podcasr 10 reel ideas
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[00:00:00] Hi, it's Karen here. I'm the owner and founder of Ben breakfast academy. I help aspiring and existing bed and breakfast owners to create a business that you're going to love running and that your guests are going to live returning to. It's been a few months now since I recorded my last podcast, life just seems to keep getting in the way all the time.
But on a positive note, that means that I'm spending quite a lot of time visiting my new grandson, Leo down in London. And all of the strength training that's I've been doing over the last two years has suddenly become much more useful. As he's getting heavier and heavier as babies tend to do.
In this week's podcast, I probably still be no more. Baby talk. I'm good to talk to you about reels and videos for your business. I know reels can be quite scary for a lot of [00:01:00] people. I am one of those people who really doesn't like having my photograph taken. And I really do not enjoy being on video at all.
And especially if that means I'm going to have to do city dances and pointing on the screen. But reels. A great way to promote your business and you can create reels that involve you would not be non-screen at all, which is fabulous. In my opinion. So if you're a bed and breakfast owner looking to do more of your own business marketing and reducing your reliance on the online travel agencies, such as booking.com.
Then reels can be a really effective way. To showcase your business. I'm talking about reels here, but they could. Uh, on Instagram mainly, but they could just as easily be reels on Facebook or videos on Tik TOK. If that's where your audience are.
So I'm good to talk you through 10 creative ideas for [00:02:00] using reels to promote your B and B. You can create them and person quickly so that you can get on with the fun part of your business, such as cooking breakfast and welcoming guests. If those are the bits of your business that you enjoy. So, first of all, what are reels?
Reels are short. 15 to 62nd videos, and there's some times known as short form videos. They can easily be shared on Instagram, Facebook, or Tik TOK. These platforms all allow you to post longer videos than. Uh, 60 seconds. And I'm not going to tell you the maximum length that you were allowed to personally, each of them here, because with the way social media platforms change, it will all be out of date. By the time I press publish, but just because you can post longer videos doesn't necessarily mean you [00:03:00] should. Bear in mind that many of us have the attention span of goldfish these days. And short-form videos are much better at getting our audience's attention in the first place. Of course, that's not to say longer videos. Won't work once you've got your customer's attention and they're interested in what you're offering.
Then you can vary the length of your reels and see what works best for you.
I do have a blog post all about the 10 Instagram marketing tips for Ben breakfast owners. If you head over to bed and breakfast academy forward slash blog and do a search on Instagram, you'll find it there.
But back to reels. Why should you use reels in the first place? Uh, it really was a highly sharable. I've already shared several reels with my daughter this week. One particular funny one, a very cute little dog being mapped up like a baby. It was loving it. It [00:04:00] doesn't sound as bad as it seems, but it was loving being wrapped up.
, but people do share reels. They enjoy and find useful, and that makes it easier for people to discover your Instagram account and then discover your business.
Reels are visually engaging. So they allow you to showcase your property and offerings potentially in a way that you can't do with, , photographs alone.
They also help you to capture the attention of your potential guests and a great way to showcase your bed and breakfast. Brand and values. When I talk about brand, I'm not talking about your font and your colors. But really your values in terms of what's important to you as a business owner. Your brand might be that you're relaxed BMB that people would just come to and chill out.
It might be, , [00:05:00] about you being a high-end more formal BNB, or it might be that you have eco values. For me, it was having a relaxed place. At, with a bit of a sense of humor, nothing too serious whilst providing a luxury experience for my guests.
Reels are a cost effective marketing tool. They are a way that you can promote your business. And in a way that you really need minimum resources and a minimum effort. All you really need is a smartphone that can take photos and videos. And I'm going to mention this in a bit, but you don't even need videos, but you know, most reels are videos, but you can create reels from photographs.
When you post the photograph on your Instagram feed. This will be shown to your followers or people happen to find you in hashtags. But reels are shown to a [00:06:00] much wider audience. So it's a great way of finding more people.
To follow your account and to learn about your business.
So what equipment should you be using?
Reels aren't meant to be perfectly produced videos. And really the only equipment you need is a smartphone with a camera that will take videos. And as I said, some reels can be done just using photographs. So you don't even need to do videos. And I'll talk about that in a minute. There are lots of different editing apps out there, but you don't even need those. You can edit your reels from within Instagram and Facebook and ticked up themselves.
I do tend to use Canva the, uh, graphic design app convert to, uh, edit real sometimes.
And there's a free version of Canva, which you could use.
If you're taking [00:07:00] videos of yourself doing something like cooking breakfast. And you don't have someone else on hand to record the video, then invest in a cheap selfie stick with a stand.
You could also buy a gooseneck phone holder. These are a flexible neck colder, which normally has about 360 degrees rotation. So you can adjust it. So your phone. Uh, is exactly where it needs to be to take the perfect shot.
Have a look on Amazon and you'll see cheap selfie sticks and gooseneck stands there.
So let's talk through 10 ideas for reels that you can use to promote your bed and breakfast. So idea number one is to showcase your property. You could use a real t-shirt case of the interior. You could highlight unique features that make your bed and breakfast standouts. If you've got really old property, there might be parts of the building that might be [00:08:00] interesting to your customers.
Or if you've got a new property and you've got, say a wonderful wet room, you might want to show that in a video.
You can do individual video tools of each guest bedroom at the dining room, the bathrooms, you can talk over them, or you can choose music to play. Within the apps themselves, you can actually choose. Uh, current music or. There's a huge music library that you can choose from on those apps. If you are planning to talk over a video, then make sure that you enable captions.
