Thousands of Aussie SMEs flock to Instagram reels through e-commerce trend #bizreels2024

Salté Designs has been busy on Instagram reels.

On Thursday, founder Sharna Hupfeld posted a reel showcasing the online boutique’s summery dresses.

On Wednesday, it was a video discussing water usage in the creation of denim jeans.

Tuesday brought an archival clip of the boutique’s logo, lovingly hand-painted on a black canvas.

The day before that, a ‘get-ready-with-me’ reel following her morning as a busy entrepreneur.

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A post shared by Salté Designs (@salte_designs)

It is hard to miss the preceding clip, playfully discussing the name Salté Designs.

“My mum suggested I call my business ‘Shart’,” Hupfeld said, inserting a fart noise in the background for emphasis.

Before that, the last reel posted by Salté Designs arrived on December 20. The account’s reel posts are sporadic before then.

As Australian small businesses dive headlong into 2024, it appears Salté Designs’ new, daily reels schedule is not just the result of new year enthusiasm.

Rather, every new reel bears the hashtag #bizreels2024 — a hashtag created by Hero Packaging CEO and e-commerce advisor Anaita Sarkar, and FAYT The Label founder Brittney Saunders.

This week, the pair challenged Australian SMEs to post an Instagram reel every day for 28 days, each with the hashtag #bizreels2024.

The challenge appears to be spreading, with nearly 1,700 individual reels now bearing the hashtag.

Taking to LinkedIn, Sarkar said more than 3,300 small businesses across Australia are slated to take part.

Reels maturing as small business outreach tool

Originally viewed as a copycat version of the ascendant TikTok, reels burst onto social media feeds in mid-2020.

Since then, it has largely shaken off its perceived overlap with TikTok to become a cornerstone of the Instagram experience — and a major tool for brand outreach.

Digital marketing leaders now trumpet short-form videos as a necessity for many consumer-facing ventures, allowing founders to build personal engagement with fans.

“Creating content every day for years has benefited all my businesses,” Sarkar said on LinkedIn.

“In fact, last week I posted a video for Hero Packaging that took me one minute to create and it generated 8,900 likes, 10,000 new followers, and a huge day of sales.”

The challenge appears to target small business owners who may traditionally shy away from the camera, and the audiences they could stand to acquire.

Some videos with the #bizreels2024 hashtag address this challenge directly.

Attention-grabbing numbers in early days

With consumer spending in many sectors likely to contract through 2024, e-commerce leaders consider storytelling and community-building some of the strongest bulwarks against declining sales.

The #bizreels2024 challenge is still only a few days old, so it is too early to tell if every business that takes part will face an appreciable increase in sales, social media impressions, and follower counts.

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A post shared by Anaita Sarkar | Marketing & Business Tips (@sellanythingonline)

For now, however, Sarkar is celebrating what she mused could be the “biggest Instagram challenge in Australia” for businesses.

And Salté Designs is likely cooking up a new reel, rounding out the first few days of the all-welcoming trend.