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8 NEW Instagram Carousel Ideas To Get More Followers - 856
00:16:33
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Here are eight brand new viral trending, hot off the press Instagram carousel ideas. Number one, the stop motion carousel. In order to achieve the stop motion carousel effect, basically what you need is the first slide to be a video. You want this video to be pretty stationary. So set up your camera on a tripod and then have the subject of the video just kind of rock back and forth like a video game character standing in one location. Then on top of that video, add a piece of text that says, hold the dots and scroll. This encourages your audience to quickly scrub through the middle of the carousel, jumping right from the beginning to the end. When they do this, they will quickly flip through all of the photos in the middle of the carousel and end up on the last slide. Of course, like I just mentioned, between the first slide and the last slide, we need a bunch of photos. And ideally these photos are going to be very, very similar from, from one to the next, with only a minor amount of movement, a minor change, or a minor animation on each slide. And then the last slide of the carousel is another video. But this one is going to be kind of like the after or the grand reveal. I've seen some college football teams using this to announce their new uniforms. I've seen fashion creators using this to show off a new outfit. And in general, it's just a dynamic and interactive way to get people engaged and show them some sort of a change. Before we get into the next carousel idea, let me just say that carousels are one of the best ways to grow on Instagram right now. So they're not one of. They are the highest, most engaged with kind of content on Instagram. In fact, more people on average engage with carousels than reels. And with there being 34% more reels posted in 2025 than 2024, now is the time to jump on the carousel trend. And hopefully by the end of this, you can see that carousels are actually a lot easier to make and you can have a lot more fun and expressiveness with your carousels than what we've been used to for the last five years. But I'm going to quit my yapping because the last time I did one of these carousel idea videos, the top comment was fast forward to the four minute mark because that's when his intro is done. So, intro done. Let's get into the second carousel idea, which is what I like to call the this versus that carousel. Basically, each of the slides in this carousel are following the same pattern. They can exist in and of themselves. They don't necessarily talk to each other in any way. You could view slide 7 or slide 4 or slide 1 in in any order and it wouldn't really matter because they're all revolving around the same topic, but they're not necessarily building off each other. It's not a story. Visually, each slide of this carousel is going to be split in half with a top half and a bottom half. And essentially you want to use the top and bottom half of each image to put two things next to each other that really contrast with each other, that really conflict with each other. One example of this that I've done personally is I put a video of myself in in the top half and the bottom half, exact same video playing in unison. But then I change up the text on the top half versus the bottom half. So on the top half it might say if my video goes viral and on the bottom half it'll say if my video doesn't go viral. And so the comparison that I'm making here is that my life isn't going to change or be all that different whether my video goes viral or it doesn't. I've also seen a ton of examples of this style of carousel where the top image represents like a self doubt or a negative self belief or a common complaint or question that people have. And then the bottom image or video is immediately disproving that with an example of maybe a celebrity, someone who's famous in your niche, a popular influencer who does what you do, who kind of disputes or contradicts what the claim on the top half of the image is saying. Carousel idea number three is what I call the gamified carousel. And essentially these carousels use their first slide as a way to present the game or to challenge their viewers. And, and then each subsequent slide is whatever that game is. One example that I've seen of these that has become quite popular is spot the AI image. I think a lot of photographers were using this early on as a way to say, look how much better my photography is than the AI generated image. But I've now seen people in other industries, including myself, use this style of carousel just to get people to look at a bunch of different photos, maybe photos that you've taken, photos that show you doing something related to your niche, kind of giving people a little bit of a background or behind the scenes into your life. And then one of the images is very clearly, very obviously AI generated. Now I guess you could use an AI generated image that does look hyper realistic and arguably that would probably get even more engagement because people are truly trying to figure out which of these images is AI generated. But if you're someone like a photographer or you're someone who would be easily offended by getting your real photographs, your real art called out as if they are AI, then I wouldn't recommend doing that. But another example of the gamified trend that I've seen people doing is if you make it to slide four, you're my people. Or if you make it to slide 7, you're the type of person I would hang out with. And then each slide can stand on its own. It's not like it's necessarily a story or you're giving tips slide after slide. Basically, each slide is a new photo that you've taken, a new video you've created, maybe, maybe a new outfit that you're wearing. If you're a fashion creator, maybe it's a new workout that you're doing. If you're a fitness creator. And then if people make it to X slide, basically what you're saying is they have invested enough, they care enough about your work that you would be friends or that you would be hanging out together or something like that. Carousel idea number four is what I like to call the cross frame carousel. And this one is somewhat similar to the this or that carousel, which, where each individual slide is going to be broken up into a top half and a bottom half. But the difference is with this one, you're going to have the top image kind of bleeding into the bottom image. This one looks super cool and would be