Study finds that Instagram Carousels are more engaging that single photos or videos

Search Engine Journal reports on an interesting study which highlights the effectiveness of using mixed media carousels on Insta. More than 22 million Instagram posts were examined to gain these insights. Carousels have become popular on the platform, making up 19% of posts during 2019 - compared with just 4% two years earlier. The study found that successful posts contain carousels as opposed to just a picture or video. If you're marketing on Insta, this might be worth a quick read. Here are the main findings:

Carousels get a per post engagement rate of 1.92% - which compares with images at 1.74% and videos at just 1.45%.

Engagement rate per post rises a further 2% when the full 10 carousel slides get used.

Even so, just 6% of users opt for the full ten slides

While engagement falls after the first few slides, weirdly, it rises again after slide number eight.

Users who combine media (images and video) in a single carousel get the highest engagement rates (2.33%).

Even so, only 7% of carousels contain both images and videos.

More than eight out of ten Insta users opt for carousels that contain only images, while 4% contain just videos.

Carousels are great at generating comments too. When users post carousels with just videos, they receive 26 comments per post on average.

Carousels that feature mixed content get an average of sixteen comments per post.

Carousels featuring just images generate only seven comments per post.

Mixed content carousels could be the ideal solution to your Instagram marketing problems. It does seem like not everyone out there is hip to the fact too. If you want to get comments, use video carousels!