Why LinkedIn Carousels Are All the Rage (And How You Can Create Them)

How do you make documents available for your LinkedIn audience? Do you try to get them a landing page to download them? No way! 

There’s a much better way to engage your audience and turn valuable documents into highly-visual posts that will stop the scroll. The feature is called LinkedIn Carousels, and today, we’ll show you why they need to become a part of your LinkedIn content strategy!

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What Are LinkedIn Carousels?

Think of some of the carousel images you see on many websites today. LinkedIn Carousels are exactly the same; the only difference is that every image in the carousel is a document page. 

Viewers can navigate between pages using left or right buttons. This makes carousels ideal for infographics, conference slides, step-by-step instructions, and more.

LinkedIn Carousels come with plenty of benefits. Firstly, because you can add as many pages as you'd like to a carousel, you can share much more information than in typical LinkedIn posts. You can even add calls to action to drive traffic to your website.

And that’s just the tip of the carousel-berg!

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Why Use LinkedIn Carousel Posts?

We've already mentioned that carousels allow you to post far more information than normal LinkedIn posts. This, in turn, provides more information about your brand or products to your customers. It doesn't stop there, though, and there are many other benefits to using LinkedIn carousels.

These include:

• More opportunities. Let's face it, most users that use the LinkedIn platform for networking or lead generation, post articles and create content consistently. You probably do the same. However, although this method of sharing documents has been available on the platform since 2018, many users don't use it. You’ll get a competitive advantage if you do.
• Increased engagement. When creating LinkedIn carousels, you can incorporate your own branding, logos, contact information, and other details into the documents. Users can also share carousels with their network and download them to view later. This makes carousel posts far more engaging compared to normal LinkedIn posts.

• Increased visibility. Carousel posts don't require your audience to leave the platform. Users can flip through the pages of the document while on LinkedIn, so the algorithm promotes these posts. In turn, this means that carousel posts give you increased visibility and more organic reach.
• Higher click-through rate. You can add as many slides as you'd like to your carousels and add a call to action to every post. This means you'll provide prospects with more information and tell them exactly what to do with that information, leading to a higher click-through rate.

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How You Can Create LinkedIn Carousels

Obviously, now that you know the benefits of using carousel posts, you want to get in on the action. Luckily, we're here to help, and we'll now show you how you can create your own carousel posts.

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Step 1: Start a New Post From Your Newsfeed

The first step is to start a new post from your newsfeed. To do this, you'll click on the Start a post text box.

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Step 2: Choose the Document You'd Like to Share

Once you've clicked on the text box, the Create a post dialogue box will open. From here, you'll be able to add a document by clicking on the document button at the bottom of the text box. 

When clicking this button, you'll be able to choose a file to upload from your computer or upload the document from Dropbox or Google Drive.

P.S. The best way to create a stunning LinkedIn Carousel post is to create it in Canva first, make sure it looks awesome, and then save your Canva project as a .PDF.

P.P.S. You can also repurpose a PowerPoint presentation template, or use one of your internal decks to share the wisdom with your LinkedIn audience.

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Step 3: Give Your Document a Title

Once you've chosen a document, you'll be able to add a descriptive title. This title can help people on the LinkedIn platform discover your document, so make sure it contains a relevant keyword.

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Step 4: Create a Post

Finally, once you've uploaded your document and given it a title, you can also create an accompanying post. Here, you can tell people more about the document and why they should read it. Once done, you can click on Post, and there you go; your carousel is done!

While it's relatively simple to create carousel posts, there are some important things you should remember when doing so:

• The document you upload should be smaller than 100 MB and shouldn't have more than 300 pages.
• You can only upload DOCX, PDF, DOC, PPT, and PPTX files. No matter what format you use, users who can see your carousel can only download the document as a PDF file.
• Once you've uploaded the document, you won't be able to make any changes to it.

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Best Practices for Creating LinkedIn Carousels

• Tell a story with your LinkedIn Carousels. Don’t just share a whitepaper. Instead, format the Carousel for LinkedIn users and ensure the content tells a story, shares valuable advice, or provides step-by-step instructions in an easily-digestible format.
• Stop the scroll. Your first slide should be visually appealing to prevent users from scrolling further. Typically, this means bold colors and minimalist copy.

• Don’t overdo the content. Stick to 50 words per slide at the most. The goal of your LinkedIn Carousel is to make users take further action, and writing too much content can put them off.

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Are Your Carousels Working?

Now you know what LinkedIn Carousels are, how they work, and how you can create your own carousel posts. However, even if you did everything right, how would you know that your posts are effective at attracting more people and growing your network? 

This is where Inlytics comes in. 

Our LinkedIn analytics tool gives you the insights you need to understand how effective your content is on LinkedIn. It also gives you deeper insights into how well your personal profile is optimized and what you can do to improve it. 

To learn more about the platform and how it can help you grow your network, get started for free today.