How to Grow on Instagram Without Reels

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0:37Welcome to the Social Media Marketing Podcast, helping you navigate the social media jungle. And now, here is your host, Michael Stelzner. Hello, hello, hello. Thank you so much for joining me for the Social Media Marketing Podcast, brought to you by Social Media Examiner. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner, and this is the podcast for marketers and business owners who want more exposure, more leads, and more sales. Today, we're going to explore how to grow on Instagram without reels. Also, if you're new to this podcast, be sure to follow this show so you don't miss any of our future content. Let's now transition over to this week's guest.

1:12Helping you to simplify your social safari. Here is this week's expert guide. Today, we'll explore how to grow on Instagram without reels. My special guest is an Instagram strategist who helps female founders grow and sell with Instagram. She's the founder of Influence Marketing Studio. She's host of the Call Her Creator podcast. Caitlin Rhodes, welcome to the show. How are you doing today? I'm so excited, Michael. I'm super excited that you're here. So let's start with your story. How'd you get into Instagram? Yeah. So fun fact, and I told this to Michael like off camera, but I've been doing social media since like 2012.

1:53And one of the first ever like blogs and people I ever followed was Michael in the social media marketing, like examiner, all that stuff. So it's just full circle moment. So happy to be here. But I actually got into Instagram out of necessity. Okay. I grew up in a very small town. Maybe some of you guys can, you know, understand where I'm coming from, but small town, not really a big network. So I realized early on that social media was going to be that big thing that removed geography from the equation. So it doesn't matter where you live anymore. You can build a business from anywhere. So it's 2021.

2:27I had just had my second baby and I knew that I was ready to leave corporate. I wanted more freedom with my family. And so I had almost a decade of experience in social media marketing because I was a social media manager and public relations manager. So I quit my job and then reality hits, right? I remember thinking like, okay, how do I let everyone and their mom know that I exist and that I'm looking for clients? So the answer was pretty obvious to me. It was Instagram and Facebook at the time. So I committed, I am a really good student. I commit to the bit. I committed to showing up on Instagram every single day.

3:03And I became the very best student of that platform. I studied what made people stop scrolling and what content was performing well and what was working, what wasn't working anymore. And I learned that this little app could adapt to anything. And eventually, everything just started to click for me. I started posting reels and carousels kind of taken off with both of those formats just to see what would work for me. And my content just started taking off. I filled my client roster. I built a full service social media agency. And today I have a team of five. But I owe it all to Instagram from showing up on Instagram and talking about my one topic all the time built me this incredible business.

3:48Awesome. Love the story. So we're going to get into a lot of your philosophies on Instagram in a little bit, which might surprise some folks that are listening. But before we go there, I want to hear from your perspective, what is one of the biggest misconceptions that you think a lot of people believe to be true when it comes to growing on Instagram? Yeah, this is a big one. everyone thinks that you have to just become this full-time reels creator to grow on Instagram. And don't get me wrong because I love reels. I've posted a bunch of videos. They're my favorite, but they're not what has moved the needle for me.

4:24If I had to pick one content format, it's carrying my business right now. And that's carousels. They're just the unsung hero of Instagram. And if you think about it, like the thing with carousels is people have to stop and kind of swipe through them. If you're watching a reel, like you watch it and you keep scrolling. But with carousels, people spend more time on them. They save them. They send them to their friends. And Instagram loves that. Instagram loves content that keeps people on the platform longer. That's the goal at the end of all of that. So that's why you'll notice some of the biggest educators, personal brands, they've kind of shifted back towards carousel.

5:03I don't know if you've noticed, Michael, but I have. But they're easier to consume. They're easier to share, in my opinion. And they let you teach something in a really digestible way. And so I've been able to build my business, my following. I have over 217 ,000 followers because I leaned really heavily into that educational carousel type format. They've helped me attract dream clients. They've got me featured in Forbes, partnered with Meta. So if you're someone who's thinking like, I have to film myself talking today. No, you don't. I want to give you permission to stop putting that pressure on yourself.

5:38Your job isn't to become the internet's next viral reel creator. Your job is to create content that people can't help but save and share and come back to. Because at the end of the day, Instagram isn't just rewarding reels. They are rewarding attention. Now, Caitlin, there's some people listening right now that just aren't going to believe what you're telling them. So we're going to end up breaking this whole thing down as to how to go about doing this and all the structure and all the fun stuff. But just explain to people the benefits that you have achieved and your clients have achieved as a result of really dialing in the carousels angle.

6:14Yeah. Like tell us a little bit more about like maybe some of the unexpected consequences that came as a result of it and some of the freedoms that came from it as well. Yeah. So I think like a lot of people don't really understand how the algorithm works. And I kind of mentioned it before, but when you create a really good carousel, you have people stopping, spending time. They're studying that carousel. They're reading it. They're swiping to the next slide. They're going back to the others. when I truly utilized carousels and we'll get into the framework of what all I do to make a really good carousel.

