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Success With Jewelry
184 - Laryssa and Liz on Instagram Part 2: Which Formats Are Actually Working Right Now?
00:19:19
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to the Success With Jewelry Podcast. Your go to source for real conversations about business marketing and what it actually takes to succeed as a jewelry brand Today.
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I'm Larissa, the strategist, systems queen and the one who finds joy in turning big marketing challenges into step by step
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plans that actually work.
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Email marketing and generating revenue through it is a specialty of my agency, Joy
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A
Joya and I'm Liz, your creative compass and advocate for designers doing things differently. I live for brilliant brand storytelling, beautiful visuals, and helping designers confidently show up and shine. I founded the Stay Gold Collective to create community and support for independent jewelry brands.
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Together we bring you two decades of jewelry marketing experience and on this podcast we're pulling back the curtain on everything we've learned. Whether you're just starting out or scaling to your next big milestone, you'll get honest insights, helpful tips, and maybe a few giggles along the way.
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A
This is episode 184 and we're back with part two of our Instagram series. Last week we looked at the big picture and today we're getting into types
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of posts, specifically what the data says
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about carousels, reels and single image posts. And if you're an insider, stick around. We're talking about how to apply this to a jewelry feed, specifically because the format conversation looks different when your product is visual and handmade and you're not a content creator with a production team. So let's get into it.
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B
I know that people are going to be really interested in this episode because I get questions all the time about Instagram formats and I see all the things that people say on Instagram about the different formats. So I'm really excited to dive into this today.
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A
I am too, and I think that it is good to kind of start this with as long as you're consistent, the format doesn't matter as much. Of course it's good to know what's performing well, what types of posts are resonating with audiences. I think that's great. But what's most important is staying consistent and thinking about what type of content you like to create. Because if you feel comfortable creating it, you're going to do it more frequently.
- [02:19]
B
Mm. I want to say too though, to add to piggyback on that, don't use what Liz said as an excuse to like phone it in though. I agree, because you could be like, ah, okay. Liz said I could do whatever kind of format I want and I just feel like just posting like a picture and for me being consistent is doing that like once a month. That's not what we're saying.
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A
That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is because a lot of times the reason why I feel like I need to say this is because there was this moment where reels kind of took over and so many people were hopping on the reels bandwagon because that's the type of content that was posting. But for folks who really are struggle with video or are don't want to do it or get stuck choosing the music and things like that, there are other ways to think about it and there are ways to do video content that is not necessarily, like I said in the intro, like you're a content creator, like you have a production team. So you know, thinking about the formats and what's working, but also thinking about what you feel good doing and melding the two things to make it all work into a strategy that is specific to you and your business.
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B
Mm, definitely. I saw it's. This is a timely thing. I just opened my Instagram feed, I don't know if it was yesterday or a couple days ago in my business one which is all jewelry brands basically. And the first post that came up in my feed was just a single photo. I think it was picture of jewelry on a hand, but then they overlaid text on it and it was like, I'm tired. Like this is all I can do right now. Just like a single photo. And. And the caption was kind of venting about, you know, the pressure of keeping up with Instagram and how they miss, you know, back in the old days, the old days of Instagram just posting a single photo and it got a ton of engagement. And I think that's also why it came up at the top of my feed. And it was interesting to me because I did find it to be relatable. I was like, haha, yes, we all feel that. At the same time though, who is that for? You know what I mean?
- [04:45]
A
It is always good to put your content through the lens of I, who am I talking to? Like knowing your audience, because that is for other, I mean, small business owners probably, that's who is probably going to engage with that. Although end consumers could also be like, I'm also tired kind of thing. But it's the same with creating process content. You want to make sure you're speaking to end consumers who maybe don't know the process as well and speak in broader terms so that they can understand. So I think it is always good to put something through that lens, but that brings up something that I Saw recently because we've been talking about carousels, and essentially, like, the big headline here is that carousels are a format that's working really well and they still are, and we'll talk about that. But I just saw something that's like saying, single image post with butter yellow text. Overlay is the type of content people want right now.
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B
Wait, wait. Okay, I'm gonna pull up. I'm pretty sure I remember who this Instagram account was. What's it?
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A
Butter yellow text.
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B
The text was butter yellow. Why?
