To get more views on Instagram Reels, make the first second something a stranger will stay for, and keep every Reel eligible to be recommended to people who do not follow you. Instagram shows each eligible Reel to a small test audience first and widens it for the ones people watch to the end and reshare, so the opening and the eligibility checks below decide your views far more than your follower count does.
How does Instagram decide who sees a Reel?
Instagram has explained this itself, twice, and both explanations point the same way.
In its April 30, 2024 post on recommendations and originality (read October 19, 2026), Instagram said eligible content is first shown to a small audience it thinks will enjoy it, whether or not those people follow the creator. The Reels that do well in that first group get shown to progressively larger audiences.
In Instagram Ranking Explained, published May 31, 2023 (read October 19, 2026), Adam Mosseri listed what the Reels ranking predicts. The most important predictions are how likely you are to reshare a Reel, watch it all the way through, like it, and open its audio page. Information about the person who posted, follower count included, comes last of the four signal groups, which Instagram lists "roughly in order of importance."
Put those together and the job is plain. A Reel gets more views when strangers in that first small audience watch it to the end and send it to someone.
That is also why our edit starts with the first two seconds: the hook goes first, captions are burned in, text stays inside the safe zone, and the sound is designed for people watching on mute. You can see how that plays out on our Instagram Reels agency page.
Why are my Reels not getting views?
Before you change anything creative, rule out the boring causes. Instagram publishes the reasons a Reel will not be recommended to non-followers. Every row below comes from Instagram's guide to recommendation eligibility or the two Instagram posts above, all read October 19, 2026.
| Check | What Instagram says | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Private account | Only public accounts are recommended. Business and creator accounts are public automatically. | Switch to a professional account. |
| Account Status | Repeated violations can make your entire account ineligible for a period of time. | Open Account Status in your settings, fix or remove flagged posts, request a review if it is wrong. |
| Reposted footage | Copies of original content are replaced by the original in recommendations. Reels already posted on Instagram are made less visible. | Film your own. Never delete a Reel and upload the same file again. |
| Watermark | Watermarked Reels are made less visible. | Export a clean file. No TikTok logo, no editing-app stamp. |
| Format | Use 9:16 vertical video with no borders, where text does not cover most of the screen. Avoid blurry or low-quality footage. | Shoot vertical at full resolution and keep text small. |
| Length | To be recommended, a Reel has to be three minutes or less. | Keep it under three minutes. |
| Search | Put keywords and hashtags in the caption, not the comments. | Write a caption that says what the video is and where. |
| Regulated products | Content promoting things like tobacco or vaping can reach followers but is not recommended. | Know that a vape shop's reach is capped by the rules, not the edit. |
If all eight are clean and your Reels still stall at a few hundred views, the problem is the idea, or how fast the first second sells it. The rest of this post is about that.
Is a small following holding your views back?
Probably not, and our data is blunt about it.
Every month we pull the Reels and TikToks in one industry that beat their own account's median by the widest margin. The outlier multiplier is views divided by that account's median views, so a Reel at 50x did fifty times its account's normal. For this post we took only the Instagram half of our open dataset: 120 Reels from September and October 2026, 15 in each of eight industries, all from the short-form video statistics page, where you can download the CSV.
| Account size | Reels | Median followers | Median views |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 10,000 followers | 39 | 2,000 | 1.2M |
| 10,000 to 99,999 | 31 | 36,000 | 1.3M |
| 100,000 or more | 48 | 424,500 | 1.7M |
Two of the 120 have no reported follower count, so the table covers 118. From the smallest group to the largest, the typical follower count grows 212 times. The typical breakout's views grow by less than half. 113 of those 118 Reels got more views than their account had followers, and the median Reel drew about 36 views for every follower. Of the 39 accounts under 10,000 followers, 25 passed a million views. Eleven accounts had fewer than 1,000 followers, and five of those still passed a million.
One caveat: we pulled these as outliers, so they lean big by design. They show what a breakout can look like at each size, not what a normal Reel earns.
The Toronto example worth knowing is a barber whose account had 402 followers. His Reel opened with "Toronto: try this if you have a receding hairline" and did 2.4 million views. It is in our September barbershop report. We made the case with our own client dashboards in 97% of reach came from non-followers, so we will not repeat it here.
Which kind of opening gets the most views?
This is the section where we nearly told you the wrong thing.
We sorted all 120 Reels by how they open. Four buckets: a line (a claim, question, warning or quote, spoken or on screen), footage of the product, place or result (a tour, a reveal, a close-up, a timelapse), people in a scene (a POV, a skit, a staged moment, an interaction), and an animation or film clip. The sorting is our call, made from our own paraphrase of each hook, so read the gaps, not the decimals.
The first pass looked like a clean lesson. Reels that opened on a line had a median of 47.2x. Reels that opened on footage had 29.8x, and footage made up 13 of the 22 Reels that beat their account by less than 10x.