6:48But when I really started taking carousels seriously and I wasn't just using them for a photo dump, but I was using them to hit a pain point, tell a story and kind of reel people into something, I started getting more conversions on my Instagram page. I didn't tell you this before, but I actually ended up building a six figure arm in my business from strictly posting carousels on Instagram. We have tried and tested templates that we've used on these different clients. It doesn't matter what niche they're in because we work with a lot of niches. Time and time again, if they use the format that we suggest and they follow it, it gets them seen, it gets them DMs, it gets them followers.

7:27Well, and one of the things that some segment of my audience is going to really resonate with is the idea that they do not have to show up on camera. I mean, this is kind of talk to me a little bit about that, right? Because this does like so many people with reels, pretty much it's about the camera and the selfie and the talking and all that. And a lot of people don't feel comfortable with that. This kind of frees people to get creative without getting themselves on camera. Does it not? Yeah. Like for me, example, like I like video, but I mean, for women, especially, we can't always be looking good to show up on camera, right?

8:02We got to do our makeup and our hair. And so we don't feel like we can always show up on camera. And what does that do? That makes it very hard for you to show up consistently online. And that's what they always say is consistency is what's going to grow you online. So I want people to just think like, okay, if I'm not strong at video or talking off the cup, unless you've been living under a rock, you've heard like there's this viral yap challenge going on right now. And the woman who put it on has done an amazing job at launching it. But she basically has said like, you have to show up and build authority by talking to camera.

8:37And it's just simply, it's not true. If your strong suit is not getting on camera, what is your strong suit? What will you be really good at and succeed at, maybe that might be writing or putting together graphic design with a carousel. And then you're able to stay more consistent and show up all the time. Then obviously that's going to work for you better than you thinking, oh, let me just try to do a reel this week. Oh, I don't feel like it. I don't feel confident enough. Oh, I just skipped posting altogether. I can already hear somebody who's driving a car right now said, that's me, sister.

9:11That's me, sister, because that's me too. And I'm telling you, like, I have the talent and I feel like I have the bubbly personality to show up on camera all the time, but I just don't want to, Michael. And there's other ways to do it. Also, I have kids. I have a team. I got a podcast I got to do. I can't always be doing video. Right. I love it. Okay. So thank you for setting that up. Is there any thing we need to be thinking about foundationally, you know, before we begin, let's just say, okay, Caitlin, you got me. I really want to learn how to do this. But before we begin, maybe there's some things we got to address.

9:48So what are those things? Yeah. So before we really like get them excited on how easy this is to do, I think the first step you need to do is one decide, okay, am I getting on social media to grow my social media following or am I getting on social media to make sales? So like have your one goal in mind in the beginning, you might not even have either of those. Maybe you just want to inspire someone today. So I think having some type of goal in mind before you start anything is what's going to help. And then if you have a little bit of Canva skills, I think that will help you. I know not everybody uses Canva.

10:24That's what we use here at the agency, but there's all kinds like Adobe is really great too. I know Michael had shown me some really cool things that AI can do for you as well. But you got to have a little bit of experience in graphic design to make a really good carousel. Well, let's also talk about static versus animated because I don't even think some people realize what the options are here. Yeah. So if you guys happen to be on Instagram and you're scrolling, there's typically two types of carousels that you're going to see. You're either going to see like an animated carousel or like a static carousel.

10:58What does that mean, Caitlin? Well, one of them is going to have some type of movement. Maybe you've got a video in the background with the text over top, or maybe you've got a very text heavy carousel, but you've got some little objects moving around. so that's what I mean whenever we're talking about you know animating versus static first can I back up for a second and talk about the visual before we get to yeah okay because sometimes I get so excited guys talking about this I skipped some steps okay real quick before you go any further folks like me I I'm gonna fully confess I am not on Instagram I am not on TikTok okay like I just don't go there I'm a LinkedIn Facebook and x guy because I'm a writer and that's just how So I'm asking the questions for some people who probably already know the answers to these questions.

11:41But so far, what we've heard you say is, hey, carousels, most people, at least from my mind, when I think of carousels, it's just a bunch of images that you're swiping through. But what you're saying is they can be a bunch of videos that you can swipe through. And you can have a whole bunch of these little videos that you carousel swipe through. And I feel like that was just really important for somebody out there to hear. Now, let's get into the visual side of things. just because like I had no idea that animated carousels were actually a bunch of little videos that you could swipe through. In my brain, there were a video with a bunch of sections in it that are animated, one big video.

12:15But really what we're talking about is a bunch of little videos, right? That you can swipe back and forth through. Yes, and let me be clear too. A carousel, just so you all know, a carousel is a post on Instagram that has more than one slide to it. So right now, Instagram allows you to have 20 different slides. Now, I'm not saying you have to make a 20 slide graphic. Please don't get scared now because ours typically are half that amount, maybe even half of that. But you do have up to 20 slides you can make. And as Michael said, they can either be animated or they can be static. But before you even decide if you want animated or static, what vibe are you going for, Michael?

