106: Instagram Trial Reels Update: What Changed and What To Do Now
Two weeks ago, I shared a trial reels strategy that was working beautifully.
In real time, Instagram adjusted.
In this episode, I’m breaking down exactly what changed, what it means for your content, and how to adapt without spiraling. I’m also answering your questions straight from my DMs, including how to know if a trial reel is actually performing well and how to duplicate content the right way.
But this episode is bigger than a feature update.
I’m sharing a powerful lesson from Olympic gold medalist Alysa Liu that completely reframes how we approach Instagram. Because the real key to sustainable growth is not gaming the algorithm. It’s how you hold your worth while you create.
If you want to stay ahead instead of constantly playing catch-up, this one is for you.
What You’ll Learn
01:33 – Why Instagram shut down the duplicate trial reel loophole
02:51 – What trial reels actually are and how they differ from regular reels
04:42 – Why reposting the same reel within days will now get flagged
06:06 – How to know if your trial reel is truly performing well
08:27 – The exact way to duplicate a reel inside Instagram drafts
09:51 – Why you should always save your videos to your camera roll
10:46 – The Olympic mindset shift that changes how you approach content
13:07 – How to build a repeatable rhythm that survives algorithm updates
Key Takeaways
This is not a panic moment. It is a data moment.
You are competing against your own metrics, not someone else’s.
If a reel significantly outperforms your baseline, it is working.
Always own your assets by saving videos to your camera roll.
Cultural moments can become powerful niche content when tied intentionally to your expertise.
When your worth is not on the line, you create more freely.
Sustainable growth comes from rhythm, not reaction.
A Truth You Need to Hear:
“When your worth isn’t on the line, you’re free.” — Elizabeth Marberry
Resources Mentioned:
Hot Reels Full Program Details
S3 Ep106 Transcript: Instagram Trial Reels Update: What Changed and What To Do Now
00:00
Two weeks ago, I taught a trial reels strategy that was working incredibly well. And in just two weeks, Instagram started cracking down on it. So in today's episode, I'm giving you the real time update, answering your questions straight from my DMs and sharing a powerful lesson from an Olympic gold medalist that might be the key to growing on Instagram without burnout. If you wanna stay ahead instead of playing catch up, this one's for you. Let's go.
00:29
Welcome to Strut It, a podcast about creating bold visibility on social media with zero apologies. I'm Elizabeth Marberry, your host and Instagram marketing coach. I help small business owners get seen on Instagram and monetize their offers so they can make more money doing their sole lead work. If you're tired of spinning your wheels on Instagram and you're seeking simple, proven Instagram marketing strategies that actually work, you're in the right place.
00:58
Let's dive in.
01:08
Welcome back to the show. As always, thank you so much for joining me. I'm super excited for today's show where I get to bring you the latest and greatest as to what is working on Instagram for small businesses and creative entrepreneurs right now. So if you listened to my episode a couple weeks ago on Instagram updates for 2026, I shared with you a trial reel strategy that was totally working.
01:33
for myself and my clients to help us increase our views, our engagement and followers. I shared that when a trial reel was performing really well, instead of pushing it to your main feed and sharing it to everyone, you could re-upload that exact same video to your main feed a few days later and essentially have your video, if you can imagine this, your reel is going in trial reels and
02:01
on your main feed. So essentially doubling your reach and engagement. Honestly, it was working. Like I said, it was working for me, for my clients. It was giving our content longer legs. In just the last couple of weeks, Instagram has started cracking down on this. So what is happening now is that people, including me, are getting a notification that says,
02:26
This trial reel won't get much reach. It's not being shown to many people because it looks like something you've shared before. So essentially Instagram is closing the loop on duplicating content between trial reels and your feed. Now I wanna say this clearly, this is not a panic moment, okay? This is a data moment.
02:51
Instagram is always evolving and part of our job as business owners is to observe, adapt and keep moving on. So what do you do now? First, when it comes to trial reels, and if you're listening to this and you're like, wait, what is a trial reel? What's the difference between a trial reel and a reel? Let me just explain that really quickly. So trial reels are shown.
03:16
only to non-follower, so people who don't already follow you, a total cold audience. The other difference in sharing a reel to trial reels is that not only is it shown to that cold audience, the people who don't already follow you, but it doesn't go to your grid, right? So a lot of creators and brands and businesses really like the feature because it gives them a sense of freedom, like they can test out different content types.
