Booking Your Instagram Influencer Campaign: Reels vs. Stories

You’ve sourced. You’ve vetted. Now, it’s time to decide what content to book with those Instagram creators you’ve worked so hard to find.

Booking the right content deliverables—no matter what social platform—plays a huge role in the success of your campaign or program. If deliverables don’t align with your desired outcomes or the strengths of the influencer you’re partnering with, you could end up killing your campaign before you’ve even gotten started.

To book the right creator content for Instagram, you need to start from a strong foundation of goals and outcomes—and let this guide you into choosing the right deliverables and creators to partner with!

Define the goals for your campaign

Before booking anything with Instagram creators, you need to set clear goals for your campaign. Is your objective to drive sales, increase brand awareness, or to grow your following?

Setting clear key performance indicators (KPIs) will streamline the booking process and help you to book the right deliverables to accomplish these goals—and choose the right creator to carry them out.

The main content types used by influencers—Reels and Stories—are suited to different goals, despite both being video. So, it’s important to understand the nuances when booking creators on Instagram:

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Reels or in-feed content

• Reels are the commercials of the Instagram platform. Where Stories feel organic, Reels are  more polished and typically have higher production value. This also makes them the most flexible format for repurposing to other social or paid channels.

”If you're looking for organic content that you want to repost in your feed, or you're looking for brand awareness, then Instagram reels is really engaging. And then maybe it's a video that the paid team would want to use as an ad.”
_{Cristina Vintimilla, Senior Influencer Marketing Manager at Oura Ring.}

• Reels also allow creators to really lean into educational content and showcase their knowledge to audiences. For campaign moments where you really want that evergreen style, Reels are your best bet.
• It’s worth noting that Reels are a lot more expensive than Stories, and not as robust for direct-response because there’s no link functionality for captions. It’s usually better to start by booking Stories (3-4 frames) with a creator before exploring Reels, if direct response is what you’re looking for.

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Stories

• Instagram Stories are well-suited to KPIs oriented around growth, thanks to features like Stickers and Links. Stories are also more spontaneous and have lower production value, which makes them a more affordable deliverable than Reels.
• “You want to drive sales, you want to drive conversions. Instagram stories are really that place for high urgency, Strong CTAs, so that's where you're going to find those conversion volumes.” Korina Sanchez, Performance Marketing Manager at Chomps.
• For these reasons, Stories are the most widely-used deliverable when booking content on Instagram. Smaller brands who are aiming to boost conversions, or larger brands with ambitious direct-response KPIs, will see the most success using Stories over any other form of content.

So, which Instagram deliverables are best for driving conversions?

Overall, Instagram Stories offer the best placement for brands that have robust direct-response goals for influencer partnerships. Features such as stickers make it very easy for creators to add a link or referral code to drive traffic to your website. If brand awareness is more your goal, then feed posts and Reels offer a great way to produce educational content that your brand can repurpose across other channels.

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Leverage a creator’s strengths when setting IG deliverables

Now that you’ve set goals you’re probably asking the question: How can I choose the right creator for my Instagram campaign?

Different creators are going to excel at different types of IG content, just as different content placements favor different campaign or program goals. So, you should tailor your deliverables to fit their strengths or commonly-used formats, whether that’s Stories, Reels, or static posts, as Jonathan explains:

“We'll take a historical look at ultimately what's performed best for them in the past. What we found to be most effective in terms of ultimately getting to the performance that our clients are looking for.”
_{Jonathan Claydon, Chief Development Officer at Acceleration Partners.}

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Even within content formats, there will be distinct differences in execution by creators. One creator might leverage Stories to share product recommendations or reviews, while another only uses Stories for BTS content.

So, why does it make sense to book a creator for an on-camera Instagram Story when they typically do voiceover? They might feel uncomfortable appearing on camera, or just aren’t great at it. Either way, if this isn’t the content their audience is used to seeing, it’s unlikely to perform well for them (or your brand).

Aside from playing to their strengths, giving influencers creative freedom is only going to play well for your brand. Any IG creator worth their rate knows what will resonate with their followers (and has likely spent a LOT of time in their analytics figuring this out).

So, while it’s totally fine to provide guidelines, encourage creators to use their unique voice and style. Their unique qualities are why you want to work with them in the first pace—don't lose sight of that!

Whitelisting your Instagram content

“Being able to walk away knowing that I'm helping the paid media team get what they need, and then also knowing that if the brand is wanting to test whitelisting they have that: Everyone's covered!”
_{Kendall Dickieson, Head of Social and Influencer at Graza.}

Whitelisting Instagram content is a powerful strategy to maximize the reach and impact of the content you’re booking. Instagram Reels and Stories make very effective ad formats, due to their high engagement rates and visibility.

The best content for whitelisting is evergreen deliverables i.e. content that isn’t clearly seasonal or pertains to a specific promotion. This gives you more flexibility in how you can repurpose that content across channels or different times of year.

“So sometimes, you'll pay for an organic post that will just go on their Stories. But we'll even ask for alternate variations that could be used from a whitelisting only perspective…that flexibility allows you to spend more and have more creative variations.”
_{Ryan Waranauskas, Founder, Advisor, and Investor.}

When negotiating with creators, specify what content you want to whitelist and for how long. Ideally, you want 60-90 days to test the effectiveness of whitelisted content, though creators may push back on this. Be prepared to settle for a minimum of 30 days to ensure you have enough time to gather meaningful data.

For more on whitelisting, check out our dedicated best practices chapter!

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Keep long-term partnerships in mind when booking Instagram content

We’ve talked over and over in this guide about the value of long-term partnerships. So, as an influencer marketer, why should you focus on long-term partnerships with Instagram creators?

Committing to more than one series of Stories or Reels is a great show of faith in a creator that’s aligned with your brand. It avoids wasting valuable time signing yet another contract and negotiating terms when you already know that this is a creator you want to continue working with. Investing in building long-term relationships leads to more authentic and impactful collaborations. And not only that; it’s great for your budget, too!

“In order for you to scale your success, you want to try to lock in as low as rates as possible with these partners. Rebooking with them is going to continue that long-term partnership with them.”
_{Colleen Kelley, Director of Influencer Marketing & Brand Partnerships at ClearSTEM.}

Retaining those creators you’re vetted and sourced, rather than just adding more to onto the funnel, makes for more sustainable program growth that breeds better ROI. This also opens up opportunities for more ambitious Instagram partnership initiatives, like IG takeovers, collab posts. and Instagram Lives, which are better suited to long-term partnerships.

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Test and measure

Once you’ve booked several Instagram creators, it’s important to monitor the success of each campaign. Did it achieve your objectives? Did one format perform better with your audience than others? Are there particular days/times where content is getting more traction?

“We are very revenue driven on our end. I'm looking specifically at what did I pay a partner? What is the revenue that came back? Does it make sense?”
_{Lauren Maxwell, Director of Influencer Marketing at Dreamland Baby.}

Continuing to test the content you’re booking on Instagram means you can keep refining your strategy, which feeds directly into the types of creators you’re sourcing. For example, if you know that Instagram Stories perform particularly well with your audience, you can be very intentional in looking for creators that are experts in leveraging this format.

Ultimately, knowing what Instagram deliverables to book for your campaign or program should stem from your overall goals and the creators you are aiming to develop long-term partnerships with. Remember: A creator’s audience trusts their style of content much more than a transactional, one-off posts that feel like ads. Look for creators that align with your brand, but also leverage their strengths and expertise to select deliverables that are going to perform.

Let’s move onto booking content on our next platform: YouTube!