3 Reasons To Design a Cover for Your Reels in Canva
Instagram Reels… love ‘em or hate ‘em, as a small business owner, brand, or content creator… you kind of HAVE to have them in your strategy right now on Instagram.
Once you have created a Reel, there is an important step that I see most people miss out on. A feature that you could potentially leverage to enhance your overall presence on Instagram: REELS COVERS!
Now, I am sure you have heard a number of different opinions and thoughts from Instagram “experts” out there on how to use this feature on Instagram…
… “don’t use a cover, it minimizes your reach!”
… “only use a cover directly from your video!”
… “make sure you have a beautiful picture with no text as your cover!”
… “uh… you don’t need a cover, it’s pointless!”
No matter what you have heard, you may feel a bit confused about how to approach using Reels covers since everything seems to be SO contradicting all over social media and the internet.
But my approach… is a bit more strategic in nature.
It isn’t based on the latest and greatest Instagram “hack” or based on a rumor. I have 3 very specific reasons why I choose to design Reels Covers inside of Canva for all of the Reels I post on Instagram!
Number One: Create a Cohesive Instagram Feed
Now, we aren’t aiming for the perfect 2016 puzzle grid here anymore. Your Reels covers aren’t supposed to be perfect. We just want to aim for a bit of consistency on Instagram. Why you might ask??
When someone lands on your profile, and scrolls over to your Reels, they are visually going to be able to see who you are as a brand or creator in one glance. If you have Reels Covers that aren’t consistent or don’t match your brand, it will be hard for that potential new follower to recognize your account or give them a reason to follow.
For example, on my Instagram profile, you will notice that all of my Reels covers might look a little different from each other, but you can tell by the gradient backgrounds and pastel color palette, my brand is instantly recognizable.
While you won’t see the Reels cover as my Reels pop up in your feed, creating Reels covers is still important when people consume your content directly from your profile!
Number Two: Makes Reels Bingeable
When creating a Reels cover, by adding big, legible, and high-contrast text, you are making it much easier for your followers (and potential followers) to read what your Reel is all about. This will entice them to binge-watch content based on their needs or get an idea of what they want to watch first.
You can leverage this in a few different ways:
Create a specific design for a Reels series you intend to create. For example, I would create a series called “My 10 favorite Canva fonts.” I would have a Reel cover that is cohesive across the series so someone could easily distinguish those Reels and consume them in order
Use large text as a hook or headline to draw your audience in and allow them to quickly find a video of yours that answers one of their questions, catches their attention, or encourages them to take further action
If you have 5 content pillars, create 5 different Reels cover designs that correlate with that particular content pillar. It will be easy to recognize what the Reel is about based on the design so your audience can binge-watch content within that particular content category.
Number Three: Easy to Batch Create
And of course, the main reason to use Canva to create your Reels covers… BATCHING!!
Yes, there are a ton of different ways you can create covers for your Instagram Reels. Many different apps. Inside of Instagram itself. But the priority here is to make content creation quick, easy, and on brand. Creating covers inside Canva can help with ALL of those problems.
There are so many features inside Canva that make this process even easier: folder organization, team templates, one-click color, text changes, and so much more!
Video Tutorial : How to Batch Create Reels Covers in Canva
And - if you want to save even more time you can check out some of our Canva Templates that you can customize with your branding for your Instagram Reels Covers!
P.S. If you are a member of Your Template Club, you can find all of these templates when you log in to the portal.
don’t want to design AN INSTAGRAM REELS COVER all on your own??
You can grab our favorite Reels Canva templates inside of the shop that you can customize for your business or brand to create a cohesive look in your Instagram feed.
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Manu Muraro is the founder of Your Social Team, an Instagram training membership and template shop that help social media managers and Instagram-savvy small business owners to grow engagement and sales using Instagram and content marketing, without the overwhelm. Born and raised in Brazil, Manu moved to the U.S. in 2000 right out of college to work for Cartoon Network, where she made an award winning career in creative and strategy. In 2021, Manu started Your Template Club, a Canva template subscription service to help social media professionals and Canva-savvy business owners to create content that performs on Instagram, add more Instagram features into their strategy, such as Instagram Lives and Reels, and save time.