38. Reels, Carousels, or Stories? The Posting Formula That Actually Gets Results

[MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome to Social Content Made Easy, the podcast that helps you simplify content creation, grow your audience, and make sales on Instagram without spending hours glued to your phone. I'm your host, Nicole Iologio. And each week, I'll bring you bite-sized actionable strategies to help you confidently create scroll-stopping content that actually grows your business. So if you're sick of wasting hours creating content that no one sees and just want a simple proven way to show up while having some fun, you're in the right place. Let's go. Have you ever sat down to create content and thought, should this be real? Should it be a carousel? Maybe a story? Maybe a graphic post? And then 45 minutes later, you've created absolutely nothing because you're just overthinking it. I need you to know that all posts can be used for all goals. But I totally get that that can get confusing for people. So today, I decided to break down what type of content is best or easiest to get desired results from. Plus, we're also going to talk about how to balance them using my simple posting formula that gets real results without burning you out. So let's just get right into it. First, let's chat about the role of each format. So before we can talk strategy, we need to understand what each post type actually does for you. Reels are best as a reach builder. So we want to attract new eyeballs and expand your audience. The good thing about Reels is that they push you into the explore page and into non-follower's feeds more than the other content types. Reels build brand awareness really fast, especially if they're super shareable. They're perfect for viral, educational, or even emotional content. I would recommend things like quick tips, entertaining storytelling, trends that have your own spin on it, and relatable moments that happen inside your business or your personal life. Reels are best for your top of funnel content. They're going to start conversations, attract attention. I want you to think of them as like a handshake or a welcome into your world if you were at a networking event. OK, carousels are best for building trust. They help deep in connections, and they also can position you as an expert. They're perfect for things like storytelling, many tutorials like I did this in three different steps, or things like myth-busting. Think about this. The longer that somebody is on your post, whether that be a real or a carousel, the better performance it's going to get. So if people are swiping all the way through your carousel or maybe even going back to reread it, it's going to do better. Carousels are usually highly savable and shareable, which are two really good algorithm signals that your content is good. I would recommend carousels for like how two breakdowns, different case studies or client wins. I like before and after transformations, like where was my client before? Where are they now? I would also use this for like checklists or different frameworks that you're trying to share with your audience. Carousels are really good for educating your audience. Think of it like you're trying to get people to stop scrolling to take notes and/or start to trust you by getting to know you a little bit better. Now stories, they are perfect for building relationships. You want to build connection and drive conversions with this. The strengths of stories is that it feels like it's real time because usually it is unless you're scheduling your stories out. And it feels personal. It's perfect for humanizing your brand, making you seem like you're an actual person and not just somebody that's trying to get people to buy from you. I love stories for selling. I think you should use them for connection and conversions as much as possible, especially soft selling. Like if you're talking about something that happened with a client on your stories, you can say, and this is what they use to do that. So you can give your product or your service or whatever it is, you can tell them what it is and link right to it. This help builds trust because people start to feel like they actually know you right from your stories. I recommend this to check in like a daily touch point or getting direct sales right from the story. You can talk about daily touch points so like hop on every day just to say, what you're up to today, you can get on to share something specific that a client's going through. You can talk about something that happened behind the scenes in your business, quick wins like if you can give your audience something really, really simple that they can implement to die, that's perfect. I really love stories to start conversations with your audience so I use things like the engagement sticker, the slider sticker, the engagement polls, the question box, that little sticker like that you can tap to make things happen. Any of those are gonna be great for your story engagement. When you're using those consistently, people learn to engage by tapping right on your story. So that means that when it's time for you to sell in your stories and you have a link sticker, you say DM me the word blank, they're more likely to do it because they're so used to interacting with you anyway. I forget who told me this but I loved it and it was that stories are like the on light in your business. So like if you come into a business in your window shopping and you don't see an open sign or a light on inside, you're not gonna go in. If someone comes to your page and you don't have any stories there, they're most likely gonna leave because they're not sure if you're active on there. So if you think of it like that, what would you want somebody to see when they first come to your page? Stories are really where your audience decides if they like you enough to buy from you. Your feed content is gonna build credibility but your story is gonna build that connection and honestly people buy way more from connection than they do from you positioning yourself as an expert. All right, part two is how do we choose this based on your goal? If your goal is reach, we wanna focus mostly on reels. I want you to use trends that have your own take and relate back to your business. Think of a really, really good hook. You really wanna hook them in in the first two seconds. Think of a hook in your text on screen, a hook in what you're saying if it's a talking head real or a visual hook bonus points if you can do all of them at once. Definitely use closed captions if you are doing a talking head real. You can also try things like quick edits, like jump cuts or if you're doing a talking head real moving scenes, you're looking in one direction and then you're outside. It keeps people on their toes and they're more likely to keep watching that way. If your goal is engagement, increasing engagement, I really want you to focus on carousels and stories. I want you to ask questions in your captions to get people responding to you. I want you to include calls to action like you