How To Create A Killer Carousel For Your Art Account

1. Introduction: Hi, everyone. I'm Memo, an illustrator, author and very tired mammo too. I run the art account at a free memo on Instagram. You might have seen my course, start a successful art account on Instagram. It's that thousands of artists grow online. But that course is from 2019. And if you've ever used social media for more than 3 minutes, you know that five years is basically a lifetime. So I'm back with a shortest bit update, focus on something that has been working really well on Instagram in 2025 Posel specifically, how to make ones that get shared, saved and maybe even seen by almost half 1 million people. Your class project is simple. Make your own Carousel using the tips I teach you today, post your work in progress in the class project section, upload your final version there too, and if you post it on Instagram, tag me at Alphe memo so that I can give you feedback and share it. You only need appropriate and 10 minutes of your time. So if you're ready, let's go in the next video and let's get started. 2. Why Carousels: Carousels are Instagram's not so secret weapon. Why? Because they keep people swiping. Which boost engagement, which boost reach. The algorithm loves that. And here's a little bons. If someone stops swiping halfway through, Instagram will often show them the carousel again, starting from where they left off. That means more chances for your content to be seen without you lifting a finger. Plus, with a new pos button, shaability matters more than ever. A post that's easy to share has a much better chance of traveling beyond your own audience. The ones that go viral, they're usually either super educational. Deeply related both or both. Here's an example. My Mary Blair Carousel, part of my women who changed our series, was viewed more than 450,000 times. Most of these times it was from people that weren't even following me. That's the power of shaability. This Carousel was informative, visually bold, and it told a story that made people feel smart for sharing it. That's exactly the mix we're aiming for today. 3. Choosing the Right Topic: The right topic. It should live at the intersection of three things, your niche, what your audience already loves and something that a non follower would find interesting enough to stop scrolling for. If you're an artist, don't just post a portfolio down. Find an angle. If you're into fantasy art, try mythical creatures that deserve better PR. If you're a character designer, maybe something like five facial expressions, you're probably drawing wrong. If you've got a skill set class like me, you can make a carousel that complements or updates it, which is exactly what I'm going to be doing in today's project. It's very meta, I know. 4. The Structure: Structure. Structure makes or breaks a carousel. My go to formula for educational or storytelling posts is this. One hooks like both headline instant curiosity. For example, the Disney Woman you never knew or five mistakes artists make in a carousel, which is the one that I'm going to be making today. There's a reason these work so well. Slightly provocative or negative hooks, like you're doing it wrong. Here's what no one tells you. Tap into our brain's natural problem solving mode. When people see a possible mistake or gap in their knowledge, they have to click through to find out if they're guilty of it. It's not about me and me. It's just about framing the topic in a way that's irresistibly clickable. Two, the intro, the quick context, MtXPut it Y. Number three, story slash Mid slides, three to five slides of useful scannable information. Then number four, optional spiclideOten used when I do storytelling or biography parables, the unfair bit, the drama, the plot twist. And then 0.5, why it matters. Bring it into the present and make it relevant. Then 0.6 call to Actionside. Ask them to do something. This is very important and we'll see why later on. Once you get this flow down, you can adapt it for pretty much any topic. 5. The Content Walkthrough: Content work for you. Come with me as I'm going to apply this knowledge to creating a new carousel. Former carousel, I wrote five mistakes artists make when designing a Carusel and how to avoid them. This tells you exactly what you'll get and hints at a benefit fixing your mistakes. My design thinking was that I made the text bold, big and easy to read and added one of my middle comics to set the tone. The comic works as a visual joke. My poor carousel is being tossed into the algorithm pool and makes it instantly recognizable as me. For your carousel, try to brainstorm three to five title options, and for curiosity, drama, or a clear benefit. Pick the one that you click if you were scrolling at 11:00 P.M. Half asleep. This is where I started listing the mistakes. So mistake number one is that your hook is too vague. For example, my art journey is a line that is good for your diary, not for strangers that need a reason to care. Onto the next slide, mistake number two, picking a topic that nobody wants to share. Sharable content makes people think, Oh, my God, same or, you know, my friend needs to see this. So when you workshop your topic, you really need to think, would this Cavazel make a non follower stop surviving? When I wrote this slide, I thought about my audience. Artists who want more reach on Instagram. So I gave a quick instect and an example, so it's easy to steal and, I mean, adapt. In terms of design, I kept the text short and sunb I use a single bold color block background per slide for view of insistency all these colors are of course part of my palettes that I use across on my social media posts and my website. In the next slide, I approach the third problem, which is the text wall. So Mistake can be free is to make people read a break of text. This is Instagram, not a novel. I aim for two to three short lines per slide and break things up with doodles or icons. For example, I also added a comic here and it's me being squashed by a giant paragraph because if your design makes people work too hard, they'll just swipe away. It's social media. As an exercise, edit your draft text until it fits two to three short lines, Mt. If you can't probably two different slides. Moving to the sec number four, don't forget your story structure. Damping random facts with no narrative will not help your carousel. Even educational carousels need a beginning, middle, and end. You need to hook your viewers, guide them, and give them a satisfying payoff. From a slide, I illustrated a mistake like I did in the previous slides. I gave an instead tip, and then I drew a little comic of me literally handing out random facts da fully. In terms of design, you can actually help your Caosel by thinking of it as a mini comic where each slide move the story forward. Finally, we have the fish mistake that is most common with people who are beginning to create