People love you when you provide some value to their lives through your Instagram content. The Instagram carousel is the best way to add value and increase engagement simultaneously. But to make your Carousel a follower magnet, you need to learn the art of carousel, which we will cover in this blog step by step.
What is Instagram Carousel?
Instagram carousel is a sequence of 2 to 20 slides laid out in a slider fashion that can be navigated by swiping left or right. Each slide can be a static image or a video, which allows us to add more information into a single post and let your audience engage with your content for longer.
How to post a carousel on Instagram?
Why is Carousel important?
Instagram Carousel is a complete bundle of slides that can include both images and videos. It gives you the flexibility to add 2 to 20 slides in one single post, which is fairly good to explain a long story in small parts.
Carousel gets more saves than a single static image post. The reason is that it wraps up a lot of valuable information that people intend to bookmark.
The hybrid characteristic of a carousel lets you play with both images and videos together to make the post even more valuable and shareable.
The Art of Carousel in Simple Steps
Instagram carousel certainly adds value, but it's boring. Yes. You heard it right. It's like a boring page of a book that doesn't bring interest to readers. In the art of carousel, we will learn some simple steps that will transform your boring carousel into a follower magnet.
To make this art easier to follow, we divide it into 5 simple steps mentioned here:
- Start Big and Beautiful
- Divide and Rule
- Unwrap Surprises
- Less is More
- Emotional Reminder
These might sound like a spell of a magician, but it will make more sense when you see it in action. We will go into each step deeply to make sure you don't miss the real juice.
1. Start Big and Beautiful
The first slide of your carousel is your win and lose game. It's like tossing a coin to decide the winner of the game without even playing the game. If they won't stop and read the first slide, they will never swipe left to see other slides of the carousel.
That's why it's necessary to start with a big and beautiful attention-grabbing first slide. You can choose an unusual visual image, any abstract, a bright color contrast, a famous face, etc., to be your first slide.
In terms of marketing, it's called a hook. As the name suggests, it hooks up the audience's attention to your carousel so they can read further. Here are some interesting hooks you can try in your next viral carousel post:
- AI Unusual Images
- Celebrity faces
- Bold Quotes
- High Contrast colors
- Trending News Headlines
- Curiosity-building Headings
- Challenge and Quiz
- Simple animations
These are some of the successfully tested hooks to increase engagement on your Carousel. You can try some or all of them to grab the attention of scrollers.
2. Divide and Rule
The most important reason why your carousel fails to get more likes, saves, and shares is that you put a lot of data for others to understand and remember. An easy fix is to divide and rule.
Turn your long story into small chunks and make a new carousel for each chunk of information. You are not limited to just posting one carousel a day, so it's better to post 3 a day on different granular topics of one single topic.
For example
If you create content for skin care, then you can divide your weekdays for different skin problems, like Monday can be for Acne, Tuesday for Scars, Wednesday for wrinkles, and so on.
Each day, you choose a subtopic inside that main topic and create a carousel on it. This way, you can go deeper into a topic without overwhelming the audience with a lot of info in one carousel.
3. Unwrap Surprises
Suppose someone decided to stop at your Carousel because your first slide is attractive, but he finds the next slide boring, then he will back off without sliding all the way to the end. That's why it's necessary to unwrap new surprises with each slide to keep the readers' adrenaline pumping in.
Hooking up readers with new surprises increases engagement percentage on your Carousel, signaling Instagram to show it more interested audience. Also, if they reach the end of the carousel, they might take action like Saving, sharing, or liking your post.
Types of Carousel Surprises:
Hybrid Carousel
Creating a hybrid carousel by mixing static images with videos can be a great way to keep the interest of viewers in your Carousel. You can add it alternately or in any order you like. Just keep in mind that there should not be a big gap between a static slide and a video slide.
Stunning Visuals
Just like your first slide, including stunning, eye-catching visuals in other slides will hook your audience throughout the slides. You can try any ideas discussed previously to make your Carousel swipe-friendly.
Number Tricks
When a person slides through the carousel and he doesn't know how long this carousel is, it will make him anxious, and he might give up in the middle. Numbering your slides makes them aware of how many slides they need to read. If it's a small number, they will be encouraged to finish it.
Surprise Tips
Add a last or second last slide with a surprise tip or bonus tips, and mention in the second slide that you have a bonus Tip at the last slide. It will create a suspension and bring curiosity to slide through each slide to get the bonus.
QnA slides
Ask a question on the second slide, give the answer with an explanation in the next slide will force them to slide to check the answer. This could be alternate slides of Q&A or questions in all slides and answers at the last one..
4. Less is More
Overwhelming your audience with a lot of information doesn't make your carousel valuable for them. Keep it concise and easily consumable. To make a carousel highly engaging, remember the rule "Less is More".
On each slide, choose your words carefully. Keep your caption to a maximum of 2 lines. If you want to write a longer story, then divide it into multiple slides.
After completing your carousel, try to slide through them to check if you can consume it within 30 seconds. If not, you need to adjust your content to make it easier to comprehend within seconds.
Cut the crap like saying Hi, how are you, or any unnecessary words in the carousel. The more they absorb the content in less time, the better and more valuable it becomes.
5. Emotional CTA reminder
For sure, you don't just want them to read your carousel and leave. The goal is to increase followers, increase likes, and bring more saves and shares. These actions can only be possible if you give them an Emotional CTA reminder. But why emotional?
The reason is that if you just put a CTA like "Follow for more updates". It doesn't work at all. There is only a 2-3% chance that they will take action. You should make the CTA interesting. Some of the good CTA ideas are as follows :
- Quote+CTA
- A question Comment down Cta
- Save it for Later + Fomo
- Share CTA + To the person you relate to
- Follow + Upcoming Content
- Follow + Next Sequel of Content
- Follow + Funny quote
- Like + Target like number
- Like + Giveaway
- Like + Senti quotes
These are some working combinations of CTA with users' emotions attached to it. You can try based on your content and the action you want them to take.
Wrapping Up
A carousel can be helpful to create a deeper connection with your audience by engaging them in your story. Unlike single static posts and reels, carousels are considered more valuable as they contain well-researched content, entertainment combos, or Useful saving tips.
Through this blog, we have explained how you can make your Instagram carousel more interesting to your audience so they will not just read it completely but also take actions like sharing, following, saving, etc. If you want to add new tips and suggestions to this blog, please comment below.