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A
Butter is hot right now. It's so funny. I walked a craft show recently and there was a lot of butter in, like, ceramic form, in ornament form, in hair clip form, and in earring form. And shrimp was another one that I saw. A lot of people are into, like, these niche, cute, funny things, and I was talking to somebody last night that we just need more whimsy. Butter yellow, for whatever reason, feels whimsical.
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B
Wait, Liz, I looked up this post I was just talking about, and the text is this buttery yellow color. Yeah, I didn't even know right now.
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I mean, we could end the episode here because that is what is working is a single image post with butter yellow text.
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B
It got a ton of engagement. It is funny you say that. I was out somewhere with Jordan the other day and he was like, you notice how yellow is, like, so trendy right now? And I was like, not really, but
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A
it's been in for a while. I saw. I follow a, like, fashion person. I like her style, and I've been following her for a long time, but she's always been into butter yellow, and I feel like she's been talking about it for a long time. But this year especially, I've been noticing the color and just butter sticks of
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butter being a thing I'm choosing to ignore because it. It doesn't look good on a redhead like me, I will tell you that.
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A
Anyway, another interesting thing about single image posts, my top post from this past year was a single image post, and it perform better than maybe any post I've ever done on Instagram. And it was a very casual image of a piece of jewelry in my hand. And I think it performed well because it was one of Kimberly Doyle's Gemmagachi pendants, which people go nuts over because they're adorable and amazing. But I also put. I had like a longer form caption where I was saying. I forget what I was saying, but I was saying something that was a takeaway or something. Something I've learned or Something like that. So I was had more of a robust caption. And the reason why I kind of felt like I needed to do that, you know, caveat at the beginning of this episode is like you don't have to take like the best performing format and do it necessarily because sometimes your audience wants something different and that's a good thing to pay attention to, like trial and error. See what resonates with your audience. Because I do not like doing video and I try very hard not to do video. Larissa does a lot of video. I'm endlessly impressed by you showing up and talking to camera. I cannot bring myself to do that. So what seems to work for my audience, thank goodness, because this is something I can do, is a single image post with a long caption.
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B
Yes. You might have to adjust expectations though in terms of like the metrics depending
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on what format you post.
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And I want to bring back in this study that we were talking about in the last episode, the Metricool study study. So they this is so helpful to me. I mean, I don't think that it's going to universally apply to every single account out there. Like you know your account best. And this study is just an average, but they break down the formats. So they said 12 in 2026 brands published 12% more single image posts, 24% more carousels and 35% more reels. And then they broke down like where the growth was in terms of like reach, views, interactions, engagement, et cetera. There was improvement for single image posts in terms of views, so those had 33% more views. So people seem to be looking at them. But it does show a super sharp decline in interactions and engagement on single image posts, which I thought was really interesting. So maybe people are just like passively engaging with images now.
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A
I think it's always good to look at how you consume content as well. I get sucked into watching videos a lot. As much as I don't want to make them, I engage with them or I watch them. And I think a view is considered an engagement. Right. So and a lot of times if I like a creator or an account that I've discovered through it just popping up in my feed, I will go and look at their profile and watch more of their videos. So I do think that there's a benefit to having engaging video content. And I will also say that carousel posts for me and for clients that I've posted for always perform well. And maybe it wasn't my top top post of this year, but I can know that if I Want to do a photo dump? It's going to perform well.
- [11:20]
B
Yes, that's very true. The other stats. So a lot of people that don't like to do reels aren't going to like to hear this, but the data showed, at least on these accounts, that they analyzed that performance on reach, interactions and engagement all went up across the board for reels where the other formats did not consistently have improvements like that. So that's just kind of interesting to know. With carousels, they saw a 54% increase in views, but not necessarily as good in interactions and engagement. And I think to what you were saying before about the photo dump. Yeah, those perform because they keep showing up in the algorithm and I think that's why the views on those are so much more increased.
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A
And I think they're exciting. Like you don't know what other photo is going to be here. I want to see them all. But any kind of carousel post, like thinking outside of the photo dump, thinking about like, I saw this great post yesterday that was teasing a new collection that was coming. And it was a sketch pad with some sketches, some finished pieces from this new collection, and then a swipe to see the inspiration. And it was really great. Like a simple post like that. Well, it's not simple, but a post like that I think is really great. Like giving reason to swipe, Giving people a reason to swipe, telling them why they should swipe is a great call to action.
