← Call Her Creator with Katelyn Rhoades
Call Her Creator with Katelyn Rhoades
171. The Content Format That's Helping My Clients Grow 1,000+ Followers a Week
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This episode is sponsored by Shopify, Whatnot and Storyblocks. If you've ever dreamed of turning your ideas into a business, Shopify makes it so much easier. Whether you're selling products, digital downloads, or building a brand from scratch, Shopify gives you everything you need to create a beautiful online store without the tech headache. Love finding amazing deals. Whatnot is the largest live shopping marketplace in the country, where you can discover everything from collectibles and beauty products to fashion and home goods while shopping live with sellers in real time. It's interactive, fun, and full of incredible finds. And if you're creating content like I am, Storyblocks is a game changer. Instead of spending hours searching for the perfect stock footage, music or sound effects, Storyblocks gives you unlimited access to a massive library of high quality creative assets so you can create content faster and make it look incredible. Ready to check these out? Start your business with Shopify by signing up for your $1 per month trial at shopify.com CHC download the whatnot app today and get free shipping on your first order. Just search wh a t n o t whatnot in the App Store and start scoring amazing deals. And bring your creative ideas to life with storyblocks by visiting storyblocks.comchc welcome back to the Call Her Creator podcast that helps you become more visible, grow your audience, and turn that attention into actual opportunities and income. And today I want to talk about something I genuinely did not see coming. If I lost my entire audience tomorrow, 217,000 followers on Instagram and had to start growing from zero, I would not start by posting reels, which is probably a very wild thing to hear from someone who has spent the last five years teaching people how to grow on Instagram. But over the last few months, I've gained almost 16,000 followers. And some of that content driving that growth was not video. In fact, most of it was not video. It wasn't me dancing. It wasn't me lip syncing to a trending audio. It wasn't me spending two hours filming B roll. It was actually carousels. Okay? And the more I started paying attention to the carousels that were performing, the more I realized this. They were all following the same basic formula. So today I'm going to break that formula down for you guys. And this is going to teach you what actually makes someone stop the scroll, what makes them swipe on your posts, what makes them actually read your content, and most importantly, what makes them take action when they're done. Because by the end of this episode, I want you to understand exactly why some carousels will take off and why others are just 10 pretty slides that nobody really cares about. So let's get into it. All right, so for the last few years, if you wanted to grow on Instagram, the advice from almost everyone has always been post reels, right? Post more video, get comfortable on camera, yap to camera, find trending audio, create B roll. And I taught all of this and I built a massive part of my audience using reels. I've helped a lot of my clients go viral by using reels, and I still create them myself. And I still think that video is a super incredible, powerful way to grow your brand and connect with your audience. But I do think somewhere along the way, when we've started confusing format with strategy and we started believing that simply posting a reel meant we were creating good content, that that video automatically is going to equal reach, or if our account isn't growing, we just need to post more reels. And I just don't think that's true anymore. Because a bad reel is still bad content. A boring carousel is still boring content. A beautifully designed graphic that gives someone absolutely no reason to stop their scroll is still not going to perform for you. So the format is not the strategy, okay? The strategy is getting someone's attention and holding it long enough to change what they think, what they feel, what they believe, what they do. And that realization has completely changed the way I'm creating content right now. Not only for myself, but for my clients. We have some very high end founder driven brands that are going wild right now with some of our carousel. And I'm going to be completely transparent with you guys. I did not sit down one day and say, okay, I'm going to create this genius carousel strategy. No, it actually happened by accident. I started creating more of them. The team started creating more of them. Some performed okay, but some completely took off. Some have reached a million views at this point. I have a client right now who used our same exact carousel formula she's got. I'm going to pull this up for you guys actually, because I just sent it to her because me and her both were like, holy crap, this carousel is going off. So let me scroll to her profile. It's super duper crazy. Okay. Oh my God. Okay. It's already okay. It's at 250,000 views right now, 5,774 likes, 118 comments, 94 repost and 7,810 shares. Guys, that is why it's. It blows my mind too because as I scroll through this carousel, it's. It's basic. It's a basic carousel. But she's using our specific format and it took off for her. So some of these carousels will bring in thousands of new followers. When you learn this basic framework that I'm about to teach you, it's called the visibility framework, you might get, like, beware. You might get