03:45
and post it to trial reels, but not necessarily have it live forever on their grid, if that makes sense. So what do you do now? What am I doing now in terms of trial reels? First, I would still experiment. So if you have a trial reel that's doing really well and you choose to share it to your feed, just pay attention. Does your engagement rate and views and
04:14
likes and comments and shares and saves, does that continue to rise when you share it to your main feed? Or does it stall out? If you notice that every time you move a trial reel to your feed, the momentum dies, then maybe you just leave it in trial reels. Or maybe you don't care if the engagement doesn't keep climbing. You just are so proud of this piece of content. You want it to live on your feed for branding reasons.
04:42
That's okay too, then push it out to your feet. So there's no one right answer here. But the whole duplicate and repost strategy within this timeframe of I posted something on Monday, it's doing well in trial reels, now I'm gonna post the same video on Wednesday to my feed, that is not going to work anymore. Instagram is going to flag that. Now what I will say is that let's say you post a video in trial reels and it's doing really well.
05:11
I haven't been able to test this yet, but I would imagine it's like other content types. If you wait 60 or 90 days and repost that exact same video to your feed, that's okay. That's not gonna get flagged. They just don't want you posting the same content within a really short period of time, if that makes sense. So they have officially cracked out on that and closed that loophole. And it's my job to bring these updates to you because...
05:37
I wanna make this as simple as possible and I know it can be frustrating when things change. The quicker you can just kind of roll with it and move on, the better you'll be. Now I also got a couple really great followup questions in my DMs after the episode where I went in depth into the strategy around trial wheels and I love this so much. So if you ever listen to the show and you have a question, don't forget, make sure you're following me on Instagram at Elizabeth Marberry, M-A-R-B-E-R-R-Y.
06:06
and know that my DMs are always open. Truly, I read each and every DM and who knows, I might answer your question live right here on the show. How fun is that? So the first question I got in the DM is, how do I know if a trial reel is performing well? You my feedback was, if a trial reel is performing really well, what I have found is when I push it out to my feed, it kind of kills my engagement. So I'm leaving some of those videos just in trials.
06:36
And so someone said, well, how do you even know if a trial reel is performing well? And the answer is it's all relative. Okay, there's no magic number I could give you. So here's how I like to frame it. If your typical reels get 200 views and your trial reel gets a thousand or 2000 views, that's doing really well for you, right? For someone else, that might not be great.
07:04
It depends on your account size, your average reach, your baseline, and you don't need to compare your numbers with anyone else's. You're just essentially competing against yourself. You're just comparing your stats versus your previous videos that you've posted. So the only metrics that really matters is, is this outperforming your norm? And the cool part is Instagram already helps you here. So,
07:30
when you post something to trial reels, you'll get a notification that says something like, this reel is getting more views in the first 24 hours than your typical reels. And it will literally prompt you to share it to everyone. So again, you can decide if you want to share it to everyone or just let it live in trial reels, but you don't have to guess, is it performing well? It will actually tell you. So just pay attention to the signals they're giving you and make the best decision for yourself from there.
08:00
The second question I got was, okay, if I did want to duplicate a video, how do I actually do that? So that's a great question. So this idea of, okay, I posted a video here and let's say I want to post it again in 60 to 90 days. How are you actually like doing that? What is the logistics of saving that video? So inside of Instagram, when you are working on a reel,
08:27
If you save it as a draft, so imagine that you've put the hook on it, you've written the caption, the hashtags, everything, before you go to post it, save it as a draft, then in the draft folder, tap on the three dots to the right of the video and select duplicate. So now you have two versions of the exact same video in your drafts folder, and you could even schedule that out in 90 days, right? If you wanted to, right then and there.
08:55
So that's one way that you can duplicate content. I always like to duplicate, like I said, after I've put the hook on the screen and the captions are done and everything is formatted. And then I just kind of save that second version of it. And then that way, if I, let's say I posted it and it didn't perform well, I could essentially like tweak the hook later on if I wanted to. I like having that option of that duplicate in my drafts folder.
09:23
Now, if you're using the edits app, which is Instagram's video editing app, you can hold down on the video in your projects folder. And when you literally like press down on the video, you'll see a duplicate option pop up and then you click on that. So you can duplicate it there as well. Regardless of what you're doing, like where you're editing your videos, I always recommend that you save your videos to your camera roll. So there's been...