12:51Are you going for a text heavy carousel or are you do you have some visuals you want to show off? Like, did you just get some professional branding photos done? Are you planning to use stock images from AI? Do you want video in them? So you got to kind of think about what's that overall vibe before you really get into creating. Yeah, let's get into that a little bit. I mean, let's dive into that a lot, actually, because some of my audience do have design background, right? Maybe they're a designer or maybe they are art director or maybe they just use some really cool templates that they're familiar with.

13:25So let's talk a little bit about the visual, because obviously that's a big deal. Huge deal. it's probably one of the most important for people who do video they don't have this problem but this is something you have to know how to do if you're not going to do video generally speaking right right exactly and it's so easy once you really get like the the framework for it so first off people are going to decide whether they're going to stop scrolling before they even read your first sentence so we want to make sure that visual looks good and it's authentic right so you can use photos straight from your camera roll you could have casual selfies in there you could have behind the scene moments, or you could just use like, I don't know if any of you guys are familiar.

14:03I mean, most of you guys will be familiar with this, but like Canva just has like plain backgrounds of like color. So you got to decide, okay, which vibe am I going for? What I'm seeing after posting thousands of pieces of content a month, truly we're seeing like camera roll photos do better than professional brand photography. Now it still has a place, but like, this is even easier for you guys that are like, well, I don't have professional photos of myself. I want people to take me seriously. Guess what? I work with some really like high profile entrepreneurs and the best performing carousels for them are carousels that include photos from their camera roll and not the branded photography.

14:43We personally don't use a lot of AI generated images, but I do think they can absolutely work for you if you've got a story to support them. The key really is making sure that they feel intentional and on brand for you. I've seen a ton of people use AI and it looks really good. But at the end of the day, your visuals should stop the scroll initially and match the message that you're trying to convey, which we'll get into. So if you're telling a vulnerable story, maybe you're sharing a simple selfie. If you're teaching a framework, maybe it's a clean text carousel. If you're painting a picture, setting a mood, then maybe you're using those professional photos or stock photography.

15:19There's really no size fits all answer here, but I am seeing the more authentic stuff work better. And I am seeing animated carousels work better than static. Okay. Just because I want to drill in on this a little bit, because there's some people that have no idea what to include when it comes to like selfies and stuff off their phone, because maybe they're just not doing that right now, you know, or maybe they have no idea if they're not going to do selfies and they're going to use some sort of like a template or whatever. they have no idea even what their vibe is that they're going for. So can you give some guidance, maybe talk about an example of something you've done for yourself, just so people can kind of wrap their brain around that.

15:56So for me, I'm going to bring some clients up too, just because I know not everyone owns a social media agency. So I'll try to make this relate to you guys as much as I can. For me, I teach a lot of personal branding, Instagram marketing tips online. So I feel like I can be kind of fun and use whatever photos I want. So like selfies, And I don't mean a selfie of you like taking the camera and taking a picture of yourself smiling. No, I mean like a mirror selfie. So like you find a cool mirror in the house or something and you, you know, do a little pose and you'll snap a little picture. Those work well for any niche that I've seen.

16:29I've seen entrepreneur, realtors, small businesses even doing very well with those type of photos. Wait real quick. What in the heck are you doing with those selfies? Like help people understand how in the world those selfies ultimately somehow work into a carousel. Because it sounds like you got to have a bunch of them, right? Okay. I'll just take an example today. We had a meeting with a realtor and we're like, Brian, we need more photos of you. And he's like, what are you talking about? He's like you, he's like, what, what do you, I'm a man. What? So we gave him a list and here just to give you guys some detail, the list that we gave him was one, go find a mirror and take a picture of you posing in front of it.

17:04Then I want you to set your phone up while you are about to like eat at a restaurant, set it up and take a quick selfie of you, like with a plate of food in front of you. I know that sounds weird, but that even works. Like lean it on a mug or something like that? Okay. Yes. Maybe you're drinking your coffee and you're showing off your mug. Pictures with faces do better versus you taking a photo of your food. But let me tell you this, when I'm doing one of these carousels and I'm using like raw images of me from my phone roll, I typically will do the first photo with a face showing off who I am.

17:39So they connect immediately with a human on that first scroll. And then as they go through like this last carousel I did, I did my face on the first one, but then the next photos were me at a festival. So like it might've been the singers up on stage. It might've been the food that we were eating. Like it was basically like a photo dump almost. You were not in every shot. It started with my face. Cause you, again, you want that human-ness, but then you can just do whatever you want, like put them all together. And you're ultimately putting text on the top of these things or no? That's right. So there's two ways to do that.

18:10You can either pull it in Canva or you can even Instagram recently. I think it really was this year. They started letting you put text overlay on top of your photo dumps. So if you're familiar with posting a photo dump, cool, keep doing that. But what you can do is add text on top because that's going to give people a reason to stop because you can give more context to that photo. And you know, these can be silly things. Like I use chat GPT for a lot of this because my brain gets fried and you're, you know, someone listening right now might be like, yeah, I'm really bad at hooks. So you might have to utilize some help for your hooks, but we'll, we'll get into the text part in a minute.