thousands of new followers very soon. You might start generating lots of new sales very soon. Some of these carousels have been shared so many times, and I don't know if you guys remember, but shares are a very good signal to the algorithm that people like what your content is about. So it will keep showing it to more and more people. So because I am who I am, I started studying these carousels. I wanted to know, why did this one work? Why did someone stop for this one in particular? Why did they keep swiping? Why are they sharing it? Why did they follow me after reading it? Why did they follow my client after reading it? And more importantly, could we redo this again and again and again? And we did. Because I think this is where a lot of creators and business owners get stuck. They have a post go viral and then they think, oh my gosh, it worked. But then they have absolutely no idea why it worked. So guess what? When you have no idea why it worked, you can't replicate it. And then they can't turn that into a strategy. So they're essentially throwing content at the wall and hoping something sticks. And I don't want to build my business on hope, and I know you don't either. I want to understand what's working so I can do more of it. So I started looking at my highest performing carousels, I started looking at the client's highest performing carousels. And what I realized was that even though the topics were very different, because we're all in different niches, the designs were very different, the stories were very different, the goal was very different. The process behind them is almost exactly the same. Every high performing carousel was answering four questions. Okay, write this down. One, what will make them notice? Two, what will make them stop? Three, what will make them keep swiping? And four, what will make them take the action? Because once they take action, that's when they convert. And that's when I realized I had created a formula without even realizing I was creating a formula. And once I could see it, I couldn't unsee it. So the formula is broken up like this. There's the visual, there's the hook, there's the story and there's the action. And that is what became what I now call the visibility framework. So for the rest of this episode, I'm going to break down all four parts for you. Not just what they are, but actually how to think about them. How I think about them when I'm sitting down to create, how our social media managers think about them when they're sitting down to create. Because Whether you have 200 followers, 2,000 followers, 200,000 followers, you do not need to keep posting more content and just hoping that something sticks. You just need to understand how to create content that earns attention. And it starts before you ever write that first slide. Okay, so let's get into it. Let me introduce you to the visibility framework. Now, I want to make something really clear. I did not sit down one day and whiteboard all of this and say, okay, I need to make this framework. I didn't do that. I didn't create this formula and then start using it in my content. I just realized I was already using it. And then I finally gave the process a name. Because when I looked at the carousels that were getting the most reach, the ones that were bringing in all these followers, the ones that people were sharing, they all had these four things in common. The visual, the hook, the story, the action. And I know that sounds so simple, but that is the point. I think we have a tendency to make content creation so much harder than it needs to be. We sit down to create a post and we immediately start saying, like, oh, what should I talk about? How should I set this up? Wait, what's trending right now? What does the algorithm want? What font should I use? And before we've created a single thing, we are overwhelmed. And then we just get analysis paralysis and we stop because too many decisions. So I realized when. When I create the best content, I'm not thinking about 47 different things. I'm answering four questions. What is going to make someone notice? That's the visual. What's going to make them stop? That's the hook. What's going to make them keep swiping? That's the story. And finally, what is going to make them do something? That's the action. Visual, Hook, story, action. What I love about this framework is that it forces you to stop thinking about content as just something that you post and start thinking about. Journey. You're taking someone on, because think about it. Someone cannot buy from you if they don't notice you. They cannot trust you if they never have a reason to trust you. Or to keep consuming your content. And they can't take action if you never clearly tell them what to do next. Each part of this framework earns the next. The visual earns that stop, the hook earns the swipe, the story earns their trust, and then the trust earns the action. So if your content isn't performing, I want you to stop immediately, assuming that you need to post more. And I want you to ask yourself, where am I losing them at? Why are they not noticing this post? Are they seeing it but the hook isn't strong enough? Are they stopping but losing interest? I want you to honestly go through the last couple carousels that you've posted and do an analysis on what your hook was. What did your visual look like? What did your font look like? And that's where we're gonna break down all of this. So starting with that very first part of the framework, and probably the most overlooked is the visual. This is part one, the visual. Okay, what is going to make someone notice? And I think this is