A case study : Phased approach to driving Reels production on Facebook

How it all started

I joined Meta as a product manager for Music in 2022 with a goal of engaging young adults on the platform using premium music videos. As a music enthusiast myself, I was excited about the prospect of working on a fun product serving billions of users across the world, with an opportunity to partner with one of the finest artists in the music industry. 

However, in another world, seismic shifts were happening in the social media industry. TikTok was emerging as a strong competitor, with short form videos(SFV) becoming viral with young adults. We quickly realized that Premium music videos is not the right strategy to draw young adults on platform, our strategy had to shift and this led to my reincarnation as product manager for Reels with a goal of driving Reels production on Facebook (FB).

In this article, I will share the phased approach we took to driving reels production on FB, learnings gained along the way with inflection points to create a thriving reels ecosystem that engages billions of people across the world.

STAGE 1: The cold start problem

Before the short form videos (SFV) revolution, FB content inventory primarily consisted of photo posts and long form video content. We didn’t have sufficient reel inventory on the platform which meant there were no audiences & in absence of audiences creators didn’t feel motivated to produce reels content on FB. To get around this cold start problem, we had to find ways to seed initial Reels content on FB.

What we did

1. Encouraged cross posting of Reels from Instagram to Facebook: Fortunately, as Meta we could tap into strengths of our sister platform- Instagram (IG). IG had a strong Reels inventory that we could tap into to seed initial content on Facebook. We built in-product upsells on Instagram encouraging creators to connect their IG account to FB and enable cross posting. 
2. Incentivized creators to produce Reels on FB by paying bonus when their reels got 1000  views over a 30 day period. This helped spike excitement with creators to start creating reels on FB!

What we learned

1. Cross posted content from IG didn’t perform as well on FB. On doing further analysis, we uncovered this was  primarily because FB has a distinct user base with different interests & content preferences compared to IG. Furthermore,  audiences perceived cross posted content as “inauthentic” and hence didn’t engage with it, further impacting the  performance of cross posted reels on FB.
2. While the bonus program was a good short term solution for the cold start problem, it was not sustainable in the long term. Creators stopped creating content once they maxed out their bonus payouts and we could not pay bonuses forever.

Inflection point: “We realized, in order to create a sustainable reels ecosystem on FB, we had to reduce our reliance on cross-posted content & bonus programs; instead focus on driving organic production, that happens natively on FB”

STAGE 2: The organic production problem

As we went to white board with a brand new problem, in order to come up with a solid game plan –  it was important to break down our user base into segments, prioritize a segment based on opportunity size and then deeply understand the needs of that niche segment. Based on data & user experience research (UXR) analysis, we uncovered that our biggest opportunity lies with content creators who are already active on the platform producing other content formats (photo posts, long form videos, stories etc.) vs activating new creators on FB. User experience research (UXR) identified lack of expertise & friction in producing reels content as the biggest pain point for this segment. This made sense, as this segment was used to producing stories/photos/long form content that required a very different muscle & skill than short form videos. We had to find ways to help this segment overcome the hump and onboard them to Reels.

What we did

1. Educate & inspire
   • As a first step, we built educational tips in FB creator tools (proDash, Meta Business Suite etc.) that  educated creators on best practices & tips for creating Reels e.g. add music to make Reel more engaging, add timed text to tell a story etc.  
   • We inspired creators with ideas for their next Reel via in product inspiration upsells e.g. create reel on trending moment #metgala, these reels are trending in your #fitness niche. We also identified a subset of creators as Reels champions and used their success stories with Reels to inspire other creators
2. Tools to re-purpose other content formats into Reels: This segment had plenty of inventory in other formats that could be easily repurposed to Reels. This was a great way to ease them into Reels format with minimal overhead. We built tools that enabled creators to bulk import long form videos and split them into multiple SFV and upsells to convert photo posts into Reels with a single click.
3. Tools to produce quality Reels on platform:  To reduce friction in producing quality reels, we built tools that reduced editing time e.g. auto sync Reels to music, auto crop, auto tune features
4. Gamified Reels creation: This was a fresh idea we wanted to test with this segment. By gamifying reels creation, we could take away some of the stress with creating reels and actually make it fun! We introduced badges like rising creator, reels ninja with perks like distribution boosts, exclusive sticker packs when creators hit important milestones in their reels creation journey

What we learned

1. With our tactics, we saw a spike in Reels production, but resulting Reels were not high quality. We did a manual audit of Reels and discovered that we were primarily activating smaller, low intent creators who are very early in their creation journey (<1k followers)  who did not produce quality content. To address this, we experimented by gating our product experiences to bigger creators with 10k+ followers. However, we failed to see production gains from this segment.
2. We also hoped that creators use our video tools to produce original reels but the low intent users we were activating,  primarily repurposed their photo/stories content and did not use tools to produce original content 
3. Gamification was effective in driving original reels production. These Reels were good quality as well but the effect was temporary. Creators quickly fell back to old production habits after they exhausted gamification perks.
4. We also observed negative feedback from our re-purpose other content format to reels upsells. We addressed this by rate limiting our upsells i.e. throttle  the upsell for a certain time period  if the user didn’t engage with the upsell more than twice

Inflection point: “We cared not just about driving reels production but quality reels production. To accomplish this, we had to deepen our focus to understand unique needs of bigger creators and drive quality production with this segment”

STAGE 3: The ROI problem

Back on the drawing board yet again, we conducted user experience research (UXR) to understand the motivations of bigger creators. We learnt that this segment was already producing reels on other platforms like IG, TikTok and used pro-editing tools like Canva, Capcut to edit reels. Their primary motivation for producing content on FB was to get more eyeballs aka more reach & engagement for their content; however despite being hugely successful on other platforms they didn’t find  similar success for their content on FB. In order to drive reels production from these bigger creators, we had to show them the ROI for their content on FB, and hence became our  imminent focus.

What we did

1. We built tools to improve discoverability of creator content.
   • We built Playlists that enabled creators to package their Reels into themes and hence improved discovery with consumers looking to deep dive into specific interest areas
   • We also built Collaborations that enabled creators to collaborate with other creators, as a result they could tap into more audiences and scale reach of their content. We built auto dubbing that enabled creators to dub their content into multiple languages and increase reach with global audiences
   • We built auto suggested hashtags and features to reshare content in groups to increase reach with interest based audiences
2. We built tools to improve engagement on creator ontent. E.g.Polls feature  to create polls “what should I create next” to encourage participation & conversations with audiences which leads to more reach as a second order effect

What we learned

1. Creators who adopted our tools, did see an increase in reach & engagement for their content. This was a proof point that our strategy was sound and we are headed in the right direction. However, for higher ROI to translate to behavior changes, we have to observe effects over a longer time period
2. For us to see topline impact on Reels production, we had to scale the adoption of our Tools. 

Final thoughts 

Based on learnings above, we are now working on growing adoption of our tools by investing in upsells and further improving usability. We also established a long term holdout to observe effects of our work over an extended time period. While the impact this work will unlock remains to be seen but as it stands today, approx 140 million Reels are produced on FB and as we celebrate the success of FB Reels, I remind myself that this is just a milestone in our ongoing journey. User behaviors will continue to shift, and new trends will continue to emerge, and when that happens, as product managers we should be nimble in adapting & pivoting if needed.

The question on everyone's mind: what's next? Will there be a Stage 4? Probably and I am certain AI will play a significant role in shaping the future stages for Reels. I hope you learned a thing or two from my experience working on a company priority, alongside some of the best minds at Meta!

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