How Instagram Reel Templates Pair Customization with Consistency

Instagram is probably the most popular photo and video-sharing app in the world. Gone are the days when it was merely used as a visual diary of duck-faced selfies and photos of your cat. Now, over 2 billion monthly active users (MAUs) use the platform for showcasing interests, advertising products and services, and doing business.

Reels, a popular feature on this visual content-focused app, is ideal for short-form videos. These engaging videos appear on users' feeds and recommended pages, making them a popular format among both personal and business users.

The irony is that creating effective short-form content can be time-consuming, as the limited duration requires the video to have a strong impact. To address this challenge, many creators have turned to using templates. These templates allow them to leverage trending content styles and produce engaging videos more efficiently.

In this blog post, we'll explore the Reels feature and how templates can influence your content creation processes.

What are Instagram Reels?

Instagram Reels are short, vertical videos that can be anywhere from 15 to 180 seconds long. They come with a range of customization options, allowing users to add text, AR filters, static filters, audio (original, voiceover, or music), custom covers, multiple clips, transitions, and even adjust playback speeds.

Reels differ from other Instagram formats like Stories in that they remain as permanent posts on a user's profile, making them better for attracting new audiences. Stories, on the other hand, primarily reach a user's existing followers.

Instagram allows you to upload fully custom-made Reels. Alternatively, you can use pre-made templates to piggyback off viral content or simply for faster production. You can even create templates of your own!

Meow Memo 🐱: Need to publish a longer video? Upload as a Post instead of a Reel. This format accepts videos of up to 60 minutes in length.

Why Use Templates for Your Reels?

Creating, scheduling, and publishing Reels can be time-consuming. They’re worth the effort when you have a unique concept to visualize. But sometimes, you may simply need to create basic content, respond to another video, or participate in a trend. In these cases, using a template can be more efficient.

There are three key advantages to using templates: creativity, consistency, and efficiency.

Creativity

Using templates for Instagram Reels doesn't have to limit creativity at all. In fact, the structure of a template can actually enhance creativity and help you produce more engaging content. Rather than starting from a blank slate, the template frees you up to focus on infusing your personal style and ideas. Leveraging a Reel template is an efficient way to create videos that still feel fresh and authentic.

But besides that, templates allow you to leverage trending content and sounds to boost the discoverability of your Reels. They give you a structure for videos around popular challenges, sounds, or styles that are currently viral on the platform. This enables you to piggyback off the momentum of trending content and potentially reach new audiences who are browsing by template or searching for that type of video.

Templates for Reels include at least 3 video clips and a pre-selected music track. Pacing and number of clips come ready for you to simply add your media and render. But within that framework, you have the freedom to customize and really make it your own. Your own media, captions, and creative touches are what will make the Reel truly unique and engaging for your audience.

Consistency

Consistency is another benefit of using templates for your Reels. When you have a cohesive visual style and branding across your Instagram posts, it helps reinforce your identity and makes your content more recognizable to your audience. Selected templates can provide structure that ensure your Reels share a similar look and feel, even with unique media and captions.

Pre-designed elements like transitions, text overlays, and audio make it easier to produce videos that don’t feel disjointed. And if you create your own templates or choose a few cohesive ones to use for your brand, you can build a strong, memorable brand presence on Instagram.

Efficiency

The efficiency of templates is another major benefit. There are hundreds of thousands of Reel templates available, covering a wide range of styles and formats. Using a pre-made template is much quicker and easier than starting your Reel from scratch.

With a template, you simply select the one you want to use, add your own media to each segment, and you're done! This streamlined process saves you valuable time compared to building a Reel entirely from the ground up. Templates allow you to produce engaging, on-trend content in a fraction of the time it would take to conceptualize and construct everything yourself.

How Do I Create an Instagram Reel From a Template?

A template allows you to maintain the same music and timing as the original Reel, but replace the media with your own images and videos. It’s a quick, easy way to produce engaging videos in just a few minutes.

Here’s how you can create a reel from a template:

1. From your Instagram home page, tap + on the tab menu at the bottom of the page.
2. Tap Reel at the bottom, then tap Templates.
3. Browse through the available templates, then tap the one you’d like to use.
4. Tap Add media , then add your own photos or videos in the order you’d like them to appear.
5. Tap Next.
6. Tap on each individual clip to make changes of the portion you’d like to include. You can also tap Replace media to swap a photo or video for something else.
7. Tap Next to preview and share your Reel.

The entire process takes minutes, leaving you with much more time to plan your approach and produce the photos or videos you want to use.

Using templates makes the video creation process much faster and easier. Rather than starting from scratch, templates provide a pre-designed structure for you to quickly add your own media and produce fresh, engaging Instagram Reels.

Producing Quality Video Content at Scale

Templates are not inherently better than content created from ground-up. However, there are times when streamlining the production process is advantageous—taking part in a trend, producing videos at scale, and experimenting with new formats, to name a few.

The benefits of using templates for Instagram Reels—creativity, consistency, and efficiency—are equally applicable to video content creation across platforms. Clipcat, our video generation API, offers similar advantages by allowing you to produce beautiful content with a customized template.

Just like Instagram Reel templates, Clipcat's templates give users a structured starting point to quickly produce engaging videos. The templates ensure a cohesive look and feel, while still allowing for personalization with your own footage, text, and branding. This helps maintain brand consistency across all your video content.

Ultimately, Clipcat empowers you to optimize your video production process, no matter which platform you're creating for. Whether it's short-form social media videos, customer reviews, or any other video content, the ability to work from a template saves time and resources. This allows you to focus on developing high-quality, customized videos that connect with your audience—at scale.

Stay tuned for launch!