Scrolling through your Instagram feed, you may have noticed posts with multiple images—a friend’s vacation photos, before-and-after shots of an organized closet, a photoshoot from a cooking magazine—or you may have even made your own multi-image posts before. Called carousel posts, the ability to share sets of images together can be a very powerful tool in your social media strategy.
There are many benefits to creating a carousel post for your business or organization. Instagram allows up to 10 photos and videos (or a combination of both) in each post that your followers can swipe, tap or click through. By combining your images or videos into one post, you avoid annoying your followers by flooding their feeds with individual posts from your company – that’s a quick way to get unfollowed.
Additionally, like a regular ad on Instagram, making your carousel post a series of ads allows you to include a call to action (CTA), providing a link to a specific landing page on your website based on which CTA was used and on which ad it was featured. Some CTAs include “Shop Now,” “Learn More,” “Sign Up,” “Download,” “Watch More,” “Contract Us,” “Donate Now,” “Get a Quote,” “Send Message,” “Listen Now” and “Subscribe.” If you’ve created a regular carousel post instead of an ad, you can still direct people to a specific URL by adding a link to a mobile-optimized landing page in your Instagram bio (instead of your company’s main website) using a service such as linkin.bio, Linktree or Feedlink. The landing page will resemble your Instagram feed, where each image is linked to a specific URL – this allows you to share multiple links per post, which is very helpful on a platform that doesn’t allow for clickable links in post descriptions.
So, what can you use a carousel post or ad for? Virtually any content fits the format, including (but not limited to):
A case study or white paper, broken down into bite-size pieces
Excerpts from an article or blog you wrote
Photos and details of how a project is progressing
Repurposed PowerPoint presentations
Step-by-step guides or tutorials
Customer reviews or client testimonials
A showcase of your company’s services or products
Employee/member spotlights
Webinar recaps
Before-and-afters
There are many reasons to consider creating carousel posts: tell a multi-part story, reach multiple audiences with targeted content on each slide, or you can even build intrigue in the slides leading up to an exciting announcement on the final slide. Further, according to Hootsuite, carousel posts get 1.4 times more reach and 3.1 times more engagement than regular posts on Instagram. Whether it’s a bunch of static images or an artistic design that continuously flows from slide to slide, carousel posts can help you achieve your marketing goals on Instagram.
Want to know how to get started with your own Instagram carousel posts? Reach out to AOE today.
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