probably the most overlooked part of content creation because everyone is obsessed with their text hook, how to write a better text, a hundred hooks to steal the hook that got me a million views. The seven words you need to put on your first sl. And yes, hooks are incredibly important. They're probably the top thing out of the framework that I overthink a lot. And we're going to talk about that next. But the first thing that someone sees is the visual. Okay, when they're scrolling, what are they going to see first? Something's going to catch their eye. Maybe it's a photo, maybe it's a color, maybe it's a face, maybe it's an image that's completely out of place from everything else you've been seeing. Whatever it is, something makes your brain go, wait, let me look at this. And that moment happens before you've consciously decided whether the content is even valuable to you. So that is the job of the visual. And I think one of the biggest mistakes business owners make, founder led brands make, is they assume that a good visual means a beautiful graphic, but it doesn't actually. Your content doesn't need to look like it belongs in an art museum. You do not need to be a graphic designer. Every single post doesn't have to perfectly match the aesthetic of your Instagram feed. That's not the goal. You. You'll be surprised. Some of the best visuals have just been photos in my camera roll. Honestly, it's like sometimes a random photo I took on my iPhone in A mirror, right. Performs better than professional photos that I've spent hundreds of dollars taking. So you can use professional brand photography and clean text based graphics. You can use the stock imagery or the video backgrounds. You can use all that. But something that makes someone think, wait, what does that have to do with this? And I think that's, that's where you, you have to give your permission to experiment here. Because I see so many of us trying to create content that looks exactly like every other person's and we don't need to do that. Sometimes the best visual is the one your audience wasn't expecting. So here's the question I want you to write down because I genuinely think this can change the way you create content. But before you create your next post, I want you to ask yourself, if there were no words on this post, would anything about this make me stop? Okay, seriously. So take away the hook, take away the caption, take away the value you know you're about to give them as they swipe and just look at the visual, would you notice it? Because if the answer is no, you might have the greatest hook in the world, but your audience may never get close enough to even read it. And I want to add one more thing here because I do not want you walking away from this episode thinking, great, now Caitlin says I have to spend three hours designing every post. No, please don't do that. The goal is not perfection here. The goal is just interruption. What can you do differently? Enough to interrupt the pattern of someone's feed for a second? So when I'm looking at my visuals, here's the couple that have worked really well for me. Honestly, standing in front of a mirror and taking a selfie has worked really well. I've seen this work really well for some other creators too. Is if it's like a very bright colored background that catches your eye and then big text, like the. The text stretches from side to side. Those perform really well. Also video. I'm noticing that video for your first slide works really well. And that can be like the background of that first slide is just a full video from Canva. Or it could be like objects. So for example, if you go to my page, if you scroll down a little bit, there's some posts about Adam Mossery and updates that he's announced. And I've taken little screenshots of Adam Mossery and put them on the carousel slide the first one, and I will animate that to where it's kind of like popping out at you. That will also stop the scroll and animation is actually super easy in Canva. If you just click on whatever object on your slide, you'll click it and then at the top, you'll see a button that says animate. And that will make it kind of pop. I like to use the wiggle animation. And then there's one that kind of pops up, like, makes it pop bigger and softer. Bigger, softer, bigger, softer. Those two have worked really well for me. If I'm animating text, there's something on my page right now. It says something like, I feel like I need you guys need I owe you an explanation or something like that. And the explanation word kind of like visually, like, not disappears, but the opposite of disappears. So it like, appears like slowly. That works really well too. Okay, if you're someone who wants to make money online as a creator, listen up. I know a lot of people. They assume you need a massive following or some fancy setup or years of experience before you can actually start earning online. And that's just not true. Fanview is a platform that helps creators monetize their content, connect directly with their audience, and build reoccurring income doing what they're really good at creating. And what I actually like about this is how simple it is. You create content around your niche, you upload it, you build your audience, and start creating income from it. 