousels, carousels are great again for going in-depth with your audience. It's a way for you to educate them and connect with them. So you can do a breakdown of how a specific beer was made, and this doesn't even have to be necessarily a fancy beer that use fancy ingredients, you can just again break down what goes into a flagship beer that you have, a beer that's well loved, and just show people what it's all about, what are the ingredients, what is the process, what's the inspiration behind it. You can do a meet the team. I can totally see that what came to mind was meet our beer tenders so that people can put names to faces that they're going to be interacting with when they come into your space. You can do a deep dive on your brewery store, you can tell this is great for around anniversary, but just any time of year breaking down how you were founded, why you exist. I think why you exist content is great because it is another way for you to connect with someone. So if you decided you were opening your brewery so that you can create a space for veterans, doing something that highlights that is great content. You can do oh food and beer pairings. If you didn't know, I used to do food and beer pairings on my Instagram before I started doing this, and that was fun. Event recaps are great. I shared an example of that in one of I think in episode two. And let's see, what else can you do? Oh, you could also I I talked about spotlighting customers, you can also do a customer spotlight in a carousel. So these are great again for connecting with your existing audience. Reels are great for connecting with new audiences, but that doesn't mean that you could not create a reel for something that would be great for a carousel. I always and I gave this advice in Minnesota, play around with it. You could even, dare I say, dare I say, you could even do a reel about one topic and then do a carousel about the same topic, just switch it up. If you were worried about them bumping up against each other in your feet, you can wait about 15 days, 30 days to repost that content. But I think finding ways to play around with different formats and how to present different types of content, totally great idea, and something that a lot of creators do on a regular basis. So this is not something that will penalize you. This is a way to make Instagram more fun and start experimenting and trying new things. Another thing that I will add is I would suggest whenever possible, and I try to do this, but it sometimes I forget get video and photo. Whenever you're out shooting and capturing content, try to get video and photo content at the same time because it will go far when you are working on content. I gave you an example of taking a real topic and then turning it into a carousel. And if you are able to, and well, you can do video and carousels too. Please play around with that as well. If you have both video and photo content, you can you can play more, you can you're more flexible in what kind of content you can end up creating. I said that sometimes I forget to do that because I have an Android, and if you have an Android, you are able to export photos from your videos, and it's great. You just open up your video, you hit edit, and there will be an icon right above where you would edit, and that will allow you to extract photos from your video. So I've done that so many times, it saved my butt so many times. So I highly recommend that. Another piece of advice I give you guys is you don't have to have fancy equipment in order to get video content. I get a lot of my video content with my phone, I get a lot of video content with my phone, and I have found as someone who's played around with creating all kinds of different content, when you do introduce things like a DSLR or a mirrorless camera, sometimes you have to play with lighting. If you don't already have great natural light, you're likely gonna have to purchase lighting, set up lighting, and now everything gets a little bit more complicated. So I use my phone a lot. I've even talked to a brewery that was very into like nice using nice cameras to capture their content, and they realized that the content that they got on their phone performed better because it feels more relatable, and especially in an age of AI where people are trying to figure out if this is AI or not, like those super polished videos just don't hit as hard as you might think they do. So let's go ahead and jump into some ways you can start incorporating this. So I would, if you're not already capturing video content, think of ways in which you can start doing that. One thing that I suggested a client do is they would usually post their new beer that was on tap, and they would always get a photo of it. And I said, You're already having to pour the beer, so get a video of the beer being poured, show the action, show that movement, and it actually gives you a better idea of the vibe in this space because you can kind of see more of what's happening versus the very beautifully lit photo of a beer. I think showing the beer being poured feels it has more energy behind it while you're getting your photos. Also just grab a five-minute video clip. Even if you decided not to film the beer being poured, for example, you can get a five-second clip of the beer just out. And I've done this many a time too for an account I manage. It's like I will just take a video clip of the beer sitting there watching the carbonation do its magic in the glass, and that's it. I put some text on there to hook somebody in, and then that's the video, and it performs. This is something you can do to start using more video and photo, and this is a great way to start building your content library. Now, let's jump into some examples. So, for reels, I always like to take you guys outside of the beer world. So, I'm gonna start with an account that I enjoy following, which is ATL Loves Mo. I think her name is Morgan. Morgan does such a good job of capturing a vibe. So, if you ever want to know like what I mean by capturing a vibe, Morgan is someone who does this really well. So she has this one video where it's clips of her time at this restaurant, but she has this great hook on there. POV, this restaurant transports you out of Atlanta without needing a passport, like that is an amazing hook. Not only does it mention Atlanta, so anyone who is interested in things Atlanta is gonna grab their attention, but also the restaurant transports you without needing a passport. Like, that's really that's a really cool concept. So when you're thinking about something like this, think about the things that make you special, that make you different from other breweries in your area, and make sure you add your city, make sure you add the city so that you get people who are interested in San Diego, Chicago, Los Angeles, all of these things, and you are naming them, you're letting them know hey, we're here in your city, and that will increase your reach because you're not just talking to beer people. Another one she has is this Atlanta restaurant is fusing Mediterranean and Mexican culture, and it's just again vibes, vibes, vibes. If you love Mediterranean food and you love Mexican food and you live in Atlanta, this video is for you. And so, yes, this video is for me. I might have to hit this place up. I think that her profile is worth a scroll if you're looking to see what kind of content would be good for Reach. I think she has really done a great job with her account, and I'll leave examples of her post in the show notes for you. And then as far as carousels, I have some examples. This one's from Sierra Nevada, they have their Sierra Nevada pills, which oh my god, that beer is so good. And they have a carousel on the first slide, they have 7% AVV. So one of the things I think that they really want to promote about this beer, is which is seen from this carousel, is the it has low AVV. They also have bright crystal and clarity on the next slide, tight white foam. So they're basically breaking down what makes this beer great, and I think it's just a great way to talk about a beer in a more engaging way, without letting everything live in the caption. They're just doing a really great job of promoting this beer without just using a pretty beer photo. This next example is from Stillfire Brewing in Smyrna, which is here in the Atlanta metro area, and they have frequently asked questions about still fire brewing, and it's just common questions that you're gonna be asked as a brewery. Are you kidding dog friendly? I know how many times have y'all gotten that. Do you serve anything else besides beer? Do you have anything for non-drinkers? Like they have all of the common questions that they're gonna get. This is a great carousel, I think, just to have on your profile, pinned if possible. I know that pinned real estate can be very tricky, but I think it would be a great way to let people know what to expect when they're visiting. This next one is from Dad Strength Brewing, which I love their content, and it is a sleep child in the back, and then you have a very like tired dad face, and it's the the hook is great. Keep swiping until this stops applying to you, and you swipe through, and he's basically telling you the story about why dad's strength brewing was founded. I think this is an amazing way to use a carousel, and I think that's all the examples I have for you. Yeah, that's it, guys. So I hope that this was helpful and helped you think about content in a new way. I will leave all of these linked in the show notes, and until next time, I'll see you later.