Instagram’s Algorithm LOVES This New Carousel Strategy

Key Takeaways

If you've been told reels are for reaching new people and carousels are for engagement, they've lied to you. And it's costing you thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of followers and a ton of money every single month. Because a properly structured carousel doesn't just reach new people. It actually gives you three times more chances to hook people and go viral if you do it the right way. This carousel, for example, got me 88,000 views and thousands of new followers and actually made $18,000 within 2 months. And the crazy thing is, you're probably already sitting on content goal that you can just turn into carousels today. So, in this video, I'll break down exactly how the carousel algorithm works and the framework I used to structure every slide for maximum reach and impact. And this actually works so well that one of my clients used this framework and he got 45,000 followers from a single carousel. So, let's break it down. Now, here's what everybody seems to believe nowadays. First of all, they think you need to post reals in order to grow and reach more people, new people, and post carousels to nurture and engage your existing ones. Now, that's actually not just wrong, but everybody tells you that's the way it works. Has no idea about how carousels work, especially the carousels algorithm. Because let's say you have a real, you just have maybe half a second to stop somebody to scroll through their feed with a real. That's the only chance you got. And if your hook doesn't land instantly, people are gone, right? And the algorithm moves on. with carousels is actually three times as easy and three times as good because first of all, you post a carousel, people are going to see the first slide obviously in their feed. But here's where it gets important. If somebody doesn't engage with your carousel, with your slide, the algorithm doesn't just give up and just that's it like with reals because the next time somebody opens up Instagram, could be hours later, could be even the next day, it's going to show them slide two, right? Kind of like it's fresh content again. And even then, if still nobody engages with your content, they get slide three the next time they come around. And that's three separate chances actually to hook the very same person, not just one, right? And most people completely waste the potential here cuz even if they have, let's say, an amazing hook in the first slide if somebody sees slide two first because, you know, sometimes you don't actively pay attention to what you scroll through. And if slide two doesn't hook them on its own because they don't have context or whatever, you've lost them, right? Same thing with slide three. And that is a very big mistake. So how do we fix that? Actually pretty simple. I call it the triple hook framework. Very creative. I'm I'm very aware of that. But the idea behind that is very simple. Slides one, two, and three each need to work basically as a standalone hook, right? Not a continuation, not part two of the story. No, it kind of needs to progress things without progressing too much, if you get what I mean, right? basically basically wasting people's time in a sense, but because you hook them, they're going to be okay with that. Each one of the first three slides needs to be able to stop a cold scroller who has no context about you. So, kind of see it as if you're making three entry points into the same content piece. So, let me show you what I mean here. Actually, this is one of my carousels that has got me 88,000 views, reached mostly nonfollowers, right? So, aka potential clients or whatever it is, grew my account by a lot and actually made me $18,000 directly from people coming there because I tracked that within the first two months. So, first of all, people are going to look here at the text. Your retention graph is the blueprint for your next viral post, right? Pretty good hook to be honest. I'm not going to get too deep into that. We have a bunch of videos about hooks. But there's also a second element of the whole hook which is the graph, right? And both things combined obviously open the whole curiosity gap here for people like you because I know you guys you're interested in that. So naturally you're going to swipe ahead to the second slide right there. And the second slide if we take a look here just on its own kind of progresses things further because we go into one example of these graphs. But if we take a closer look this whole thing is a hook on its own because people instantly understand that graph. This drop right here. This is why you stay stuck. Most creators don't realize this graph literally tells you what to fix to blow up. So that's a hook right there on its own. If that doesn't hook you, by the way, you're not part of my target audience. But mostly people are going to be like, "Okay, this drop right here, I know what this is. Interesting, right?" And they're not even aware that there's actually another slide to the left of this whole thing cuz they just see this and they're like, "Okay, let me swipe ahead." Same thing with the third one right here. If 60% of viewers leave within the first three seconds, it's not the algorithm, it's your hook. That is a hook right there again. Now, can you see that all three are separate hooks on their own and they could all be the first slide? Basically, each one being an entry point on their own into the rest of the carousel. Now, as for the remaining slides, you basically just have to get your content across. If we look at this, if they leave midway to your page, this not really a good slide, honestly. But because the hook was good, it's all right, right? Then there's people that say, "Well, you need to have exactly seven slides because people's attention spans and stuff like this." Yeah. No. All my data points towards being well, you just have to have your carousels be as long as they need to be. And if you look at this one here, performed pretty well. Six slides out of which the first three ones are technically a hook and not really information or new information. So, there's that. Now, obviously, this whole thing doesn't just work for me. Here's an example from a client who used the triple hook strategy for the first time. And if we take a look at here, oh, here. I I didn't get it out yet. That's what she said. And if we take a look at to her analytics right there, 2,000 likes, almost 2,000 saves, and 94,000 views. This is German, by the way, but this means views. And uh if we take a look at down here, right, first of all, most of the reach, almost 86% come from nonfollowers. Take that, all the gurus. And second of all, if we