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B
I think I should probably do more photo ds. Just thinking about.
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I know I've been meaning to do one for a while. It's in my head. I need to do my summer or like halfway through summer photo dump kind of thing. Because I do them, I tend to try to do them quarterly. I think I'm a little behind, but I'm overwhelmed by all of the photos and choosing. And now you can choose 20 photos.
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Yes. It's a lot.
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A
It's a lot.
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Wait, here's a good stat. Carousels get nine times more saves than single image posts on Instagram.
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A
That's really interesting. I think that depending on what post they're looking at, you know, if you're doing a, like a, a carousel post where you have text, I find myself outside of getting lost in the video content, I do find myself reading scrolling carousel posts with text on it. You know, like you could do something like, here's how I made this piece. Or swipe to see how this custom process started. And you could have text on top. Like it started with a conversation and then a mood board. Here's the mood board. And then I got my materials on my bench. And then here's the first phase. Or, you know, bring people through the story and kind of tell that story in text in the carousel. That. That seems to work well.
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B
Yeah, I like those. I find myself reading those too. And sometimes it's the same picture or
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A
like a variation on it.
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Like someone just making like a different face, and then they have like an overlay and text on that, and you're not even really paying attention to the picture. That's kind of like background, but you're like, swiping through to read the story. Yeah. So those.
- [14:54]
A
I mean, it makes sense that those types of posts would get more engagement because there's more engagement to be done versus a single image post where you can read the caption, you can, you know, like, save, share, but you can't swipe. You can't watch. Carousels with videos or like, mixed media tend to perform well from my experience recently.
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B
Yes. They're saying carousels outperform single image posts. Excuse me. Across every single metric. No exceptions. Every post published in this format gets more than double the reach and views and almost four times more interactions than single image. And yet carousels are used 37% less often.
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A
Hmm.
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I mean, this study was done before
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the single image post with the butter yellow text. So just keep that in mind.
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Everyone without to write to them and say, can you please add like an update to this study? Because we need to know.
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A
So I think the. I think that the main takeaway here is to try out a carousel post. Right.
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Add it to your strategy. Yeah. Especially if you haven't done one in a while or maybe you've never done one. You know, think about how you can tell a story across multiple slides.
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A
And Larissa and I are going to do photo dumps.
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B
We are going to do a photo dump.
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A
Yes.
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B
I'm like, what is even in my camera roll for the past month? Like, my dog had a birthday.
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I mean, a photo dump of your dog's birthday would be great.
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That was pretty much the whole thing.
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Or a photo dump of, like, your favorite vegan meals from the summer. That would be a good one.
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That's true. Yeah. Could be fun coming up with themes.
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I love a theme. My camera roll is essentially all my flowers. I have a garden and I grew flowers, many of them from seed, so I'm pretty proud. And it's just like this chaotic flower garden, and I keep going and taking photos of it, which is kind of silly. And then I have A lot of photos of craft around the western North Carolina region. So that could be several photo dumps.
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I would like to see your flowers. I think you should post them. I will post them.
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A
I'll post them. It's in my brain. I like I have to get this up soon, even if it's just my flowers. Like a photo dump of my flowers. Last question I want to answer before we wrap up and talk to insiders. A realistic posting frequency. This is another question we get asked a lot. I get asked a lot and I always say, like, consistent is what you feel like you can show up and do consistently.
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But I would say two or three
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times a week, ideally.
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I think that's a good guideline. I found the part in the study where they talk about this. The data shows there's no universal answer to how often you should post, but small accounts benefit from consistency. Posting 7 to 14 times a week is where interactions peak. So that's kind of like where you don't see any more returns for accounts over a hundred thousand followers. The less they post, the more each post gets. That's kind of interesting.
- [18:49]
A
That is interesting. Well, we'll be back next week talking more about captions, hashtags, SEO, calls to action, all that kind of stuff. So we'll talk to you next week. But in the meantime, let us know what you think, what questions you have, what your thoughts are. We'd love to hear from you. And if you love the podcast, we'd love for you to leave us a review. It means so much to us. Thanks for being a part of our community.