a great way to show off maybe your vacation if you're a travel creator or an exercise in the gym if you're a fitness creator, or any other sort of photography or still images that you have that relate to your brand. And I'll hop into Canva right now because it looks super complex. It looks like you're gonna need to be a graphic designer, but honestly, it's just like three or four clicks. All right, so here we are in Canva. All you're gonna do is press Create and then select Instagram Post and then go down to the Uploads button and find two images that you wanna use. I'm gonna use this random photo shoot that I did with a pumpkin seven years ago because it's funny and it's cringe and whatever. Who cares? Why not then just move one image so that it's kind of in the upper half of the screen and we'll drag this bottom bar to crop it so it's cropped right at the Midline. Then I'll select this random other image and I'll enlarge it so that it covers the bottom half. And again I'll drag the top part to crop it so that they meet at the bottom. What I'm going to do is I'm going to have the pumpkin from this top image be on this bottom image as well. So all I have to do to achieve this effect is copy the top image and then paste it. Then I'm going to move it so that it's perfectly in line with the original image. And then I'm going to drag it down so that it covers the bottom image right where I want it to. Then all you have to do is press background remover and Canva will automatically remove the background from the image. Now it looks a little wonky because my entire body is bleeding onto the second image. So I'm going to do is select that top image again, select background remover again, and then I'm going to erase the part of the image where my body extends. And it's okay if you erase a little bit higher, we'll make this bigger so I can just erase, erase, erase. And then the only part that you have to be careful not to erase is the part that you want bleeding into the lower image. So I'm just going to do a quick rough erase around the edge of the pumpkin. And then when you hit the X and you're all done, you'll be able to see that the top image is now kind of passing an object down into the bottom image carousel. Idea number five is probably the easiest out of all of these to create. And it's what I like to call the surprise proposal carousel. All you need in order to do the surprise proposal carousel is to take your phone or your camera or whatever you're going to shoot the image on and make sure that it's horizontal instead of vertical. Make sure that it is, you know, wide ways it's on its side, so to speak. And then what you want to do is stand on the left hand side of the frame and, and get on one knee, preferably holding a ring box as if you are proposing. Then you ideally don't want anything on the right side of the screen. Or if you do have anything on the right side of the screen, it should not be a person necessarily. Because the whole point of the surprise proposal carousel is that what we're gonna do is we're gonna take this horizontal image and we're gonna split it down the middle so that the image of you On a knee with the ring box is the first image.
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And.
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And then people get all excited and they swipe to see what or who you're proposing to. But then when they swipe, there's either some text on the screen on the second image or there is an object that you are getting married to. I've seen one example of this where someone on the second image, it just said the game. So what they were saying is they were getting married to the game. I could imagine a fitness creator doing this where the image on the right is maybe a squat rack or whatever their favorite piece of exercise equipment is at the gym. If you're a recipe creator or a food blogger, maybe the thing on the second image is going to be the refrigerator or your favorite piece of kitchen equipment or your oven or something like that. Basically, this is just having a little bit of fun with people's expectations. Posts about people getting engaged are some of the most engaging, pun not intended posts on all of Instagram. And so playing around with that, but saying that you're getting engaged to something related to your niche would just be a fun, funny way to get people to engage. Carousel idea number six is what I'm going to call the surrealist carousel. And basically there's a few different versions of what this surrealist carousel might look like. One version that I've seen is popular in the fashion industry, where fashion creators will make their head like super, super big, like disproportionately 40 times bigger than it's supposed to be. And because it's surreal, because it breaks the norm of what, you know, fashion selfies, outfit pics look like, it grabs our attention. Another version of surrealist carousels often use mixed media. So they might use a screenshot from their notes app and then they might cut out a photo of themselves and put it on top. Or they might use a reminder that popped up on their phone's notifications and they might add that on top of the image, but then have their hand reaching up to that pop up as if the pop up was actually existing in the real world. One of my favorite carousel content creators, which, that's a tongue twister who is doing a great job of making these surrealist carousels right now is Victoria Bogadist. And I'm sure I'm butchering her last name, but check her out, especially if you're someone who's in the fashion or the apparel industry, because she's doing just an amazing job at creating super unique, super engaging carousels that aren't just boring fit Picks one after the other. Carousel idea number seven is what I like to call the ChatGPT Stereotypes Carousel. Essentially all you have to do to create this carousel is go into ChatGPT and, and ask it to create an image of a stereotypical blank in your industry. I've seen an example of this where someone did it with real estate agents. So they asked ChatGPT to come up with what it thinks the stereotypical real estate agent is who works for X company. And then they insert a bunch of different companies and had ChatGPT create a bunch of different images. Now, if you are going to do this trend, of course you're using stereotypes, so I want you to be careful and, and not lump any group of people into a certain, you know, defamatory or negative spotlight. But as long as it's all in good fun and as long as nothing is too negative or mean or bullying or hurtful