Then we checked who posted them. The footage Reels typically came from accounts that normally get about 70,000 views a video. The line Reels typically came from accounts that normally get about 35,000. A multiplier is views divided by that normal, so an account with a higher normal will always show a smaller number for the same breakout. Compared like for like, most of the gap disappeared.
| How the Reel opens | Accounts that normally get under 5,000 views | 5,000 to 50,000 | Over 50,000 |
|---|---|---|---|
| A line | 6 Reels, 239.8x | 15 Reels, 89.4x | 16 Reels, 18.3x |
| Footage | 10 Reels, 278.4x | 13 Reels, 83x | 27 Reels, 10.4x |
| People in a scene | 7 Reels, 587.3x | 6 Reels, 161.5x | 12 Reels, 13x |
| Animation or film clip | 4 Reels, 402.8x | 4 Reels, 167.6x | none |
Read down any column and the opening style moves the number far less than the account's normal does. In the middle column, accounts that normally get 5,000 to 50,000 views, a line and a piece of footage landed at 89.4x and 83x. Scenes with people and animations sat highest in the two smaller columns, but on 4 to 7 Reels each. Treat that as a lead worth testing, not a rule.
So no style of opening is a cheat code. What the winners in every bucket shared was an idea a stranger has not seen a hundred times:
- Footage that won showed something unusual. A restaurant delivering food by toy train did 5.3 million views from 10,000 followers. A dental account with 1,200 followers filmed its own plaque under a microscope and did 470.5x.
- Lines that won picked a fight with an assumption. "Listing not selling? What to do before lowering the price" did 494x for a real estate account. "Husband: there is nothing wrong with this kitchen" did 3.1 million views at 422.3x. "Please do not get a crown on your tooth" did 212.3x, from an account with 437,000 followers.
- Scenes that won put the staff on camera. A salesperson saying good morning outside the store did 12.4 million views from 7,500 followers. A med spa provider in the hot seat did 1.9 million from 875 followers.
Our viral hook library has the opening of every one of these, sorted by industry.
What changed between our best and worst Reel on the same account?
The cleanest test we have is not in the dataset. It is our own work.
We made four Reels for Yorkdale Fine Cars, a dealership in Vaughan. Same account, same crew, same city. They finished between 125,000 and 23.6 million views, a spread of 189 times.
The top one, the Flying Salesperson, opens on a night street with a figure in pink flying over a moving car. Nothing in the first second says dealership. It runs seven seconds, which makes it easy to watch twice, and the dealership's name arrives last, in one line, once the viewer has already decided they like it.
The bottom one, No Expensive Restaurants, borrows a meme format thousands of accounts have already used, and its payoff is a line of SUVs. It is closer to an inventory video in costume. Still a respectable 125,000 views, and still the lowest of the four.
Nothing about the account explains that gap. The premise and the first seconds that sell it do. If your Reels swing wildly, put your weakest next to your best and look at what actually changed.
What should a Toronto business change this week?
- Open Account Status first. If anything is flagged, nothing else on this list matters until it is fixed.
- Post natively. A clean, vertical, full-resolution file made for Instagram. No watermarks from other apps.
- Write the first line for a stranger. If you serve one city, say so. Three Toronto-area Reels in our data named the place in the hook: the 402-follower barber at 2.4 million, a new pistachio affogato spot at 1.4 million from 17,000 followers, and a Mississauga condo tour that named Erin Mills at 140,900 views from 377 followers. Three videos is a lead, not a law, but it is the same instinct behind our Toronto neighbourhoods Reel: people stop for their own street.
- Burn in the captions. We put them into every Reel we make, because a Reel that needs sound to make sense loses anyone scrolling on mute in the first second.
- Test new ideas as Trial Reels. Instagram's Trial Reels, launched December 10, 2024 (read October 19, 2026), show a Reel to non-followers first and keep it off your grid. Results arrive about 24 hours later, and you can let Instagram share it to followers automatically if it performs well in its first 72 hours.
- Judge every Reel against your own median. Not against a creator with a million followers. Our outlier calculator does the sum. Formats that beat your median get a sequel; formats that do not get cut.
- Watch non-follower reach. Instagram Insights splits accounts reached into followers and non-followers. That one number tells you whether you reached new customers or only the people who already knew you.
Want someone to do the first pass for you? Our free Breakdown measures your recent Reels against your own median and names the first thing we would change.
Frequently asked questions
Why are my Reels not getting views?
Start with eligibility. Instagram only recommends public accounts, makes watermarked, low-resolution and already-posted Reels less visible, and will not recommend a Reel over three minutes. Account Status shows whether your account has been flagged. If those are clean, the opening is not holding strangers in the small first audience Instagram tests every Reel on.
Can you get more views on a Reel after posting it?
Not much, honestly. Do not delete it and upload the same file again, because Instagram says it makes Reels that were already posted less visible. If you post it as a Trial Reel instead, Instagram can share it with your followers automatically when it does well in its first 72 hours. The real lever after posting is the next Reel.
Should a business buy views for its Reels?
No. Meta's spam policy (read October 19, 2026) prohibits buying, selling or exchanging engagement. And the Reels ranking Instagram describes leans on whether people reshare, watch to the end and like, so a bigger view counter on its own is not what gets rewarded.
Do hashtags help Reels get more views?
Instagram's recommendation guide mentions hashtags only under Search, and says to put keywords and hashtags in the caption rather than the comments. Treat them as labels that help people find the video, not a way to push it to strangers. The opening does that.
How long should a Reel be to get more views?
Under three minutes, because Instagram says longer Reels are not eligible for recommendation. Our dataset only has exact lengths for 4 of the 120 Instagram Reels, so we will not give you a number from it. We timed 116 TikToks instead, and the answer there was that length barely mattered.
Do Trial Reels hurt your account?
Instagram built them so they should not. A Trial Reel is shown to non-followers first, stays out of your followers' Feed and Reels tab, and does not appear on your grid unless you later share it with everyone. That makes it the safest place to test an opening you are unsure about.