What the data actually shows
You post a nice graphic, it gets a few likes from people who already follow you, and you conclude Instagram "doesn't really do much" for the clinic. It is worth separating what those likes actually measure from what reach measures, and the problem isn't your clinic. It's the format.
Here is the part almost nobody checks. Open your own Instagram, go to your reels tab, and compare the view count on a reel to the like count under it. For most clinics those two numbers are not close. A reel sitting on a handful of likes has often been watched by hundreds or thousands of people. The likes came from the followers you already have. The views came from people who have never heard of you.
That gap is the whole story. A reel with a handful of likes looks like it flopped. It may have been the single widest piece of reach your clinic got that month. If you only look at the like count, you will never know it happened, and you will conclude that reels do not work for you.
A like mostly comes from someone who already follows you. They saw your post because they chose to, at some point, and Instagram keeps showing them your feed. A view on a reel is a completely different signal. Instagram actively pushes reels into the Explore tab and the Reels feed of people who have never heard of your clinic, based on whether the video holds attention in the first couple of seconds.
That's why a static graphic and a reel can come from the same account, same day, similar effort, and land in front of two entirely different crowds. The graphic reaches the people who already know you. The reel is the one shown to the person scrolling at 9pm who has never been a patient and doesn't yet know your clinic exists.
A handful of likes tells you how your existing followers felt about a post. It tells you nothing about how many new people saw it.
It's an easy trap. A static graphic that pulls a decent number of likes feels like a win, because the number is right there under the post. A reel that pulls only a few likes feels like a dud, so a lot of clinics quietly stop posting them and go back to graphics, which is exactly backwards. The graphic may have been seen by little more than your existing follower list. The reel may have been the only post that month that reached someone who isn't a patient yet.
Likes are the number clinics watch because it's the number Instagram puts in front of your face. Reach, the count of people who actually saw the video, is the number that has any relationship to new patients walking in the door. It's just buried a tap deeper, in the post's own insights, so almost nobody checks it.
The honest conclusion isn't "reels are magic." It's that likes are the wrong number to judge your content by, and most clinics have never seen the number that actually matters.
We'll build one free sample reel for your clinic so you can see the difference for yourself, no cost, no obligation. If a short video from your own content can do what these numbers suggest, a steady month of them is worth having done for you.
Get a free sample reel See the full offer for clinics, or email hello@reelmonth.com.au.