You can do this in Instagram by hitting the caption sticker. When you create a real captions are important for accessibility. And they're also really important because a lot of people watch videos with the sound turned off. They might be. Awakened middle of the night and looking at their [00:09:00] phone. No, you shouldn't, but they might be.
Uh, and they don't want to disturb their partner. Uh, so they have the sound down, but they still want to see, what's been said in the video.
I didn't. Number two is you could use reels to highlight local attractions. And activities near your bed and breakfast, such as national trust properties, museums, beaches, restaurants, Steph, and her husband, Richard, who came on my course a few years ago. Run the, uh, spur wing guest house in Wareham down in dorset.
And Steph has. Done some reels sort of around local, uh, historic properties. And they've done really well. You know, got thousands of people looking at them. So, you know, that's an idea visit and local property national trust property, and just take videos of it as you're going around rather than just photographs.
I did. Number three is to take your videos on a [00:10:00] walk. So if walking is a particular activity that your bed and breakfast guests enjoyed doing. If you're in a rural area, or if you've got nice walks around your tent city. Then, maybe take yourself out on the walk and take photographs or videos as you go and then bring them all together into one real. So people can actually imagine themselves going on that walk process, staying with you.
The next idea I didn't have before is to feature your breakfast. So you could use rails to showcase your breakfast offerings. Highlighting the sort of special dishes or ingredients that meet your BNB unique.
One way you could actually do it is just using. Photograph. So you start with a photo of an empty plate. Then take a photo each time you add an ingredient. So you're building up the plate. Uh, on each of the photographs, then you end up with a full plate. Uh, this is where having a [00:11:00] gooseneck stand or a selfie sick comes in really useful.
Because you can make sure the camera and the plate. All exactly the same position.
You could demonstrate cookery technique. One of my very popular reels was demonstrating how to poach an egg. And you could show different stages with your followers, with ingredients and to have the methods and captions over the top of the video. And also put the. Recipe in the caption of the video itself. So in the written bit underneath the real.
Have a look at some accounts. There's lots of accounts out there that do cook real line recipes online. So look at something like half baked harvest on Instagram, she does a lot of recipe videos, and it will give you some ideas about how you can use, uh, videos when you're doing recipes. Again, these don't have to be fantastically produced productions.
You know, it's just a few videos. Take our Niro, iPhone and patch together. [00:12:00]
You can do that in Instagram itself. Or as I said, something like Canva. So the next idea, where are we idea? Number five. I think you could show off your garden. If your bed and breakfast has a nice garden on that side space, you could use reels to showcase it. Highlighting any flowers, plants, landscaping, wildlife. You know, I use reels a lot show off our wild flower garden that there's different times of year.
And God has a great for that because they're seasonal. So you could, for example, do a reel once a month showing how the garden is evolving over the seasons. You could do an annual real witch. It pulls together the photographs for each month of the year. That'd be nice to do it. End of year.
I did number seven to incorporate reels in your business marketing. Is to consider sharing behind the scenes footage for your BNB. You could feature [00:13:00] cleaning processes, give people an inside, look about how your business operates. A great account to follow, to see how this is done is Charlie's cottage.
Not low. She's very clever in the way she uses Instagram to create reels, to show different techniques.
Uh, for example, she has a video, a reel, which shows you how to fold a napkin or a towel in a particular way. Do think a bit carefully about behind the scenes footage. Even though it's behind the scenes, it wants to be showing your business in the best way. What Rachel at Charlie's cottage is showing in her videos.
Yeah, how to fold a napkin. It's not really about how to fold a napkin. It's about showing the attention. Uh, to detail that she's putting into creating very special experience for her guests. So do think about that, you know, it might be funny to post a picture of you cleaning the toilet. But is it something that's going to appeal [00:14:00] to our guests in a Chaplin? And do they really want to see the toilet being cleaned? So think carefully about. How your video or real will come across to your guests. Idea number eight. Is to consider featuring seasonal reels. So it could be, as I said, real off your garden. In different seasons.
You could show off. Different decorations for different times of the year. So Christmas, Easter, whenever you decorate. Similar activities, winter sports. And seasonal videos of the local landscape. You could feature different seasonal breakfast you offer. I used to do a spice plumb recipe in the ultimate winter time.
So that was something that I would only do at that time of year.
So the next tip, [00:15:00] um, is number nine is to consider collaborating with local businesses. So if you've got maybe a town tour or a gift shop that you could cross promote, you could take a video when you go and visit them or photographs, you could ask them to promote your offerings as well. So get some collaboration going.
Take reels of your local pubs and restaurants and the food they offer. It's always helpful to be able to show people the sorts of things, places. Uh, restaurants, all the things they can do while SIS stay with you. It's not just about saying it you'll be in beats, the whole experience.
And finally another type of video is that before and after video. If you think about all the TV programs out there, uh, the before and after. So showing the house, which is completely rundown and then is made into beautiful home. People love that sort of thing. So if you're doing something to improve your BNB, maybe make sure you take photos or videos beforehand and photos after [00:16:00] and do that as before and after real.
Okay, well, we're at the end of this week's podcast. I would love to see what you're doing in your reels. And if you incorporate any of the ideas I've shared today, So please do tag me at Ben breakfast academy on both Instagram and Facebook. And I really look forward to seeing what you come up with.
Well, I hope you found this week's podcast useful. If you have, please consider subscribing to the podcast. And I promise I would try and record more episodes in the future. You can also pop over to my [email protected]. Where I've got lots of other blog posts and hints and tips on how to set up run and market a bed and breakfast.
And if you're interested in running your own BNB, I have eight great online course, which you can get started with [00:17:00] straight away. And you'll find that on my website as well. That's bed and breakfast academy.co.uk. Thank you for listening and I will speak with you soon.