18:51Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But the key thing is if we're going to take all these photos, we got to be thinking about a narrative arc, right? And we got to be thinking about, and we're going to get to the story part of it in a little bit. we'll connect all the dots together, but this is important for people at least to understand the kinds of visuals. So one visual kind we know is you could take pictures of your life and you start with you in the picture and then you could, you could put in a bunch of other stuff and somehow ultimately sew it all together, but you can also do this without you. Is that correct?

19:18I mean, can you just use templates or no? Oh yeah, absolutely. Like for the carousels themselves or for the photos? For the carousels. I mean like, yeah, I mean like, you know, you said selfies is the best way to go. But if you don't want to do that, there's other ways to do it. Is there not for visuals? Oh, absolutely. Yes. So Canva totally has a bunch of templates that you can use. I know Adobe, I think it's Adobe Express does too. There are a ton of like sites out there where you can pay to have templates in place and you just plug and play. Or you can utilize my visibility vault, which I have templates that are tried and tested for you.

19:52But if you have nothing in your brain to start you off with your first carousel and you're like, this is my first one, go to Canva, type in Carousel and they will bring up millions of templates for you to use. Now, I'm not saying that Canvas will work because I've used templates from Canva and they might be so-so, but if you're just starting out, that's a great place for you to start. We've got some exciting news. We just launched a creator ticket for Social Media Marketing World. Here's what other creators had to say about the conference. I'm a content creator. I came here to really learn about the different strategies and tools that can better my workflow and automation and to better my audience as well.

20:30This is my third year coming to the social media marketing world and I love it. Every year I get to hear firsthand from creators all over the country, what they're doing, the new ways to improve things. It doesn't matter how many followers you got, whether you are new or you've been around for a while. All of these people are so friendly. You just walk up to anybody and they introduce themselves to you. This community is amazing. Everyone's here to share. I'm excited to get back home and start creating. Get tickets at socialmediamarketingworld.info. So we spent a lot of time on visuals only because I felt like it was really important.

21:04Let's talk about the animation side of it. Let's say we've got some photos or some templates or whatever, and we want to actually animate them. Like explain how that's even done. Yeah. So there's kind of two ways to utilize animation, which I mentioned. You can either do like throw a video on top of that carousel template. But let's act like we're doing this right now, Michael. So what you would do is let's just say you're using Canva. You're going to go into Canva and you're going to click Instagram carousel. And it's going to basically give you a white screen. This is where you say, OK, I'm starting off my carousel.

21:39Should I do animation or am I going to do a static? Let's say you're going to do animation. And for example, I just posted a carousel that is going off right now, guys. This works. So trust me on this. Posted a carousel. I took a video from Canva. Like I literally typed elements or not typed. There's a button that says elements over on the left side, elements, video. And I typed in like train. I don't know why I was thinking of a train, but I was thinking of a train. So I start to see a bunch of different videos of a train. Oh, like this one. So I click on that train video and I just plop it onto that blank canvas.

22:17And then from there, you're going to need to put your hook and text on top of it. So you will literally click text. You'll pull it on over. I'll get to you guys in a minute on what that text can look like and what colors and fonts you should be using. But that's how I get started with a video type carousel. Now, say you don't want a video, you want to do a text heavy carousel. So again, we're going back to that blank canvas. We type in whatever our hook is, and then you can click on your text, literally just click on the text and there's a button at the top that says animate and you can make your text animate.

22:53So maybe you do something like the wiggle animation and it's basically got your hook wiggling or typewriter. So it stops the scroll because you're typing out a word to them. So there's a ton of different animation options inside of Canva specifically that can help you animate your graphic. Okay, so let me ask you this. Is it important that all of the slides, for lack of better words, inside of a canvas carousel, yeah, do they all need to be animated or is it just the first couple or talk to me about this? So it depends how lazy you want to be, right? Because I do, here's, here's my caveat for this.

23:30If you do a carousel that has animation on every single slide, the downside to this, and this is super technical, but some of you might not care. Some of you might, but when you go to download that carousel, you are going to have to download each slide as an MP4 and it just takes longer. So for me, I'm a really fast girly. So I animate that first slide. And then the second couple of slides, they're not animated. They're pretty static. From a user perspective, is that what you mean? It'll show up quicker or is that what you mean by download? Like, like if you're out and you have a bad internet connection, it's not going to show up as quickly.

24:06Is that kind of what you're saying or no? Yeah. Yeah. Or like you don't have patients or your ADHD like me, like I just don't have the time to download all these different MP4s. It's, it's just a hassle for me, but some people might be like, that's nothing. I'll do all the video. But what I'll tell you is I haven't seen a huge like benefit to every single slide being animated. It's really just been that first facing slide that pops out at them and gets their attention. Got it. Okay, cool. So is there anything else we need to talk about on animation here? So far, we've talked about that you can add a video, like you had a train moving.

