Get on-board the Instagram Carousel ride and engage more followers with every post!
Get on the Instagram Carousel post ride!
If you haven't heard about Carousel posts - it's time you learned about them and added them to your ‘must-do-on-Instagram’ list!
From everything we know today, Carousel posts beat single image and single video posts in views, especially in accounts of less than 5K followers.
What are Carousel posts?
So what are Carousel posts? These are multiple images or videos (maximum 10 of each) or a combination of both – revolving around a single theme - posted together and can be viewed with a flick of your finger.
This is an incredible way to showcase – for instance - a product line in different colors and patterns or a fashion line in styles and on different body types, or share and show off a skill or a How To. How To Carousel posts are very popular and get great view numbers!
What’s the magic behind Carousel posts?
To be effective a Carousel post must have a uniform message, eye-catching graphics, background colors and fonts, great formatting and a valuable message that will (1) keep followers flipping from image to image in the post and (2) engage new viewers with interesting content and entice them to follow you.
How to create a Carousel post
Here are the 4 initial planning/work stages:
(1) Take a theme that is related to your business.
(2) Develop the theme into multiple steps/points of view/images (up to 10) that translate into multiple post images (or videos – which is more involved).
(3) Design and create these multiple images with a uniform graphic look & feel: fonts, background colors, branding and the like.
(4) Add a CTA (Call to Action) on the final image. This should include a contact us (remember there are no links in the posts), as well as a request to Like, Comment, Send and Save with or without a graphic reminder using the Instagram icons.
Here are the 3 easy steps to Carousel posting:
(1) Create a post in Instagram and click 'SELECT MULTIPLE' immediately (you cannot do this after the fact!) and upload all the images for this Carousel.
(2) Now add all the usual: caption, tag, location, auto shares.
(3) Post.
A few important points to know about Carousel posts
How can you differentiate a single image post from a Carousel post? Carousel posts contain little dots on the bottom center of the images (number of dots correspond to the number of image pages).
Want to learn how to create industry-specific Carousel posts? Search for similar-industry accounts that use Carousel posts. Click the Save button (see Instagram icons above) and review and learn from them at your leisure; you should also learn from anyone who provides interesting and memorable Carousel posts.
One last word: Learn from my mistakes! Don't ever consider doing a themed series of one-a-day posts on a topic. This works very well in Facebook; but is a terrible idea in Instagram!
Instagram's Carousel posts are a great way to showcase your products, fashion lines, How Tos and so much more! Want to talk about your Instagram marketing presence? Contact us today!
Images credit: Image by eslfuntaiwan & Image by Erich Westendarp from Pixabay
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