7 Tips to Create Engaging LinkedIn Carousel Posts that Drive Results

LinkedIn is an essential platform for brands seeking credibility within their industries, meaningful connections, and effective marketing opportunities. Among its diverse posting options, carousel posts stand out. They are a powerful tool for driving engagement and capturing attention, but perhaps most importantly, they allow you to share complex information in an accessible and visually pleasing format.

Carousel posts tap into curiosity, interactivity, and storytelling. Users feel naturally compelled to swipe through carousel slides, eager to uncover the full story and gain the insights or advice offered to them. Clearly, this not only boosts engagement, but it also enhances retention rates as audiences will spend more time with your content.

Understanding how audiences receive carousel posts is key to encouraging engagement. This article will explore 7 best practices to help you design carousel posts that captivate, inform, and inspire your audience. We’ll also provide a summary of common mistakes to help you get started on the right foot.

Let’s dive in:

7 tips for creating engaging LinkedIn carousel posts

1. Captivate audiences with your first slide

Your first slide is the gateway to your entire carousel post. If it doesn’t immediately capture the attention of your audience, they won’t swipe right and all the work you’ve done will go unseen.

To be effective, your first slide must begin with clarity. Audiences should instantly understand what they’ll gain by continuing through your carousel. Pose a compelling question like ‘Are you satisfied with your website design?’ or ‘5 best ways to retarget customers’. These tight and punchy messages should be benefit-focused.

Visually, bold is best, opt for high-contrast backgrounds, striking typography, and strong imagery that echoes your brand message. Make sure you avoid clutter; this isn’t the place for overrunning sentences or vague introductions. Fewer words are better, and the text should stand out at a glance.

2. Design for mobile friendliness

Since LinkedIn is primarily a mobile-first platform, your carousel must be designed with smaller screens in mind. Otherwise, you risk losing viewers to cramped layouts and illegible text. Start by previewing your carousel on an actual mobile device before publishing. What looks clean and well-spaced on a desktop might appear chaotic or microscopic on a phone. When evaluating each slide, check for readability, clarity, and visual balance.

Font size is critical. Avoid ultra-thin fonts or script styles that get lost on smaller screens. Simple, bold, and sans-serif fonts often perform best.

You should also consider the layout. Don’t fill every inch of a slide with text or visuals; give your content room to breathe. Margins matter more on mobile, where cramped content can feel overwhelming.

Finally, ensure tappable elements like call-to-actions are clear and large enough to be easily clicked by a thumb. Keep your slide dimensions to LinkedIn’s preferred size – 1080×1080 pixels. Sticking to this standard square format ensures consistency and reduces the risk of awkward cropping down the line.

3. Use consistent branding

Every carousel you post on your LinkedIn is a visual handshake with your audience. Consistent branding ensures that that handshake is professional, recognisable, and trustworthy. Start with your basics – colours, fonts, and visual style:

• Your brand colours should be woven throughout your carousel posts – not just in logos or accents but in backgrounds typography buttons and graphics. You should have one or two primary brand colours and one or two neutrals to maintain balance.
• Stick to your brand fonts across every slide. Whatever fonts you choose across headings and subheadings, replicate your chosen pattern throughout the carousel. This creates rhythm and familiarity, making your content easier to consume and more distinctly ‘you’.
• Visual style also matters – whether your brand leans towards the minimalist, playful, corporate, or creative. Reflect your style in your layout choices, icons, illustrations, and photography. Avoid mixing too many styles in a single post as this can feel off-brand and chaotic.

Brand recognition compounds over time. The more cohesive your posts look, the more likely audiences will begin to associate your visual identity with the value that you offer. That familiarity builds trust, and trust leads to higher engagement and conversion rates.

Pro tip: create a few reusable templates for your carousel posts. This speeds up your workflow and ensures brand consistency without reinventing posts every time.

4. Tell a story

The best LinkedIn carousels don’t just share information – they tell a story. Whether you’re educating, persuading, or inspiring, storytelling gives your message structure, momentum, and emotional pull. It keeps people swiping because they’re curious about what you know but also, they want to see how the story ends.

Start with a clear arc. Your first slide is the hook. You should pose a question, highlight a problem, or tease the transformation to come. Then, guide readers step by step through your message, with each slide building on the last:

• Introduce relatable pain points.
• Share a personal insight or surprising fact.
• Create tension or curiosity by withholding the answer for a few slides.
• Then resolve it with a satisfying payoff, whether that’s an actionable tip, a fresh perspective, or a call to action.

