A social media carousel might be ‘micro content’ but that doesn’t mean it’s quick and simple to create. When it’s done well, it’s a super engaging piece of content. This blog post will help you make the most of this highly successful format.
If you use social media platforms like Instagram and LinkedIn, chances are you will have encountered carousel content. It’s a single post that presents several pieces of content—usually images—that users can swipe through. Carousels are popular because they enable storytelling and can capture the fleeting attention of social media scrollers. In this blog post we’ll look at carousel content in depth and how it can be an effective tool in your talent attraction content strategy.
I want engaging carousel content
Image carousels are the most engaged-with format on Instagram but account for just 19% of posts. So, lots of people like them and not so many people post them. That makes developing carousel content a very good use of your creative team’s time. It’s less time consuming than producing animated video content but, with multiple images to play with, there’s still plenty of opportunity to show creativity in your messaging. In bang-for-buck terms, image carousels are where it’s at.
The flick-book style of carousel content makes it ideal for the kind of storytelling used in talent attraction and employer branding content. A recruitment marketing partner can help you uncover stories about your employees that you can tell with your carousel content. Statistics from our own content marketing campaigns show that carousels content telling employee stories is frequently the most engaged-with content in a campaign.
I want engaging carousel content
The process of developing engaging carousel content that tells employer branding stories begins with interviewing your employees. Employers will often get a recruitment marketing partner to conduct these interviews so that employees feel that they can be open and most importantly, authentic, in their responses. Responses are then edited into content—longer pieces might be ideal for articles or (if you have audio) podcasts. But the smaller nuggets of content gold are perfect for carousels.
It’s important to bear your audience in mind when you’re creating carousel content. LinkedIn users, for example, will have certain expectations of carousel content owing to the conventions of the format and constraints on their time. You only have seconds to capture their attention, and a few more to tell the story in an engaging way that leaves a positive impression on the reader. Short, snappy sentences are the order of the day with one or two (max) per slide and a maximum of ten slides. And it’s crucial that each slide makes the reader want to read on. Because it’s by making your readers care that you build an audience for your content and your employer brand.
Headlines are crucial in getting your reader’s attention. A recruitment marketing specialist can help you craft ‘thumb-stopping’ headlines that can stop readers from scrolling and make them want to engage with your content. An example of this in a talent acquisition context might be ‘The crucial piece of advice that helped my Sales career’ or ‘I’m a CEO. Did I go to university?’. A great headline will create intrigue and curiosity that can only be satisfied by engaging with the carousel until the last slide.
I want engaging carousel content
At the opposite end of the spectrum to whitepapers and e-books, carousels are considered ‘micro content’—so the stories you tell can’t be epic in scope. You couldn’t, for instance, tell the whole Star Wars saga in carousel form (although attempting to do so might be entertaining—retailers take note). But you could do a carousel on ‘Five times Jedi mind tricks saved the day’ or ‘How it felt to be frozen in carbonite’. By focusing on small aspects of an overarching story (Star Wars here, but ‘working at our company’ in the case of employers) you can add value with carousel content. Go too big and you’ll only scratch the surface and give readers nothing of value.
‘Top five’-style content can also work well in carousel form. Headlines for this kind of content might be ‘Top 5 tips for getting into a Tech career’ or ‘My top three female role-models in Tech'. Get straight to the point with the first couple of slides to optimise engagement and use a slide of the carousel for a call to action (CTA) to encourage user contributions in the comments. This could be the start of valuable candidate interactions.
The key thing to remember with carousel content is that the writing is only part of it. Compelling stories can also be told visually. Think about this when you’re deciding what kind of content to cover with a carousel. Does the subject you are covering have a strong visual element? This can make it perfect for carousel content. Striking images are the very essence of recruitment marketing as they help employers stand out. Pair them with concise copy and a thumb-stopping headline and you’ve got a recipe for serious online buzz about your employer brand.
Genius Group Limited
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