Like many marketers, influencers, and content creators, you’ve probably gotten the memo that short-form videos are king. On Instagram, Reels account for over half of the time people spend on the platform. But what about reach?
Like other social platforms, you can boost Instagram Reels, which gives you a straightforward and powerful solution to extend the reach and results of your content.
A boosted Instagram Reel is a video post you promote with a chosen budget, helping it reach a larger audience beyond your followers. Boosted Reels appear in the main feed, Reels tab, Explore page, and Instagram Stories.
Unlike organic Reels, which rely solely on Instagram’s algorithm for distribution, boosted Reels give you more control over who sees your content. They also differ from full-scale Instagram ads as they lack the advanced targeting and advertising features available in Ads Manager.
For social media managers, boosting an Instagram Reel is an excellent way to give high-performing organic content extra exposure, attract profile views, or drive visits to your website. To help you boost your Reels like a pro, we interviewed strategist and keynote speaker, Jason Keath, who is also the co-founder of marketing agency Social Fresh. Below, we’ll share his tips and a complete step-by-step guide on how to boost your Reels to maximize success in 2025.
Bonus: Claim your pack of free animated Instagram Reels templates created by Hootsuite’s professional designers. Easily customize them in Canva, and take your Reels game to the next level today.
Criteria to boost an Instagram Reel
First, ensure your Instagram account is a business account, as only businesses can boost Reels.
When choosing to boost a Reel, make sure it meets Instagram’s criteria:
- Less than 90 seconds
- Vertical aspect ratio (9:16)
- Cannot contain copyrighted music, GIFs, stickers, or camera filters from third parties
- The Reel cannot have been shared to Facebook
- It cannot be a Trial Reel
How to boost Reels on Instagram
Step 1: Choose your Reel
First step: pull up the Reel that you want to boost. You can access your Reels in two ways:
- From your Instagram profile feed (note that it won’t show any Reels that you’ve chosen to hide from your profile grid)
- From the Reels tab on your profile (will show all of your published Reels)
Step 2: Tap boost
If viewing the Reel from your profile grid, tap Boost post in the bottom right corner.
If viewing the Reel from the Reels tab, tap Boost Reel in the bottom right corner.
Step 3: Set your goal
The first decision you’ll need to make is what objective you want the Reel to achieve:
- Visit your profile: If you want to build brand awareness or new followers
- Visit your website: If you want to drive purchases or signups on an external website
- Message you: If you want to have personalized interactions with potential customers (pro tip: add a question or prompt in the Reel caption)
If you choose Message you, you can select the text for the CTA button.
Psst: Keep reading below to hear Keath’s expert take on which goal is best when boosting Reels.
Step 4: Set your target audience
Here, you can choose who you’d like to see your Reel.
You can let Instagram do the heavy lifting by selecting Suggested audience or set your own parameters by using a saved audience or creating a new one.
If you select Create your own, you can set the targeting for location, age, gender, and interests.
We suggest leaving the Advantage+ audience toggle on to allow the Instagram algorithm to expand your audience.
After you fill in the targeting, Instagram will show an estimated size of your audience. Your budget will determine how much of that audience you’ll reach.
Step 5: Set the budget and duration
At this step, you can choose the daily budget and time to run the boost. You can spend as little as $1 day to $1,000 USD total for up to 30 days.
Some notes:
- The budget cap is much lower when boosting a Reel in the mobile app — if you want to use a higher budget, you can spend moreper day when boosting from the web
- If you’re using the Instagram app on an iOS device, you’ll be charged a 30% Apple service fee on top of your boosting budget
- You may be charged tax based on your device location
Based on your budget and duration, Instagram will show you an estimated reach and results for your chosen objective.
Step 6: Review and launch
In the last step, you can review your settings for the boosting campaign. Based on your stored payment method, you may need to add funds or simply use a credit card.
After you publish the boost, Instagram will review your Reel to ensure it meets Meta’s ad standards. Reviews can take up to 24 hours, but in most cases, approvals only take a few minutes.
How to boost Instagram Reels using Hootsuite
Pro tip: If you’re already using a social media marketing tool (like Hootsuite), chances are you can boost posts from right inside the tool.
Here are some benefits of boosting Reels through Hootsuite:
- You can schedule a boost to run in the future
- Different objective options, including engagement and video views
- The option to set a total budget (rather than daily)
- Choose the exact start and end times for the boot, down to the minute
- More audience options, such as using custom or lookalike audiences that you’ve built on Facebook
- You’ll avoid the 30% Apple service fee
Step 1: Open your Instagram stream
In Hootsuite, navigate to the Streams tab and open the stream that has your Instagram feed content.
Find your chosen Reel within the stream and tap the Boost post button.
Step 2: Select your accounts
Select the correct Instagram and ad account and tap Save.
Step 3: Choose your boost settings
In the next window, you can choose all of your boost settings on one page, including:
- Objective: Engagement, video views, or awareness
- Audience: Recommended, saved, or custom
- Placements: Include/exclude Facebook (we recommend including it for maximum reach)
- Budget and duration: Set a daily or total budget and the start and end times for the boost
Once you’re happy with the settings, tap Boost on Instagram, and that’s it!
You can use Hootsuite to review your overall Instagram analytics during and after the boosting period.
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How much does it cost to boost Reels on Instagram?
Unlike when creating campaigns in Meta Ads Manager, you aren’t paying per click or impressions when boosting Reels. Instead, the cost is simplified based on how much you’re willing to spend per day and how long you wish to run the boost.
