Reels for Government and Nonprofits
Ignite connection and inspire action for your organization with Reels.
Reels are short videos that you can create on Facebook and Instagram to express your organization’s cause.
Why Reels
Reels ignite connection.
Reels can help you spread awareness about your organization and engage your community. They are also a great way to inspire people who have already connected with you or your organization.
Reels amplify your policies, programs and values.
Create Reels that show off your organization's identity, what you stand for and how it will positively impact your community.
Reels are culturally relevant.
Reels allow organizations to participate in the broader shift to short form video, helping to spark valuable interactions with more than half of the world's population.1
Reels can spark action.
Get people to participate, share, have conversations and take action with Reels.
Reels ads can help supercharge results.
Reels ads can drive results against brand and direct response goals by plugging into the powerhouse performance marketing ecosystem of Meta—built on world-class AI—amplifying outcomes for your organization.
95%
of people surveyed have shared
Reels with friends or family2
85%
of people surveyed say they have followed an organization after watching Reels3
Getting started
When you build Reels using the creative essentials — vertical video (9:16) with audio, in the safe zone — they’re even more engaging for your audience. And you likely already have these assets on hand!
- Build 9:16 video to make your video captivating. Reels is a full-screen, immersive video format. To help your creative feel at home here, lead with vertical video.
- Build with the safe zone in mind so that so that your messages are clear. Work within the safe zone so your text sticker overlays, calls to action or key messages aren’t obscured by the Reels user interface. Keep the bottom 35% of your 9:16 creative free of text, logos, and other key elements.
- Build with audio to make your Reels entertaining. Audio – whether that's music, voiceover or sound effects – is a key driver of engagement and entertainment on Reels. In fact, over 75% of Reels plays per day on Instagram are viewed with sound on. Tap into our Sound Collection to explore free audio and sounds.
There isn’t just one way to Reel. Reels can be informative, inspiring or thought provoking. They do have one thing in common–what we call the language of Reels--a style that’s entertaining, digestible and relatable.
- Make it entertaining: Great Reels provoke an emotional response through a mix of music, visual effects and storytelling. They can entertain us by sharing something useful, making us smile or satisfying our curiosity. Create a space your supporters want to turn to learn more about a cause they care about.
- Make it relatable: Great Reels are relatable because they tell stories we recognize, feature people we can relate to and use a visual tone and set of values. Foster empathy with your audience by conveying your passion for your cause or organization.
- Make it digestible: Great Reels respect the limited time their audiences have by being direct, immediate and easy to understand. Focus on the pace of your Reels to ensure you’re capturing, maintaining and rewarding attention, including a voice over and captions to help tell the story.
This PDF outlines impactful best practices for Reels on Facebook and Instagram. Download the PDF here.
Taking your Reels to the next level
- Partner with creators.
- Consider working with creators as an authentic creative or production partner for building Reels and reaching new audiences who may care about your organization’s mission.
- Tap into Meta Business Partners.
- Meta Business Partners offer Reels templates that provide an easy way to develop new Reels assets that not only incorporate the creative essentials but also use advanced creative techniques.
- Measure the impact of Reels.
- Use Reels Insights: understand how your content is performing and what kind of Reels help you reach your community in order to fine tune your content strategy.
- You can utilize a conversion lift test or an A/B test to measure the impact of adding Reels to your mix of campaign assets.
- Amplify your Reels on Facebook and Instagram by running ad campaigns with Advantage+ placements or manually adding Reels placements.
Transparency on Reels
Advertisers who run ads about social issues, elections or politics that require a disclaimer are now able to run ads on Instagram and Facebook Reels.
Learn how to run social issue, electoral or political ads, including on Reels, here.
Advertisers must disclose whenever an ad about social issues, elections or politics contains a photorealistic image, video or realistic-sounding audio that was digitally created or altered in certain cases, including on Reels.
Learn about disclosure policies here.
FAQ
Commonly asked questions about Reels by governments, candidates and nonprofits.
- Reels are short, entertaining, immersive videos, up to 3 minutes, that can easily be created and watched on Instagram and Facebook. Reels ads (interstitial) on Instagram and Facebook are served in between organic Reels content as users scroll.
- Work within the safe zone so your text sticker overlays, calls to action or key messages aren’t obscured by the Reels user interface. If using a disclaimer, keep the bottom 40% of your 9:16 creative free of text, logos, and other key elements. If you are not using a disclaimer, we recommend to keep the bottom 35% of your creative free for Reels ads that do not have a disclaimer
- Our analysis of Reels ads found ads that violated the Reels safe zone—those that had key elements overlapped by the Reels UI—had a 28% lower click-through rate, on average, compared to those that did not violate the safe zone.
- To learn more, download the PDF.
- File type: MP4, MOV
- Recommended Ratio: 9:16
- Video settings: H.264 compression, square pixels, fixed frame rate, progressive scan and stereo AAC audio compression at 128 kbps+
- Resolution: At least 500 x 888 pixels
- Video sound: Optional, but strongly recommended
- Primary text: 72 characters before truncation
- Maximum file size: 4GB
- 99% of reels content is brand safe, measured by brand safety and suitability Meta Business Partners.6
- You can use our in app solutions to turn static assets as well as organic posts and videos into Reels ads.
- Yes, you can share Reels from Facebook to Instagram or from Instagram to Facebook.
- Download royalty-free audio from the Sound Collection to use in your creative. Sound Collection features a library of sounds created specifically for Reels. Simply search for 'Reels Sound' in the search bar to discover audio for different story types.