should save this for blah, blah, blah, or share this with blah, blah, blah. In stories, I want you to definitely focus on using polls, quizzes, question boxes, all of those stickers that are gonna drive engagement. Now, if your goal is conversions, I want you to focus mostly on stories for sales and carousels that include proof so like you're showing your client testimonials and educating people. It's 'cause that's gonna position you as the expert, get people to trust you, see your results, and then buy from you in stories. So my recommendation would be your posting testimonials, but not like Sarah was so good at blah, blah, blah. No, I want you to think about like taking them on the journey. So Sarah started out with this and then after working together this habit. Behind the scenes is really good or information about simply how to buy from you. I really like talking head stories to explain your offer like you were just chatting with a friend on FaceTime. If some, if a friend came up to you and was like, "Hey, tell me more about this offer." It sounds really interesting. How would you describe it to them? Get on your stories and talk about it like that. All right, so if you're looking for someone to just tell you how much of this do I post and how much of this do I post, this is what you're gonna do. It's a 70 30 rule. I want you to balance discovery and connection and sales. Most creators either post only reels and never like connect with their audience because they're only doing trending reels or only stories and they never grow because stories only go to your current followers. So the secret is we need to mix kind of both of them together. My recommendation is we focus 70% on discovery content. That's going to be reels and charitable carousels. That brings new people in. It expands reach. It expands visibility. Think things like educational tips. Relatable humor that people can share with their friends and quick wins that people can take and run with right away. They're gonna save it. They're gonna share it. And that's how your content gets pushed out to more people. Then the other 30%. I want you to focus on connection content. Think about personal stories and connection carousels. So what's happened to you in your business? How did you get to where you are today? Think of a transformation story that a client had. It builds relationships. It builds trust. It builds loyalty to your brand. You can do like behind the scenes, simple beliefs, lifestyle moments in your stories that you're hanging out with your kids. You're going on a walk with your dog. Things that just make you seem like a real human being. My favorite breakdown is doing two to three reels a week, one to two carousels a week and stories every single day. Now again, I really want to profess this by saying that all of these can do all of your goals. So if you're thinking, oh my gosh, well, I really only like posting reels, that's totally fine. Yes, you can still build connection in reels. It's not only for brand awareness. Remember this episode is for the people that are like, I don't know what to post. Or if you've ever had that moment where you're like, I don't know if this post would be better as a carousel, a real story. This is the episode for you because if you're doing all talking head reels, yeah, that can build credibility and trust right away. But it takes a certain type of content and it takes a lot of practice to be able to do all of it in one. So before we head into the end, I do want to let you know that there is one big mistake that people make when they're doing this. And that's trying to make every post do everything like what we were just talking about. So they're hoping that one reel is going to build connection, help them sell and brand awareness all at once. Can you do that? Yes, absolutely. Can one real do that for you? 1000% can. But you need to know that it takes skill and practice in order to do that. So I find it way easier if you're just getting started or if you're confused by Instagram in general. You need to focus on one main goal per post that you're putting out. Why does it hurt you when you're trying to connect to position yourself as an expert and sell all at once? I want you to have one main goal with every single post. I don't want you to be confused. If you're confused by your post, your audience will definitely be confused by your post. It hurts you because a confused audience will never buy from you. They might not even follow you. It also leads to burnout because every post feels like really high stakes. It's like, "Oh my gosh, this post has to do so much for me. I really want it to go viral and sell my stuff." Connect with my audience to increase engagement. It's a lot of pressure to put on one post when you're doing that. So the fix to this is simply having one piece of content have one clear purpose. Is this to reach new people? Is this to engage my current followers? Is this to convert people to buy from me? Pick one, post it, and move on to the next one. As you get better at it, you are going to see how these all flow together and actually maybe I'll do another podcast post about how to flow all of these together if you're more advanced with Instagram. As with all of these episodes, I love to do a wrap up so we quickly talk about what's going on and an action challenge for you to do this week until next week's episode. Your quick recap is that Reels is for Reach, Carousels is for Trust, Stories is for Connection, and Conversion. I want you to remember the 70/30 rule to stay balanced. Remember, 70% is for Brand Awareness 30% is for Connection. And then you're going to sell in your stories. Let each post have one clear purpose. That way you're not confusing yourself, you're not confusing your audience. Okay, your action challenge is I want you to look at your last five to ten posts. Look at which format are you using over and over again, and which one are you avoiding? Also look at stories when you're looking at all of these. And then this week I want you to create one piece of content in the format that you've been neglecting. Just one. If you haven't done a carousel in months or weeks, do a carousel. If you've been hiding from stories, show your face. That's your challenge. I promise that the magic of Instagram is not in posting more. It's just about being intentional with what you're posting. And if you loved this episode, DM me on Instagram, tell me what format you're going to focus on this week. And I am so excited to cheer you on. I'll give your posts some love. I'll cheer you on in the DMs. I love being your cheerleader. I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day, and I'll see you next week. Thanks for hanging out with me today. I hope you're walking away with at least one actionable takeaway to make creating content easier. If you loved today's episode, it would be in the world if you could take 10 seconds, leave a review, or screenshot this episode, and tag me on Instagram at insta.amplified. I'd love to connect and see your new content. Always cheering for you. See you next time.