Your customers want a visual experience Brands like Letterfolk use Instagram carousels to engage followers with themed images. Since October 2010, Instagram has offered users easy-to-use tools for sharing the most important parts of their days. And what better way to tell your brand’s story than to show off a catalog? You want people to want your products. So, use a carousel to show your customers what their lives and homes might look like if they had your product. Don’t underestimate the hashtag You are tapping into the latent potential of shared storytelling and connection. Your success on Instagram’s platform will be determined by what you show, when you show it, how it is arranged, and who it is directed to. Carousels can work any way you’d like. Conclusion I’ve given you ten solid ideas on how to begin crafting great, organic content with Instagram carousels. How do you use Instagram carousels to engage your audience?
Visual content is dominating the social media landscape.
Adweek cited a study last year with a sample size of 300 marketers, where 53% of participants indicated 91-100% of their published content as visual content. This trend is rising.
It’s safe to say that visual content drives engagement harder (and faster) than any other form of digital content.
And it’s for this reason that Instagram continues to rise faster in popularity over any other social platform.
In fact, Instagram closed 2017 with 800 million users. Between April and September, it saw the addition of 100 million new users.
How did it jump by an extra 100 million users in under five months?
Simple.
People want to see things rather than read about them.
You can no longer afford to ignore the power of Instagram’s platform.
Instagram makes it easy to share vivid, often beautiful visual storytelling.
This is no more evident than with the addition of the multiple-image post, otherwise known as the Instagram carousel.
Your customers want a visual experience
Brands like Letterfolk use Instagram carousels to engage followers with themed images.
You can even use carousels to tell deeply personal stories about your brand’s core values.
Look at how Nike uses an Instagram carousel to celebrate the hard-earned victories of two athletes.
Can you blame people for wanting to spend more of their time there?
Nope!
Humans share the stories that give us the best experiences.
We laugh at something, and it feels good, so we remember that feeling and try to share it. This is why memes are so popular.
As they say: show, don’t tell.
Visual storytelling is the core of Instagram’s purpose.
Since October 2010, Instagram has offered users easy-to-use tools for sharing the most important parts of their days.
Users do this by showing.
Why would this matter to you when you’re focused on prospecting customers?
If they aren’t your customers right now, you want to capitalize on showing them why they should be.
Otherwise, you’re leaving money on the table.
Here’s the key takeaway:
It’s pivotal for you to start using Instagram to show, not tell, your strongest points of value to potential customers.
Images allow people to share and experience their stories more than with plain text.
That’s the key word: Experience.
This is how you prompt your customers to move down the funnel.
Top brands are moving in quickly
54% of marketers are already ahead of the curve.
This means that there might eventually be less real estate for your brand.
Luckily, Instagram is all about easily sharing creative content.
The platform is also becoming more friendly for advertisers.
Here’s a useful Adage report on how Instagram is now integrating carousel-style ads into its Stories platform.
In a few steps, Instagram carousels make the process of telling your brand story much snappier.
Use this feature for stringing together engaging, actionable, and compelling stories for your customers and prospects to latch onto.
Here are ten ways that you can do this immediately:
1. Teach your customers
Let’s say you have a product that might require some extra expertise.
It could be a product that calls for manual assembly or a specific technical process.
Or, it could be a product with hidden features that are commonly overlooked by customers.
Somehow, your documentation isn’t enough to fully translate the value of your product to your customer.
In October 2017, startup Teforia closed after failing to educate their customers on the best way to use their proprietary technology.
When your customers don’t understand how to use your product, they won’t see how it solves their problems. This equals lost sales.
After all, you want to be the hero who saves the day, don’t you?
Yes, of course, you do.
So, utilize each image as a step along the way with an Instagram carousel, giving your users value by making their lives easier.
Technical products deserve to be shown in a technical way.
For many toys and games, the assembly is part of the fun.
Remember that carousels are also used to illustrate the aesthetic appeal of your product.
2. Share something unique
In addition to teaching customers the proper way to use your product, you can teach them how something happens in the world.
They might be curious about how you craft your product.
Or they want to go on an adventure.
Instagram gives you the ability to fascinate your audience.
Carousel lets you show it on a step-by-step basis.
It may be something they won’t get the opportunity to see otherwise.
How do we know this works?
With carousels, Harley-Davidson captured the attention of 1.4 million men in Australia and New Zealand between the ages of 18-35 in 3 weeks.
Novelty is entertaining.
So, engage your audience’s curiosity.
Your brand does something interesting every day. Show your followers how it’s done.
3. Showcase the best moments of a past event
Your customer wants to be where the action is.
Relevance is what makes your content worth experiencing.
Events are especially powerful sources of relevance.
This is because they happen within a short period of time.
And they tend to drive tons of excitement.
Out of 1,000 respondents in the 2018 Eventbrite Pulse Report, 64% of organizers expect to increase event budget in 2018, while 76% expect to run additional events.
Visualize the Super Bowl if you want a great mental image.
There are different “Super Bowls” in each major industry.
This is because people want to engage with what’s happening right now, in relation to what they’re most interested in.
ESL One is an esports event where professional gamers compete for millions of dollars inside popular video games.
Dance music enthusiasts look forward to watching their favorite artists perform at Insomniac’s EDC Las Vegas every year.
Case in point:
People who care about your product want to know where interesting things related to your product are happening.
But the most important moments are easily missed.
Nobody wants to attend that game they’d been waiting six months for only to miss the winning goal over a restroom break.
Use the Instagram carousel feature to deliver a play-by-play.
Sometimes, event highlights are the most important content for fans.
Even when your followers are unable to attend your events, they still want to know what happened.
Carousels allow you to immortalize the exact moments that define your brand’s identity.
4. Highlight the importance of an upcoming event
If your brand is driving engagement through events, then certain days hold more value than others.
This is a given, right?
You want your customers to know when they should be paying the most attention to your brand.
Do this by using an Instagram carousel to mark a day on the calendar.
Is it the day that your brand is revealing a new product?
Is there a competition that you’re trying to boost attendance for?
Are you organizing your customers around an activity?
Remember, your customers want…
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