Give your audience a ride on a LinkedIn carousel

Insight

22 Jun

Seven success factors

With content creation on LinkedIn increasing by 60% in 2020, it’s more important than ever to generate content that’s not only valuable, but also stands out from the crowd.

LinkedIn carousel posts, not to be confused with LinkedIn carousel ads, are becoming an increasingly popular way of getting content in front of LinkedIn users, and can drive up to 10x more engagement organically. This in part is because they offer users something a little different – interactivity. This is especially important on mobile, a platform where users are more inclined to want to swipe and dive into content. 57% of LinkedIn traffic is from mobile devices, so providing something that people can swipe through will inevitably drive higher engagement. Furthermore, LinkedIn posts with images see a boost of up to 38% engagement when compared to posts with just text.

But there’s more to LinkedIn carousels than meets the eye. To maximise engagement, here are our seven success factors:

Follow the AIDA principle

AIDA is a great marketing principle that ensures your messaging and design is on point. This principle applies to carousel posts too. The acronym stands for:

Attraction – this should be the first slide, and it needs to be powerful and eye-catching. Grabbing attention with strong typography, colours or imagery helps to stop users as they’re scrolling through their feeds.

Interest – now you’ve got their attention, you need to keep them engaged. Questions or bold statements on the next couple of slides should help to peak their interest.

Desire – speak to their pain points so they can see how what you’re offering will help in the users own situation.

Action – give them something to do or somewhere to go.

2. Encourage swiping

While it might seem obvious to swipe, it’s always good to account for the users that might not naturally swipe. A simple Call-to-Action (CTA) on the first slide that simply says ‘Swipe’ should be enough to tell users what to do.

3. Connect it together

LinkedIn carousels that encourage users to keep swiping are designed with visual overlaps between each section. Teasing new content within the carousel keeps the user engaged and swiping for longer than relying on them to look at isolated slides and keep swiping. It also helps define the beginning and end of the carousel.

4. Prompt engagement

Likes and comments go a long way on LinkedIn, so it’s a good idea to encourage users to action these on the first slide. A simple arrow to the engagement actions on the post should get users clicking, while a question encourages comments.

5. Make sure it’s desktop and mobile friendly

Design-wise, this is key. As we mentioned earlier, 57% of LinkedIn traffic is from mobile, but we still need to account for the 43% desktop traffic too. Carousels need to be designed with this in mind, so keep messaging simple and concise, focusing on high impact headings that draw attention and large copy for readability.

6. Keep it short and sweet

LinkedIn carousel posts can be up to 300 pages long, but who’s going to swipe through that many slides? Generally speaking, a carousel of less than 10 slides should be more than enough for most users, and enough for you to get your key message across. Any user who wants more than that should be encouraged to read more elsewhere, whether that’s a blog post or an extended PDF version.

7. Leave users with somewhere else to go

As mentioned above, carousels should end with somewhere else for the user to go after. This could be a link to a blog post with more detail about the subject, or a download link with a full-length PDF. Either way, it’s good to get the now captivated user to engage with more of your content after they’ve finished with the carousel.

We recently created a LinkedIn carousel post for our client Magma Global to demonstrate the success of a recent deployment. The eight-page carousel was a huge success, with engagement pushing 42% over its lifecycle. Typically, posts from Magma were getting around 7% engagement within the same time frame. This just goes to show the power of LinkedIn carousel posts.