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And when your first customer is ready to buy, Shopify Checkout helps more of them complete their purchase. Even better, when they come back, their information is already saved. So checking out is fast and easy because Shopify takes care of the setup and the checkout. Experience, you have more time to focus on what actually grows your business. Creating content, serving your customers, and getting your brand in front of more people. Plus, you're building on the same platform trusted by millions of businesses worldwide, from brands like Mattel and Gymshark to entrepreneurs who are making their very first sale with Shopify. Nothing stands between your idea and a real business. So go make it one. Start your free trial@shopify.com CHC that's shopify.com CHC One more time, shopify.com CHC so make sure you are taking the time with your first visual. That first slide, make sure it's. It's popping out, it's interrupting, or maybe it's animated. That is going to help you stop the scroll. All right, next part of the carousel is your hook. So you got them to notice from the visual. Now we move into the second part of the visibility framework, which is your hook or what is going to make them stop? Because noticing your content, actually deciding to consume it are two completely different things. So your visual bought you a second of attention. Now your hook has to earn the swipe. And I think one of the biggest mistakes with hooks is that they try to tell people exactly what the content is about. So they. They'll write something like how to grow on Instagram. Okay, that's technically a hook, but there's no tension or curiosity with that. There's nothing that makes me think, wait, I need to know more. And this is one of my favorite things to do when I'm writing hooks. I take the positive version of what I want to say and I'll throw it in the chat GPT and I'll ask for the negative version, or I'll look for the tension. So instead of saying something like how to grow on Instagram, I might say something like, you are killing your Instagram growth by doing this. It's literally the same topic, but it's a completely different feeling, right? One tells me what I'm gonna learn. The other makes me wonder if I'm doing something wrong. So instead of five ways to get more clients, try this one thing is keeping people from buying from you. Again, that's the same topic. But now there's a gap between what I know and what I need to know. And people want to close that gap. They want to know, wait, how am I doing? What? What is this why my content isn't growing? Am I making a mistake? What's keeping people from buying from me? So now they have to swipe, and that's what I want you to understand about a good hook. Your hook does not need to give me the answer. I don't want the answer. Because if I get the answer, I might just keep scrolling. I would argue that a lot of people are actually killing their content because they're giving away the entire answer in the first slide. There's no reason for people to keep going through your carousel if you give them everything on the first slide. You told me everything I need to know, so why would I keep swiping? And this is the line I really want you to remember. Your hook doesn't need to tell me everything. It just needs to make me want to read the next slide. That's it. Because remember what we're doing here, we're creating momentum. The visual got me to notice, the hook gets me to stop, and now I need a reason to keep going. So the next time you go to write your hook, I want you to ask yourself, did I give them information, or did I create curiosity? Because those are not the same thing. And I can already hear some people listening, saying, okay, Caitlin, so are you telling me I need to start using clickbait? No, that's not what I'm saying. There's a very huge difference between creating curiosity and manipulating attention. Clickbait makes a promise that the content will never deliver on A great hook creates tension, and then the content resolves it. That part's important because getting someone to swipe is super easy. But getting someone to swipe and making them feel good that they swiped, that's where great content is created. And this is also where I think people overcomplicate hook writing. You don't need to reinvent English language every time you post. You just need to understand what your audience already wants, what they're afraid of, what they're frustrated by, what they might be doing wrong, or what they desperately want to know. And then you open the loop, give them just enough information to think. Wait, tell me more. Because your visual earned the attention, your hook earned the sight, but now what you gotta deliver, you gotta keep them reading. You have to build that momentum. So this brings me to the next part of the visibility framework, which is your story. So now we have what I think is probably one of the most important parts of your entire framework. It's the story. What is going to make them keep swiping? Because you did it right. You got their attention. The visual made them notice. Your hook made them stop. They swiped to slide 2. And this is where I see a lot of carousels fall completely apart because the creator Got so focused on writing a really great hook that they forgot something important. Now you actually have to deliver and hold their attention. And this is where I think a lot of people misunderstand storytelling. So when I say story, I don't necessarily mean you need to tell me about something that happened to you. You don't need to start every carousel with. So I was sitting there, you know, at Starbucks on a Tuesday morning. Storytelling, to me, is about movement. I'm taking you from one place to another. And before I create the carousel, I want to know exactly what the movement is. So I ask myself, okay, what does this person believe right now? What do they need to understand, and what do I want them to believe