24:43We talked about how you can take text and you can have it draw on the screen. Anybody who's ever done anything inside of a keynote or PowerPoint kind of knows how that works when things animate on the screen. Is there any other subtle little kinds of animations that maybe people might not have thought about that might be kind of cool, like clouds moving through the background or any of that kind of stuff? Yes. Oh my gosh. The clouds videos work really well too. I'm going to be honest with you. You're never really going to know what works for your audience till you test it. And that's why I'm so big on my template pack too, is because we have tested this, these different template packs on all kinds of different niches.

25:19So there's a lot of testing involved. So you are, you, you do have to be open to testing and seeing what works for you, but to dumb this all down, think of animation as this little pattern interrupt that really earns you that extra second of attention, right? On Instagram, that extra second can be the difference between someone scrolling right past or becoming your next follower, or even more important to your customer. And a little tip for anybody who uses AI, and I don't know if what I'm about to tell you will work, but I know that if you use Gemini by Google to create images, you can simply say, animate this and it will automatically animate it.

25:57It might do a subtle little zoom in. And if you have a coffee cup, it might add some like smoke or steam coming out of the coffee cup and maybe a car moving in the background. I have not tried this, but I would bet if you uploaded one of those selfies to Gemini and you said, animate this, I bet you it would slightly animate it. Kind of like, you know how, when you take a picture in live mode on your iPhone, it's got a little bit of animation. This is something I think is worth an experiment just to see if that might work. Have you tried that? No, but I'm going to. And if it goes viral, I'll give you all the glory.

26:29Well, and what's cool is you can also tell it to put text over the top of it too, inside of Google, which is kind of cool. All right. So we're talking about animation. We've talked about Canvas, the tool of choice here, just through some little AI stuff out there. So you've mentioned the hook quite a few times. So let's dive into the hook. Talk to us a little bit about how important that is and some tips and techniques on how to be able to pull that off. Yes. So once your visual is ready to go, the next thing you have to really think on and be intentional about is your hook, because it's really probably the most important part of the entire carousel besides the visual.

27:05So I want you to think about this. If your first slide doesn't make someone stop, they're never going to see how good the rest of your content is. So before you write a hook, I typically will ask myself two questions. And one, one, I want to know who am I writing this for and what do I want them to feel after they read this? And then the second question, I really want to make sure that I am so clear on what they're going to get out of it. Like the easier it is to write that hook, the easier it's going to land with them. Like I tend to see, this is insider information. Well, I've seen other people talk about this, but I've tend to see negative hooks outperform positive ones.

27:44I guess there's some research on this that people just naturally pay attention to mistakes they're making or myths or unpopular opinions or things they're doing wrong. So when you do go to write that hook, you might want to try like a negative hook. So instead of saying something like how to grow on Instagram today, you might say something like, hey, you are killing your Instagram reach if you don't fix this one thing. Like which one are you probably going to scroll on? The latter. Another example of that, like five ways to get more clients. Yawn, so boring, right? You could say something like, this one thing is what's keeping people from buying from you.

28:21So it just creates like the curiosity because people immediately wonder like, wait, am I doing that? Like the other thing I'd pay attention to is readability as well. So you've got this really good hook. You're calling them out, but is it easy to read what you've written? So accessibility here. So is your text super simple font? I like clean fonts, big text, lots of white space, nothing that's overly decorative because it just, if it's hard on the people's eyes, they're just going to keep scrolling. and one other thing that I'm seeing that's really trendy right now is the text color so I typically will tell my clients hey either use black or white because it's the easiest to read but I am seeing yellow blow up right now there's an emphasis on it I don't know why but yellow is really performing I think it's kind of like people are so used to the black and white that the yellow is kind of popping but your first slide guys with that hook you have one goal and that's to stop the scroll.

29:20So everything after that is just delivering on the promise that you made in that hook. Let's talk about the composition of where we place the hook, because especially if you're pulling something off of your phone, I would imagine the way you take that first shot of yourself, you got to leave room for the hook. So where do you normally suggest, like if you're putting a picture of yourself, how would you compose the vertical photo so that you've got it doesn't just come right over the top of your head? Does that make sense? That is such a good question for you to bring up. And a lot of the times my clients don't know this and they'll send me pictures and like their face.

29:55Okay. So there's some kind of rule in design. I'm not like a super duper like, Oh, she's the rule of thirds. Yes. I'm not an expert graphic designer, but there's the rule of thirds. And so your hook, you need to make sure it's at the top. Even if you're doing reels or carousels, it needs to be at the top of your, your carousel. so if you are taking images make sure you leave a little bit of space up top of your head now Michael I've ran into this to where I'm going through my camera roll and like you know when I was taking these pictures I wasn't thinking like oh my god let me take a picture so it's perfect for a carousel so the cool thing you can do is you know play around with that image crop it if you need to some things I'll do too if I'm inside of Canva and I really like this photo but there's not enough room for the hook to be on top, you can always place it like smack dab in the middle.

30:47Sometimes like pattern interrupt works for us. So don't be afraid to test putting it in weird places. The girls actually posted on the agency the other day, they put the text in the bottom right corner. And I was like, why did you guys do that? But Darby's like pattern interrupt. We want to see, you know, we're testing, it's all testing. But if I were telling you first time, this is your carousel and you really want it to hit, I would put it at the top of your picture. A lot of people have different kinds of phones, right? Is there a certain section where you should never get like, do you understand?