carousels, which is the CTA. TTA means call to action and a lot of people miss it. People are psychic, so you need to literally tell them exactly what you want them to do. Do you want them to come and say, share or visit your profile? You think it's kind of obvious that you want that since you're on social media. But people will probably forget if they don't see it physically. I list a few actions with modes, so it's easy to scan, and that tiny bit of prompting massively increases engagement. Then the next slide, the bone stip. This is a new slide. This is a tip that I thought of while I was making the carousel. It wasn't in my original structure. And this is why you should always say flexible when creating anything really. Basically my bonus tip is to make your carousels visually consistent between each other. Use the same colors, template or layout so people instantly recognize your post. In my case, for example, as you can see here, I have a similar layout, my signature color palette, and my little train my comics. They all bring together my visual identity and brand recognition. Of course, in my own carousel, I will have my own CtA for this carousel. In this slide, I like to ask questions of my viewers, try to make it more relatable so they can share their experience. It's very simple. I restated the main question, which one are you guilty of and then prompted people to say the post for later if they want to create a carousel. Because this is your last chance to get engagement, make sure that it's very clear and very obvious and catchy what you want people to do. In terms of actual design, as you can see, I created this carousel on my procreate, I have basically a template that I always use with certain brown colors, with fonts, I keep my text editable so that I don't have to recreate this structure every time. I use my notes app to write the text and then I just paste in the text into my Procreate. 6. The Design: Really talking about how to make these graphics from scratch in terms of practical steps because that would be another video much longer. But this is where artists have a major edge because you already have a visual identity, most likely. Here's the key, clarity over complexity. Use a consistent palette, stick to one to two typefaces maximum. Keep your layout clean and easy to read on a phone screen. I'll give you a very real example of when I learned this the hard way. Let's go back to my Mary Blair carousel, which by the way, was one of the first carousels I designed back in March. It went absolutely wild. It was shared everywhere, partly because Mary Blair is just an incredible artist and the topic resonated instantly. But in the comments, a lot of people a lot told me that they could barely read some of the slides. The font was too cursive, the text was too small, honestly, they were right. I had designed the whole thing on my giant computer screen and never checked how it would look on an active phone. Now I make sure that I check every carousel at 25% zoom. Before posting. If I can't read it comfortably at that scale, it's a noble. I also now limit my cursive font to big bold titles only, no body text. If your drawing style is painterly or detail, try pairing it with bold clean text overlays. If you lean graphic, then let the shapes and colors do the work. A tip that helps me is to think of each slide as a page in a picture book. What's the emotional bit here? What's the takeaway? What does the viewer feel at this point in the story? 7. Sharing it the Right Way: Sharing it right. Now you've made your beautiful swipe worthy cause. Now, please don't just post it ghost. First, post at your peak time. For me, that's about 6:00 P.M. CET because most of my audience is in the US and I'm based in Europe. You can check your Instagram insights to figure out your own sweet spot. Again, if you want a new short class on how to read your new insights, please just comment about it and I will do it. The difference between posting at the right time and the wrong time can be hours of wasted momentum. Second, write a caption that actually works for you. Don't just rely on hash tags because they don't really work very much nowadays on Instagram. You need to use keywords that your audience might search for. For example, instead of writing my latest carousel, hope you like it, I might write how to design an Instagram carousel that gets more states and shares. That's a very searchable phrase that Instagram can just index. Third, add old text to your slides when you aplo. It's good for accessibility and bonus, Instagram uses it for search indexing too. So it will only take you an extra minute or so, and it's a win win. When you actually post or if you schedule it and then it gets posted, then you should be online and on Instagram for the next 10 minutes so that you can share your stories immediately, and you don't just put the carousel there. You give people a reason to click through. Maybe tease one of the tips or use a poll sticker to increase reach of your stories. For example, something like, which of these mistakes are you guilty of oh, let me know in the comments, something like that. Then, as I said, you can stick around for a bit and reply to comments as soon as they come in. Quick engagement right away after you post tells the algorithm, Hey, people are into this. If it's doing well, don't be shy about reposing it a few weeks later. Most of your audience won't have seen it the first time. Here's one more little growth hack. If a carousel really takes off, repurpose it into a reel. Just pick a few key slides or tips, animate them, or even just talk to the camera about them. Reels reach way more known followers and a strong reel can pull new people back to your profile where they will see the full carousel. 8. Your Turn: All right, your turn. Your class project is to make your own carousel using what we covered today. And yes, it can totally be inspired by your existing work or as in my case, a class on Skillshare. You should upload your work in progress and final version in the class project section and tag me at arpa memo so that I can share it on Instagram. I've got a list of other social media tips that I'd love to cover in future short Skillshare classes. Update my main startup successful art account on Instagram course. Things like what the algorithm is actually prioritizing right now. How to write a killer media kit to pitch yourself to brands. And yes, you can get collaborations without a massive account too. I have it on good authority, literally from people at Meta that brands are actively seeking out micro and even noun creators at the moment. That might be a good class to follow. If there's a topic, any topic, any question, they might pop into your head that you'd like me to cover, post it in the student board and you might just be in the next mint class. This was how to make a killer carousel for your art account. Now go make one worth swiping for.