09:51
So many times where I have had videos pop off and let's say I do want to post them again three, six months later, I can go back in my camera roll six months back and find that original video and then repost it with, sometimes I will add a text on there or sometimes I will have saved it with the text on the screen and then I'll pick a new audio. But either way, I really recommend that you always save your videos to your camera roll. You want to own your own assets, right? God forbid.
10:20
Instagram goes down, you lose all your content, right? So you always want to have your assets protected and backed up on your camera roll, computer, all that stuff. Okay, so that's the tactical update. Now I want to zoom out for a second because yes, trial reel strategies matter, hashtag limits, we talked about that a couple of weeks ago, feature updates matter. But you know what matters even more is how you show up.
10:46
And I wanna tell you about something I posted yesterday. So as I'm recording this, we just wrapped up the Winter Olympics and I posted about Alyssa Liu. She won gold in figure skating for the United States. And what struck me wasn't the medal, but it was something that she said. She said she would have been okay if she went out there on Olympic ice and she fell out of every single jump. Not because she didn't care.
11:15
but because skating and getting out on the ice and performing itself was the point for her, the joy, the craft, the expression, the metal was really just a bonus in her mind. So I created a real remix yesterday with some photos of her and kind of told the story on the screen. And in the caption, really, you know, connected the dots in my post about this is why she won.
11:42
Because when your worth isn't on the line, you're free. When your worth isn't on the line, you're free. And I want you to really take that in because what if you approach Instagram like that? You know, I know we're not competing for gold medals here, but one thing that I see so often with small business owners and creative entrepreneurs and brands that wanna show up on Instagram is we get so stuck in overthinking and
12:11
over curating and over planning our content. And it's cause we care, right? And that's a good thing. But what if your reels and your content weren't so precious? What if it wasn't, if this doesn't perform, I'm failing or my business isn't good or I'm not good enough or no one wants my product or service. What if instead it was, I'm here to serve, I'm here to create and I'm here to get better.
12:38
I posted that video yesterday and it's already at 32,000 views. So it's really resonating. And more than that, it's also proof that when you can tie in cultural moments to your niche in a meaningful way, that is also a powerful content strategy and move. So if you're ever noticing something in the news or something that's happening in current events that you can tie into your niche, do it. That's how you can ride trends without
13:07
it being really random is really connecting the dots into your niche. You can hear how I did that just now when I told you the story of Alyssa Lue and I tied it into Instagram marketing, right? You can do that for your business too. So to wrap it up, Instagram is going to keep changing. Trial reel strategies will change, features will change, what works today might shift in two weeks or two months or six months or six years, constantly feel behind. But if you build a repeatable rhythm,
13:37
visibility, connection, conversion. You don't panic every time the platform tweaks something. You adapt, you test, you refine, and you keep going. And that's exactly what we build together inside of Hot Reels, my 12 month Instagram content lab. It's not just tactics, not just, oh, just try this trending audio and say a prayer. It's, I teach you proven frameworks and systems.
14:07
I teach you how to build a rhythm that supports your energy and your business. And I'm so excited. The doors are opening again this April for our next round of Hot Reels. The wait list gets first access. So if you are not already on my Hot Reels VIP wait list, what the heck are you waiting for? You definitely wanna get on there if you are interested in joining my group coaching program.
14:32
Wait-listers get first access and I throw in some really incredible bonuses that you don't wanna miss. So head on over to ElizabethMarberry.com slash hot. That's Elizabeth Marberry, M-A-R-B-E-R-R-Y.com slash hot. And you can see the full program info and get your name and email on the wait list. Or if you're over on Instagram already following me at Elizabeth Marbury, DM me the keyword hot, H-O-T.
15:01
and my robot assistant will hook you up with the link to join the wait list. Get yourself in the room. I would love to support you. All right, my friend, I hope you loved today's episode. Thank you so much for listening and I can't wait to strut it with you next week. Thank you for listening to strut it. If you're ready to start leveraging Instagram to grow your business, then you're gonna wanna grab my free monetize your IG guide where you'll learn seven simple and proven ways
15:30
to finally make money on Instagram. You can grab your guide at ElizabethMarberry.com slash freebies. That's ElizabethMarberry.com slash freebies to get my monetize your IG guide. If you got some incredible value from today's episode, be sure to leave a review and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. And I cannot wait to start it with you again next week.