31:17Like, is there like a quarter inch at the top and bottom that are the no man zone where you should never put text or can it go right up to the very, very top if you think about like a, you know, a phone rotated kind of thing? So it's different for carousels and reels. For reels, I would tell you to leave space up at the top and at the bottom because when you're watching a reel, your username gets shown up at the top. So if your text is underneath that username, they're not going to see what your hook says. And if your text is too low, it's going to be behind the caption of your reel. But for carousels, it's different, Michael, because for carousels, you're getting this space right here for the carousel.

31:57Like the way that Instagram is set up, you're not having to worry about your text being on top of that carousel because it's, it's actually in the white space of Instagram. It's not on your actual like content. Yeah. And is a carousel square or rectangle, or is it like a vertical like selfie, just the shape of it? You know what I mean? Yeah. And I should know exactly what sizing they ask for, but there's two different sizes right now that they're allowing you to post. One is like more of a rectangle size. If you go into Canva to make a carousel, they've actually got them pre-measured for you and it will say square size or the rectangle size.

32:32I prefer the rectangle size because it takes up more space on the feed when someone's scrolling. But if say like Michael had mentioned your picture, like maybe your picture looks better as a square. It's totally fine to square it up, but there is some benefits to using the rectangle because you're taking up more real estate in the feed. One little tip for people who feel like their selfie is amazing, but they don't have enough headspace. Inside of Photoshop, they have something called generative fill. And with this, you can actually make the canvas taller or wider than the actual shot. And it will generate three AI variations that will look photorealistic.

33:07So this is really cool, right? You've got this perfect shot, but you don't have the room above your head because for whatever reason you weren't thinking when you took the shot, you can actually in Photoshop, just make it bigger and it will just fill it with three options. And you pick the one that looks best and no one will be able to tell. Now, this is just a cool little thing like anybody can do. And it's just an AI thing where it just looks at the image and understands the lighting and understands everything that's in the image. And we'll just try to replicate what was outside the area of the shot, which is kind of cool.

33:38It's so cool. I'm taking notes. I really, and me and Michael have talked about this before, like there's so much that AI can help you do that I'm not even tapping into. So I'm going to tell my team about that. Okay. So generally speaking with the hook, we're just talking about one simple little sentence, just a few words. Is that really what we're talking about? And are we seeking for high contrast here between whatever the background color is and whatever the text color is? Yes, guys, you want to make it as easy as possible for them to read whatever you have on the screen. I also like to put a little curiosity there.

34:15Do not give everything away on that first slide or else you're not going to give them a reason to keep scrolling. And that's why your story is so important. But one thing that I've noticed a lot of people do is they'll start with a great hook and then they end up answering it right on the first slide. I'm like, I'm just going to keep scrolling. I don't I don't there's no need for me to keep swiping through your carousel. You've told me everything. Yeah. And you want them to swipe through because that's an engagement metric that Instagram looks at. Right. And if there's more engagement, they might show it to more people.

34:41Right. Yep. Instagram is measuring how long you stay on that post, the swipes you go on, what slide you leave off of. If you click one, if you share one, Instagram is measuring all of that. Love it. Okay. Let's talk about how we can make all of these carousels work together in kind of a cohesive story arc, because obviously you've already hinted that you don't want to give it away on the first slide or the first image. So talk to me about how we can kind of like pull together a whole bunch of these and how many of these we should historically use. So let's dig into that a little bit. Yeah. So once you've hooked someone in, the next step is the story that you're about to tell them, right?

35:23This is the meat of your carousel. And this is where you're actually going to deliver on that promise that you made in the beginning with your hook. So before you write a single slide, you kind of need to storyboard out what you're going to say. I typically will tell people to use ChatGPT for this, especially if you are not a strong writer. I will give you a plug and play chat GPT prompt that you guys can use for free and it might help you. Some of us aren't natural storytellers, Michael. So utilizing AI is very, very helpful during this part of the carousel. So before you write a single slide, you need to ask yourself, what's the goal of this carousel?

36:00What do I want someone to think or feel or do after they finish reading it? And one thing I want you to remember is don't write to everyone. Okay. You want to picture one perfect person, your dream clients. What are they struggling with? What's a question that they're asking or what transformation are you trying to create for them? And then when you write to one person, everyone else who relates will feel like you're speaking directly to them. And so I know not everyone is the natural storyteller and that's okay. That's why I told you that's where AI comes in. So if you could even at least bullet point what your story is about and feed that into AI, it's going to help you write your story.

36:44But with the chat GPT prompt I'll give you, you can literally plug and play your idea and it'll help you organize your thoughts into a story that flows. Now, one thing I do want to mention, Instagram does give you, I think I said this already, but Instagram gives you up to 20 slides that you can use in a carousel. that doesn't mean you have to use all 20. Most of our carousels that we pump out are around eight to 10 slides. Your goal is not to make these people swipe forever. The goal is to get to the point, provide value, and then leave them wanting more. So every slide should earn the next swipe.

