Instagram Experiments with Audience Feedback for Unpublished Reels Clips

Instagram’s trying out some new options to enable creators to get feedback on their Reels clips before they post them to the public, with the capacity to share draft Reels with friends, and a means to test your Reels concepts with a smaller audience.

First off, on trial Reels, some IG users are now being prompted to send a preview of their in-progress Reels to friends in the app to get their input on their latest creation.

As you can see in this example, posted by Jose Rodriguez, some Reels creators are being shown a new pop-up which alerts them to the feature in the Reels creation flow.

The pop-up reads:

“Send to friends to get their thoughts before you post it. No one can comment on or share your preview. A draft will also be saved that you can access anytime.”

That’ll provide a simple means to get a second opinion on your latest Reels opus before posting, which could give you the extra assurance that you need to go live.

Or, you know, torpedo your idea before you embarrass yourself.

Ideally, it’s less of the latter, but it could be a helpful way to get additional feedback on your Reels concepts before sending them out to everybody.

Instagram’s also testing another Reels testing feature, which would enable you to share your Reels with a selection of non-followers before posting.

As you can see in this example, posted by app researcher Alessandro Paluzzi, the option would enable you to test your Reel with some viewers, without publishing it officially.

That could provide another means to gather feedback on your concepts, and cancel not-so-great ideas before broader exposure.

It’s interesting to see IG moving into audience sampling for Reels clips, as a means to improve content quality, while also, potentially, getting more people posting by giving them a means to gather feedback before public sharing.

Both could have varying value, though Instagram hasn’t confirmed that either will get a broader roll out at this stage.