or anything like that, this can be a really fun trend to take advantage of. And my pro tip is that when you are using ChatGPT to create these images, encourage it to be funny, encourage it to be over the top, encourage it to include elements that you might know are the, the stereotypical included elements that that person might have. And then all you have to do is put all those images together into one slideshow carousel collection and put some text on the first image that says I asked CHAT GPT what blank, blank, blank stereotypically looks like or something like that. And then eighth, last but not least, this one seems super confusing to make, but it's actually really fun and it's a really interactive way to get your audience to comment a specific keyword or to just engage with your carousel. Essentially, this style of carousel is going to take advantage of the hack, if you will, that we've talked about a few times, which is where when someone holds their finger down on those buttons at the bottom and they scroll quickly, it will flip through the images very fast, kind of in a stop motion style. And so the eighth carousel idea is what I like to call the hidden object or hidden word carousel. And like I said, it looks confusing to make. It looks like it's going to be very challenging, but, but it's actually relatively simple to create right in Canva. For this one, again, all you have to do is go to Canva, press, create, and then create a new Instagram post. Then what I like to do is go to Google and find a random photo of static or a gray blur. I'll just save this image, go back to Canva, and Then pull that into my uploads. Then I'm just going to make sure that this image covers up the entire screen. And because I don't want those pixelated squares to become too big, I'll just stack a few of these pixelated images on top of each other. Okay. And then last but not least, all you have to do is click Elements and then type in the shape or the element that you want to add. So let's say I wanted it to be a T shirt. I could just type in T shirt. And then what you want to do is you want to find the one that's called Frames. You want a frame of whatever the thing is going to be, just select that frame, then go back to uploads, go back to your pixelated blur and drag it into the frame. So now as you're looking at this image, you can't really see what it is. But what we're going to do is we're going to duplicate this page, and then we're going to move that object ever so slightly, maybe just up a couple pixels and to the right by a couple pixels. Then we're going to duplicate this frame again, select the object, and move it just ever so slightly to the right, maybe down, duplicate it again, and you can continue this process. I think it's good to do it at least for eight to nine different slides. But whenever I use this carousel, I usually do it at least 15 times. And again, I'm just moving it ever so slightly so that when you quickly flip through all of the slides, it creates this effect where you suddenly can see the shape or the word that's in the background. If you wanted to do this with a word, all you would have to do is again go to Elements and then type in each letter of the word individually. So if we were typing in the word the, we would just start with T, search for the word T, and then we have all these different versions of it. And again, you can just repeat this process for whatever word that you're trying to spell out or whatever word you're trying to have hidden. I will say the smaller the object or the more letters in the word, the tougher it's going to be for your viewers to figure out what that hidden word or object is. You could use this carousel idea in conjunction with DM Automation so that when people figure out what that hidden object or that hidden word is, and then they comment that word, they automatically receive a direct message through ManyChat that then can be used to promote your email list. A course, a product, whatever it is that you're selling or anything like that. If you want eight more Carousel ideas I did a video just a few months ago with a bunch of other interactive, fun dynamic carousels that aren't just the boring three tips for blah blah blah style of carousels. So we'll link that up in the show notes that you can click on and go back to watch that episode. And I want to end this episode by giving a shout out to one of my favorite carousel creators right now who I have no way to describe what their carousels are like and I don't want to lump them into one specific category, but they are bube by. I'll link them up in the show notes as well below. Every time I see their carousels I am so impressed. They are so graphic design heavy. And I'm not necessarily encouraging you to create carousels like them, but I am encouraging you to express yourself using carousels. Get creative, try new things. You use mixed media, use photos and videos and cutouts and clip art all in the same carousel. And ultimately just have fun with it. Thank you so much. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button if you haven't already. Thank you so much to everyone who has already subscribed. I'll see you next time. And as always, happy listening.
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Morning Zoe.
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Got donuts Jeff Bridges why are you still living above our garage?
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Well, I dig the mattress and I want to be in a T Mobile commercial like you teach me.
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So Dana oh no, I'm not really prepared. I couldn't possibly at T Mobile get the new iPhone 17 Pro on them. It's designed to be the most powerful iPhone yet and has the ultimate pro camera system.
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Wow.
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Impressive. Let me try T Mobile is the best place to get iPhone 17 Pro because they've got the best network.
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Nice.
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Jeffrey, you heard them.
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T Mobile is the best place to.
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Get the new iPhone 17 Pro on.
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Us with eligible traded in any condition. So what are we having for launch?
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Dude, my work here is done with.
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