With that said, even if you choose the same budget & duration settings for two different boosted Reels, the estimated reach & results may vary. Behind the scenes, costs for boosted Reels may vary based on:
- Time of year (and how many advertisers are targeting the same audience as you)
- Campaign goals (some results may be more competitive than others)
- How well your Reel performs (better performance may lead to wider audience reach and cheaper results)
10 expert tips to boost Instagram Reels
As co-founder of Social Fresh, Keath has been advising businesses on their social media strategies since 2008.
These days, Instagram Reels are a key lever for his clients, who range from startups to Fortune 500 companies. Here are Keath’s top tips for boosting Reels, based on insights from over 200 clients.
Tip 1: Start with audience research
Before clients start putting money into ads or boosting, Keath helps them do audience research. “ Our audience research informs the creative more than demographic and psychographic targeting.”
Keath suggests reaching out to customers and asking them these questions:
- “Why did you buy our product?”
- “Why did you start working with us?”
- “What pain point did we help you solve?”
- “If you hadn’t bought from us, what would you have done instead?”
The goal of asking these questions is to learn about the customer journey.
“Learning your audience’s needs, pain points, and emotional triggers will help you dial in what content will connect with your audience.”
Tip 2: Trust the algorithms
In the early days of Facebook and Instagram ads, the more specific your targeting, the better your ads performed. However, with the maturation of Meta’s algorithms, this is no longer the case.
“Meta has gotten really good at finding audiences for you. For most clients, letting Instagram figure out where and whom to serve ads has been very successful.”
If you’re not 100% confident in the algorithmic overlords, you can always test your targeting against Instagrams. Keath suggests the following plan:
- In month 1, test Instagram’s suggested audience
- In month 2, test your custom targeting (using the same creative as month 1)
- Compare the performance of both and continue with the winning targeting in month 3
Tip 3: Invest in competitive research
In addition to audience research, Keath also suggests investing in competitive research.
“We do benchmark research on our clients’ closest competitors and the audiences, channels, messaging, and creatives they’re using.”
Putting even a few hours into competitor research can reveal valuable Instagram insights for small businesses.
Keath’s competitor audits usually focus on these questions:
- What’s working? What’s not working?
- Are they using consistent messaging or call-to-actions?
- What formats are they using – UGC, animations, fast edits & transitions, static images?
Keath recommends researching at least three competitors on Instagram and any related brands you aspire to emulate.
Tip 4: Know your objective
Boosting isn’t always the best tactic for every business. Keath finds it generally works best for solo entrepreneurs, startups, and small organizations focused on driving brand awareness for a new business, product, or media platform.
“ Starting an Instagram account for new podcasts or newsletters has become increasingly common. If you’re just getting into advertising, boosting is a good tool to learn the basics.”
Tip 5: Use boosting for top-of-funnel campaigns
Keath firmly believes that social is best for driving awareness.
“ Asking someone to make an online purchase is always going to be a harder ask than liking, commenting, or sending a post to a friend. Those engagement metrics are more awareness-driving and easier to achieve with boosting.”
Even if your primary business objective is to drive leads or conversions, boosting can complement these efforts. “You can’t rely on retargeting your existing audience forever. You have to grow your top-of-funnel audience to have a sustainable advertising strategy.”
Tip 6: Test at least 3 creatives
For every test Keath runs, he aims to run at least three ads or content pieces against each other.
“ An easy way for small businesses to do that is to look at your analytics for months one, two, and three. If you’re producing weekly content, you can learn one new thing each month to consistently iterate on.”
While conducting these tests, you should keep audience targeting constant to isolate the learnings about the creatives and messaging.
Tip 7: Start with $10 a day
If you have no idea what budget to use, Keath recommends starting with $10 a day.
Keath’s pro tip: “Don’t check your Reel’s performance every hour of every day. Set a length of days that you’re comfortable with, and only check the performance once the boost finishes. If you’re tempted to monitor the results because of the money you’re spending, you need to reduce the budget. “
Tip 8: Run 4, 7, and 10 day boosts
Keath generally sees the most benefits from running 7-10 day boosts.
“ When you’re just starting out, start with 4-day runs. As you see success, work up to 7 and 10 days. The key is to get confidence that your creative and messaging are working.”
“After 10 days, you’ve probably reached the max point of performance for the Reel.”
Tip 9: Boost top-performing organic content
When choosing which Reels to boost, Keath recommends leaning into what’s working on Instagram organically.
Right now, that could include:
- Send-worthy content: “Content that’s emotional, humorous, provocative, or has interesting stats — anything that would make someone send it to their friends or family members.”
- Value-add content: “Video content with explainers, tutorials, and inspiration lists; anything that leaves users feeling educated or inspired.”
- Playlist content: “Content where you answer common customer questions and create a watchable series.”
- Trends: “People tend to pay more attention to videos showing current trends.”
- Starting a story in the middle: “This is one of the more engaging content techniques with roots in ancient storytelling.”
“You should be boosting Reels content that’s already showing good signs of life on organic.”
Tip 10: Test as many formats as you can
“ One of the biggest gaps we see with clients is not testing enough types of videos.”
To learn what content will resonate with your audience, you need to think like a scientist and experiment, experiment, experiment.
“Look at what’s working on Instagram, look at creators, and ask yourself, what would it look like to replicate that for your business?”
Start building your Instagram presence using Hootsuite. Schedule and publish posts directly to Instagram, engage your audience, measure performance, and run all your other social media profiles — all from one simple dashboard. Try it free today.