when they're done? So that's it. What do they believe now? What do they need to understand? What do you want them to believe next? And I want to give you an example of this. So let's say I'm creating a carousel for a business owner who believes I need to post more content if I want to grow. That's what they believe, right? But what I need them to understand is that posting more bad content is not going to solve the problem. They don't necessarily have a. A consistent posting problem. They have an intention problem. And what I do want them to believe when they finish reading my carousel is I don't need more content. I need to create more intentional content. That's the story. That's the movement. So I know where they're starting. I know where I want them to end. Now, my job is to build that bridge between the two. So every new single slide needs to move them a little further across that bridge. This is the part I really want you to hear. Every slide has to earn the next swipe. Every single one. Because I think people create carousels like they're writing PowerPoint presentations. Slide one, title. Slide two, introduction. Slide three, more intro. Slide four, bunch of information. Slide five, even more information. Slide six, a random quote. Because why not your audience doesn't owe you their attention. They do not have to finish your carousel because you spent three hours creating it. At any moment, they can swipe and leave. So every time I create a slide, I'm thinking, why would they keep swiping? What did I just say that makes them need the next piece of information? Did I create a question? Did I build some kind of tension? Did I challenge them something that they believe? Did I make them think, wait, I've never thought about it that way before? Because that is how you create momentum. And I think momentum is probably One of the most underrated parts of creating content. You want someone to feel like they almost can't stop reading. And it's not because you're trying to manipulate them or that you're withholding all this value until slide 10. It's just every piece of information naturally leads to the next. And this is why I don't think longer carousels are necessarily better. I think Instagram gives you a lot of slides. You can upload up to 20, but I don't think you need to use them all. Most of my carousels are around 8 to 10 slides, sometimes even less. Because one of the biggest mistakes I see people making is they think, well, if I'm going to create a carousel, I need to give them as much value as possible. So then you just start information dumping. 5 tips become 10 tips. 3 mistakes become 7 mistakes. One clear idea becomes an entire course. And then what? What could have been a really powerful piece of content feels like homework for you. More information doesn't automatically mean more value. Sometimes more information just means more opportunities to lose interest. And this is something I've had to learn in my own content. I will create a carousel. I'll read it back, and I'll realize, slide 4 doesn't need to be here. Slide 6 is basically saying the same thing as slide 5. Fluff. This paragraph could be one sentence. This entire slide is interesting, but it doesn't actually move the story forward. So I cut it. And I know cutting stuff from your content can be hard, especially when you've spent so much time writing it and you think it's really good, but save it for another post, because your job is not to fit everything into one carousel. Your job is to take someone from one belief to another. That's it. And this is probably one of the biggest changes I've made in the way I create content. I stop asking, what else can I add? And I start asking, what can I remove without losing the story? That question will change your content, because when you start removing the fluff and the repetition, what is left? Momentum. And momentum is what's going to keep them swiping. So before you create your next carousel, I want you to know these three things. Where is my audience starting from? Where do I want them to end? And what is the absolute minimum they need to understand to get there? Then build that bridge for them, slide by slide, thought by thought. Remember, every slide has to earn that next swipe because your visual got them to notice. I'm gonna keep saying this till you're sick of it. Your hook got them to stop, your story got them to stay, but now what? What do you actually want them to do? And this brings me to the last part of the visibility framework, which is the action. This is where you make money, honey. So we made it to the final part. Action. What do you want someone to do? They notice your content. They stop, they swipe. They stayed long enough. Now what? You have to tell them what to do next. And this is where I see a lot of people over complicate their content. They get to the last slide and then suddenly it's like. Like this. Post comment below. Follow me, Follow me for more. Save this for later. Send it to a friend. DM me, click the link in my bio, buy the thing, join my email list. Oh, turn on post notifications while you're at it. That's way too much. Guys. When you give someone seven different things to do, that's a pretty good chance that they're gonna do none of them. So my rule is simple. One carousel equals one action. Before I ever start creating the content, I want to know, all right, what is the one thing I want someone to do when they're finished reading this? Do I want them to save it or share it or comment or follow or join my email list? Only one. And then this is the most important part. Create the content with that action in mind. Because