look at this graph, which is essentially how many views you get during the first seven days, in this case, the algorithm instantly knew what to do and it performed better. Now, if we take a look at this one, this is the regular graph of how things usually progress with her followers, it doesn't really look too much off from her regular path. But because she used the triple hook strategy, if we look at the non-followers, how the nonfollowers reacted way better. And this is the reason why this whole thing blew up. That is the triple hook strategy in action. Brand new people in her target audience were activated and found her account because of this. Now, there's actually one thing missing that could totally wreck whether this whole thing actually even works for you or not. And a lot of people don't even know about this. It's actually using the right audio. And I'm not talking about trending audio or certain songs the algorithm favors. Yeah, this actually matters way less than you think. Almost nothing. But what actually matters is finding a song or a sound bat or something that matches the vibe of your target audience and the content that you're putting across right there. Because for carousels, obviously retention, the long the more people swipe through is the big thing. You can actually take a look into your analytics even deeper to see when did you get the most likes right there. And this could give you a first hint at where things become boring or what things are especially interesting. But using a wrong song or something that just doesn't really fit can snatch people out. But also using the right song can actually keep people watching it if it underlines the content or whatever you have. So for example, if we take a look at the the song of this carousel right there. Well, probably I'm not allowed to show you the song by the way here on YouTube. So I'm just going to put something that's very similar to it down there. But basically it's intentional obviously and it's very mysterious. It's almost like you're Indiana Jones and you're finally figure out the truth about your retention graphs. Right now, let's compare this to the same carousel with a totally different song. You probably wouldn't even take this seriously. You would swipe away instantly because you'd be like, "Well, I'm not sure something is just off, right? Doesn't fit the vibe." Now, with all that being said, here's the part that most of you are going to love because I'm going to show you how to create viral carousels with content you most likely already have. So almost no additional work cuz what if the easiest way to create viral carousels is just basically looking at your old content that already performed and then you just repurpose it into a carousel. Sounds obvious, but you'd be surprised at how things work sometimes because first of all, the carousel that I just showed you right there is literally a real that I did a while ago, right? I basically just turned it into a carousel. By the way, it was also a YouTube video, long form video here at some point. Go find it. and an email newsletter, which by the way, weekly I send out deep dive newsletters to teach you how to grow your following and [music] actually get clients with your Instagram, you know, down below for free. Now, point being, you don't have to reinvent the wheel, right? Nobody's going to call you out or be mad if you reuse things, even content pieces. We're not at the Oscars where they're trying to stone you if you wear the same dress twice. So recently, another one of my clients obviously used that carousel strategy and she essentially found a thread that kind of performed better and made it into a carousel, expanded on it a little bit, and boom, a thousand followers gained right there with just this one carousel, right? Time commitment about this whole thing, not that much to be honest. And again, she didn't create anything new really. So the barrier of entry with this whole thing is a lot lower with this strategy. Now, here's where I see a lot of people screw this up, and it could be a big problem. So, [music] when I started out, when I was trying to become an Instagram influencer in those days, cringe alert, but yeah, it was different times, but reals did not exist back then, right? We had regular posts, we had carousels, and we had stories. And I was actually very active in the stories with my face, with my voice. Stories were the only way to get videos across. And I was like, "Yeah, I'm doing the video thing." And at some point after doing my thing, I could see that the audience that I had built was actually pretty invested and I had way more engagement than all the other people, all the influencers around. And I was like, why is that? And after a while, I started to see a similar comment coming over and over again. It went something along the lines of, yeah, when I read your captions, I hear your voice in my head. And that's when it clicked. Written content works really, really well when it's an extension of your voice, right? when people kind of know you already and it's not and this is where a lot of faceless and carousel only accounts draw the short straw, especially in the long term. It's not a replacement for video or showing your personality in some shape or form. It would be like somebody sending you a DM saying, >> "I'm going to need your kidney." >> Obviously, I'm going to block this person, right? Report it and possibly I'll get a restraining order. But if your best friend suddenly DMs you and is like, "Well, you know, I need a kidney." Obviously, you would react it for me. at least some people would. So, don't just post carousels because you're like, "Oh, they're the replacement and that's what gurus say. Well, this the new way of growing." Yeah, kind of. But you need reels for videos and you need to let people hear your voice. Then the carousels are suddenly going to hit a lot different. So, here's what I want you to do right now. Look at your last few carousels and check slice three and two, two and three and think, would they hook someone with zero context? Right? If not, you know what to do. Just add those two extra slice in and post it again. You're going to be surprised at what this can do. Here's the thing, though. None of this actually matters if the algorithm doesn't trust you in the first place because before you even post, the algorithm has already decided how far it's even willing to push you cuz it's a little weird. And most creators have no idea where they stand. So, watch this video next. I'll show you the one metric that tells you whether the algorithm is on your side or working actually against you. And once you know that number, everything else is going to click.