Maintain flow by using transition phrases or visual cues (like arrows or numbering) that help the reader understand where they are in the story. Don’t forget to end strong. Your final slide should reinforce the takeaway or inspire the next step whether it’s commenting, sharing, or visiting your profile.

Since people remember stories more than they remember facts, you’ll be more memorable if you can package your message into a narrative.

5. Use visual hierarchy

Visual hierarchy is the art of guiding the viewer’s eye. It’s how you signal what viewers should read first, what to pay attention to most, and how to navigate the flow of the information presented to them. In a LinkedIn carousel, a strong visual hierarchy is essential because users are swiping quickly and often scanning more than reading.

Size

Make your most important message the largest element on the slide. This is usually a headline or a standout statistic. Supporting details should be smaller, so the hierarchy of information is very clear.

Contrast

Dark text on a light background (or vice versa), a bold type next to light, and colour accents can all draw attention to key phrases. Don’t just use contrast for aesthetic choice – you can utilise it to make emphasis.

Placement

Our eyes naturally scan from top to bottom and left to right, so position your main message accordingly. Don’t bury key takeaways in the bottom corner or squeeze them into cramped corners. Give them space to shine!

Visual elements

Beyond text, use visual elements that support your message (like icons, charts, or simple illustrations). These can quickly convey meaning and break up blocks of text, making each slide more easily digestible. Just make sure they’re not decorative clutter – they should be relevant.

Pro tip: limit each slide to one main idea. This helps you maintain a clean visual hierarchy and avoids overwhelming your audience with too much information at once.

6. Optimise each slide

Every slide in your LinkedIn carousel is precious. Instead of trying to cram in paragraphs of information, aim to communicate one key point per slide in a clear and punchy way.

Keep your text brief and focused on benefits. Carousels are not blog posts, they are skim-friendly snapshots. Boil your message down to its essence – what’s the insight, takeaway, or value your reader will get from this slide? Use short sentences or even bullet points to make your message instantly digestible.

Also:

• Replace features or facts with benefits and outcomes. Speak directly to audience goals, challenges, or curiosities.
• Use legible, easy-to-read fonts.
• Avoid writing in all caps, unless it’s done sparingly for emphasis
• Use appropriate spacing between letters and lines to improve clarity.
• Keep the layout balanced and breathable with whitespace. Don’t feel pressured to fill every inch, clarity often comes from restraint.
• Consider how each slide fits within the broader flow. Does it push the story forward? Does it introduce a new angle?
• If a slide feels repetitive don’t be afraid to refine or remove it

Over time, pay attention to which carousels perform better than others. You might be able to glean insights about specific elements and continually optimise your posts.

7. Invite interaction from audiences

A brilliant LinkedIn carousel post doesn’t just inform readers, it invites a conversation. If you’d like to see more comments, shares, and saves, you should ask for them! Guiding audiences towards certain actions doesn’t have to be pushy, it can simply be strategic.

Begin by asking a question that invites audience reflection or opinions. For example, ‘What would you add to this list?’ or ‘Agree or disagree?’ are great invitations as they’re specific, relevant, and easy to answer. These types of questions are ideal since they lower the barrier to engagement and make audiences feel included.

You might also opt to invite personal stories or advice. E.g., asking ‘What worked for you?’ or ‘Tag someone who needs to know this’. These prompts won’t just increase comments, but they also deepen the connection you have with your audience.

Don’t forget the importance of CTAs. CTAs can be subtle nudges such as ‘Swipe to see all 5 tips’ or more direct prompts like ‘Follow us for weekly advice on web design’. Always place CTAs where they make the most sense – perhaps after a valuable tip or on the final slide.

Finally, CTAs should stand out visually. Refer to our advice on this above to design them optimally.

Common carousel post mistakes to avoid

Before beginning your new carousel efforts, consider the following common mistakes. Knowing these should help you stay ahead of the game:

1. Failing to optimise slides for mobile users
2. Having an unclear first slide
3. Using too many slides that overwhelm audiences
4. Forgetting to include a call-to-action
5. Writing too much content on each slide
6. Inconsistent messaging across slides
7. Failing to have a coherent and clear narrative
8. Poor quality or irrelevant images
9. Failing to keep visual elements consistent

Equipped with an understanding of these best practices and common mistakes, you’re ready to design your first carousel post! What will it say?

Final thoughts

A high-performing LinkedIn carousel is more than just good design or clever messaging. It’s an experience for your followers!

The best carousels earn the swipes by inviting curiosity with strong hooks, delivering clear value throughout, and giving audiences a reason to respond. Whether you’re sharing insights,

telling stories, or guiding audiences towards certain actions, remember that each element (text, imagery, colour, layout, and tone) should work together.

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