I think this is where a lot of the calls to action go wrong. People will create an entire piece of content and get to the end and think, crap, I need a cta. So then they slap on something dumb like, follow me for more tips, which I've done that before too. I'm not calling us dumb, but let's be smart. We want to connect the content to what they just consumed so that they take action. So let me give you an example. If I create a carousel, teaching you how to write better hooks, then on the last slide, I better be saying something like, like, hey, I put a hundred of my best performing hooks into a free guide for you. Comment hook, and I'll send it over to you. That feels natural, right? That's way easier for someone to do versus buying a $700,000 course from you. You want something easy for them to do next. And I'm not saying don't try to sell things either, because, like, I totally have carousels that sell, like, my low ticket items. Um, we even make carousels that sell our high ticket items for social media management. But you can't always be trying to sell these big ticket items because some, some people Just aren't there yet. So take it slow. I, I, I break it down. Typically it's like I'll look at, I'll create content, like looking at it from a 30 day content creation process. So like the first two weeks are gonna be freebies and, and helpful low ticket offers. And then maybe at the very end of that 30 days we can go in with a punch and try to sell something higher end. To be honest with you, like, I know I'm talking about the call to action at the very end of all of this, but I do think you need to have your call to action in mind before you even start this process. Because if I know where I want someone to end up, I can intentionally build the entire story to lead them there. Right. Remember what we talked about in the last section? Where do they start? What do they need to understand? Where do I want them to end? Your CTA is the answer to okay, now what? And so that's exactly what I've done with this episode. I wanted to teach you the strategy behind my carousels. I want you to understand why they're working. I want you to see that high performing content isn't about just throwing pretty slides together and hoping for the best. There's an entire process behind it. But I also know that learning the strategy is one thing. Actually sitting down and creating the content is something completely different. Which brings me to the obvious next step. All right, so there you have it. We've got visual hook, story action. That is what makes up the visibility framework. So now you kind of understand how to make a really good carousel. Right now some of you are like, this is really great, Caitlin, thanks so much for teaching it to me, but I don't have time to do this. Got you. That is where my visibility vault comes into play. So the visibility vault is 150 +150 canva templates that we have created using this visibility framework. These are tried and tested. We've created thousands of templates, right? We've helped thousands of people grow their business using our templates and now we've literally packaged them up with a nice pretty bow on top and take out. We've taken out the guesswork for you. They're ready to go. The hook's in there, the visuals are in there, the designs in there. All you need to do is fill out the hook, right? Like there will be like fill in the blank hooks for you. The stories are kind of going to be fill in the blank. You can totally use ChatGPT to help you write the stories or you can use our prompt starters that are inside of these templates. There are some trendy templates in there that everyone is loving right now. There are some templates in there that you can literally reuse over and over again. They are all packaged for you inside of the Visibility Vault and we've also included a list of 100 plus captions to go with it. So you could literally go to your computer, buy the Visibility Vault, and create your next month of content in like an hour using these templates. They're tried and tested collectively between me and my clients, we've gained thousands of followers using the Visibility Vault. So I'm telling you, this stuff works. And if, if there's anything I can ever tell any business owner out there, it's don't do things the hard way. If, if you can find a template or a course or a coach or a mastermind to help you get there faster, to help you get to that finish line faster, then you buy it. You do it, and this is it, this Visibility Vault. Thousands of dollars. It's not, it's very low ticket. It's not going to cost you an arm and a leg to buy, but it's going to save you so much money and time and it's going to make you money. When I use these templates, I make money. When I post these templates, I get Stan purchase confirmation notices, emails in my email account saying, hey, so and so, just bought this from you. And I'll be like, oh, why did they buy that? Oh, because I posted this carousel today. So I hope this was helpful. I hope you understand the importance of a carousel. I hope you know that you do not have to get in front of a camera and try yapping if it's not natural to you. If you're not a natural yapper, you can use carousels to grow your account. You can use carousels to grow your business. And the Visibility Vault is going to help you do that and way faster than it would take for you to go into Canva and search and search for a template that works for you. You all right? If you like this episode, share it with a friend. Leave me a review. Screenshot it. Share it to your stories. I'll share it for you and I will see you next time.