37:20If a slide doesn't move the story forward or make your point stronger, then cut it. The best carousels aren't going to be the longest carousels that you have. They're just the ones that every swipe feels worth it to them. A couple of questions here. Maybe this is a chicken or egg kind of question, but instinctively, I would think it would make the most amount of sense to start with your story and then develop all the images to go with it instead of trying to make your images work for a story. Do you recommend that you start with the story and the hook and then go out and take the pictures? And I mean, like what's your kind of order of operations on this kind of thing?

37:55I'm going to be honest. I don't do that. I typically come with a story and then I will find photos in my camera roll that could relate to it. I'm not going to come up with a story and then go specially take photos because that's just not me. But you are doing kind of what I'm recommending. You're starting with the story and finding the visuals to support the story rather than creating the visuals and trying to force the story out of the visuals, right? Right. Yes. No. Like you need to know what your story is and you need to know what your goal is. And then, you know, you can make it all flow together.

38:27I mean, this must mean you are constantly taking pictures everywhere you go. I am. Is that true? Always thinking about how this could be used. I am a content creator, Michael. So everywhere I go, I'm like, oh, that's content. Oh, that's content. And I think everyone, you don't need to say like, oh, I'm a content creator, but you need to be documenting everything. I think everyone should, even if you don't use it for Instagram, you have it now for the memories. but I hope that someone listening to today's podcast actually will think like, oh my God, she's right. I do need to start documenting more because guess what?

39:01You're just going to fill up that little B-roll library now. And when you start making content, it's just going to be that much easier for you. So when you are taking as many pictures as I can only presume you're taking, cause you got kids, you're taking pictures when you're going probably to the grocery store, probably when you're doing all the things, right? Preparing dinners, all this kind of stuff. how do you find like when you have as many as you have are you just using the standard search features built into the smartphones any tips on that yeah actually so I do have a type a employee who albums everything I am not that girl I think you guys can realize that by now in this conversation but as Michael just said iPhone now allows you to search things so I can search like house or drink or something like that.

39:47And it will show me all my photos. Now, Michael, like a year ago, I swear, unless I didn't know, but I don't think this feature was there. And so I would scroll all the time, but now that that feature makes it so much easier now for you to just easily find something. Love it. Okay. So far, here's what we know. We know that you should have like eight to 10, ideally images in your story based on what you recommend. And ideally you've got your story crafted before you figure out the visuals are going to go with it. And before you worry about that animation of that first visual or many of the visuals.

40:19But the whole thing is really to map out a story and AI can really help you with this if you're not a natural storyteller. I'm just curious about the arc of the story. Obviously, we've started the story with some sort of like, in this case, a negative, like, here's the thing you're likely forgetting to do that is my secret weapon for XYZ or something like that, right? Somehow, how do you draw that arc through the story? Like help people understand kind of the elements that go into the story? Yes. So I always think about that dream client that I was speaking of. I want to call them out in the worst way.

40:50I want to hit them with the painiest of pain points. Painfulest? I don't know the word. We want to hit them to where they're like, oh my God, she just called me out. So you want to hit that pain point. You're doing that like in the second carousel or something like that? No, that first one that they see, I want them to feel so called out that they're like, this is diabolical. I have to keep swiping to see what she has written to me. so try your best to call them out i even this is a side note uh tip when you're using ai you think you might have the best hook but i actually will rewrite my hook so many times using ai i'll be like make it spicier make it more call out make it more here's another one i use make it more gen z coded because whenever i say that it tends to throw in these really weird words like diabolical completely unhinged if you can throw in some cool words like that it works really well i don't know why.

41:40So call them out, give them enough value. This is so hard. This is probably the hardest part of your carousel. You want to give them enough value to where you've taught them something. They're, they're walking away with something, but I also don't want you to give everything away to where they don't feel like they need, need you anymore. Like they don't need to work with you anymore. So it'd give just enough for them to be like, wow, this girl knows her stuff. I need to keep swiping. I need to see, okay, what's her call to action? Oh, go grab this. The phrase I've heard is useful, but incomplete.

42:12It's a really good phrase, right? Like it's useful, but it's missing some pieces that will make them want to get more, right? Yes. But there's such a fine line too, because you also don't want to make it so much to where they're like, Oh my God, I could have Googled that. Right. So I love how, what was that phrase you said? Useful, but incomplete. Useful, but incomplete. That's what we're all going to, that's our mantra for the rest of 2026. Yeah. And this is what people do in webinars too, right? They provide useful information, but it's not complete because the whole point is if you want complete, you do the call to action at the end, which is a good transition.

42:43So how do we ultimately move someone with a carousel to take the action that we want them to take? This is my favorite part guys. And this is what unlocked. I'm telling you a six figure revenue stream in my business. I stopped posting carousels to educate and I started posting carousels to sell, right? So the final piece of your carousel, a really good one is your call to action. And this is where so many people miss opportunities. So you've worked so hard to get someone to stop scrolling, to swipe through your carousel. They've invested their time in your content. Don't leave them wondering what to do next.

43:21Tell them what to do next. So a couple of different things. I don't want you to think, Oh, I have to sell at the end of all these carousels. That's not what I mean when I say a call to action. So one, the first call to action could just mean you want engagement on that post. You simply want them to comment something because at the end of the day, the more comments you get, the more the algorithm is going to love your content and share it to more people. So you could simply have a comment, what flavor ice cream you like. Maybe you're talking about ice cream. I don't know. The second call to action, save this post, which saves were really big last year.

43:53Right now, I think the biggest measurable analytic for Instagram right now is shares. So maybe you don't, I mean, you could still tell them to save the post. You could say share with a friend or something, right? Yeah. I would tell them instead of save the post, share this with someone or tag your best friend in the comments. That's going to be more valuable to you into the algorithm. And then the other, you know, part of this would be like, okay, here's my offer. You want to work with me? Comment the word XYZ. And that's where DM automation would come in. And I'll quickly walk you guys through that.

44:25But DM automation is basically you set up this keyword. So you make it super, super easy for them to take the next step with you. So say that I taught them this whole carousel about how to grow their followers. And then on my last slide, I say, comment the word starter kit, and I'll send you my starter kit to growing a hundred thousand followers. They comment that word, DM automation will then send them my offer. And so they get that offer right in their DM and it's up to them if they want to buy or not. But doing this, being very intentional with my call to action truly has changed the game in my business.

44:59Does Instagram offer native stuff these days or do you have to use tools like ManyChat to pull this off? So I've been using ManyChat. StandStore also offers DM automation too, but of course you would have to pay for your StandStore subscription. Instagram, I'm not really, the only thing I've really seen, Michael, is if you set up frequently asked questions, basically like saved replies. So you could do that. But it's like, if you're a business owner, that's changing up your offers or you're changing things around on the, the, the best ease I'm like super, like make this the easiest thing possible.

45:30That's where I would sign up for DM automation. Well, and if you don't want to do DM automation, you can always say DM me, right? If you want to actually, cause if you're selling something that's a little more complicated and requires interaction, you could say, you know, if you're interested in learning more, DM me. You absolutely could. You could tell them to DM you. Also, if you don't want to pay for DM automation and your following is not that large right now to where you can keep up with the comments, Michael, then don't set up DM automation. Still tell them comment starter kit and you just manually go in and reply to them and send them a DM.

46:02Do you know if any of this stuff applies over to Facebook also? Like does carousels even work on Facebook? Yeah, but here's the thing because we cross post a lot of our Instagram content and just cross posts over to Facebook. It's not as visually appealing on Facebook because on Instagram, you're only seeing that first slide, but on Facebook, it basically uploads like an album almost. And so you're seeing everything. Yeah. And that's not really, that's not really the same effect. Great. Caitlin, this has been really fascinating. Thank you for answering my questions. You mentioned that you were going to provide some prompts and stuff like that.

46:38So tell everybody where they can find that and also tell everyone where they can connect with you on the socials. Maybe they want to check out your Instagram account. Where should they go? Yes. So you can find me on Instagram, the Caitlin Rhodes. I'm constantly sharing Instagram updates, visibility tips, strategy, all the things. But I'm going to gift you guys a free chat GPT prompt that you guys can use for your next viral carousel. If you go to influence and that's with an E, influencestudio.com slash SME, you'll be able to grab that, that prompt for free. And I also would love for you guys to catch me over on call her creator podcast.

47:13Love it. And then they can learn more about your visibility vault, which it sounds like you've got templates. Oh my God. Can I please plug that in real quick? If you're someone like me who wants to cheat the system and you don't want to go into Canva and look through thousands of templates, grab my visibility vault. Because what we've done is we've taken, we've created over thousands of templates, right? But we've picked, we've cherry picked the top performers that literally moved the needle in your business. And we put them all to this little pack. So you will go into the visibility vault. You will say, I want to grow today.

47:42All right. Here's our growth templates. Oh, I want to grow my email list. Oh, I want more comments, likes, engagement. Okay. We've organized it all for you. So you are not wasting your time doing all that. Kaylin Rhodes, thank you so much for sharing all your wisdom with us today. Thank you. It was a pleasure. Hey, if you missed anything, we took all the notes for you over at socialmediaexaminer.com slash 729. If you're new to the show, be sure to follow us. If you've been a listener for a while, we would love a review on whatever platform you're listening on and do share this with your friends.

48:10Do check out our other show, the AI Explored podcast. This brings us to the end of the Social Media Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner. I'll be back with you next week. I hope you make the best out of your day and may your marketing keep evolving. Catch you next time. The Social Media Marketing Podcast is a production of Social Media Examiner.

48:34Before you go, Social Media Marketing World has a creator track taught by creators like Daryl Eves, Adley Kinsman, Maria Wendt, and Sean Cannell. Whether you create or hire creators, you'll learn how they grow their audiences, and you'll get to meet them in person. April 1st through 3rd in Anaheim, grab your tickets at socialmediamarketingworld.info.