#1418- The Instagram CEO Just Confirmed CAROUSELS Are The #1 Format

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  What's going on squad? Welcome to another episode of the Change Lives Make Money Podcast for business owners that are trying to grow and sell on social media. My name is Brian Mark. I'm your host and in today's episode, we're talking about carousels. As you guys are tuning in, I just want to remind you that we're giving away a thousand dollars cash to one of our podcast listeners. We do this every month. Last month's listeners winner, last month's winner was Coach Anthony Francis. If you want to be a winner, all you gotta do is screenshot any podcast episode you're listening to, share your Instagram stories, tag me at the real Brian Mark, let me know that you're tuning in and also leave me a rating on the podcast. You know, if you guys are getting value from it, check it out. And if you're tuning in live, there's 1400 episodes specifically for online business owners that want to grow and sell on social media. Now today's episode, coming with a new idea, I guess, it's not a new idea, it's just a confirmed idea. For those of you guys that post consistently on Instagram, you will notice that your real

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  engagement has been down. The engagement that you're typically getting on your Instagram reels is likely down. The content formats that you were posting in before are not working as well as they are now. What happened? You know, what happened? I've been talking about an Instagram algorithm change in October 2026. That's when I really started noticing this stuff because we're posting six times a day, seven days a week on social media. And so anytime there's like an algorithm change, like I will get that feeling immediately because I'm like actively tapped into my account. I'm like very like tuned into what's going on social media because we have so much data to go off of, you know? So long story short, about a month ago, I started realizing that our carousels were significantly outperforming our reels. Like a good Instagram reel for us

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  right now will be like 30 to 50,000. Like that's where we're expecting them to land. But an average or bad carousel will be 30 to 50,000 and the good ones are getting like 100,000 to 500,000 to a million views. And so we started shifting our content strategy about 30 days ago to be carousels heavily. Like if you go to look at my news feed right now, as of November 3rd, you will notice that there's a significant amount of carousels on my page right now. It's usually like one reel, one carousel, one reel, one carousel. It's like, we're really trying to like go 50 50. And so I want to talk about why that is and the confirmation that I just got and how you can implement this in your strategy. So opened up Instagram today and the first thing that I saw was Instagram CEO on a podcast, basically confirming that Instagram carousels are the top performing format right now. And he said it's for a variety of reasons. He said,

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  number one, he's like, because when you got carousels with music, they end up getting showed in the reels tab, which is really cool. Two is, this is a really fun fact. When you post a carousel and somebody doesn't engage with your first slide, what Instagram will do is they'll actually show that carousel again to the same person, but they'll show them a different slide. So it gives you multiple chances of visibility. But the third reason, and I think this is the most important one, is you can put a lot of data in a carousel and make it highly engaging. Whereas with a reel, you basically want to condense it down as like little as you possibly can and keep it as short as you possibly can. Whereas in a carousel, you can put a ton of information and it's engaging because people are just swiping through. And so I actually launched

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  a birthday giveaway. Like I just turned 35 years old, but like five days ago, October 28th, and I launched my birthday giveaway and my birthday giveaways typically do pretty well, like usually three to 400 entries. This birthday giveaway got over 650 entries, which was insane to me. And the number one reason that it got as many entries as it did is the carousel that I posted about the giveaway ended up having 1300 comments on it, which is like, again, like typically speaking, when I post a carousel, like if we think back to 2024, 2025, where reels were like the dominant player, when I posted carousel, it just would not get that type of engagement. It would not get that type of traction. But now in 2026, like everything has shifted. And it's like, that's the game that you're playing with social media realistically is you need to have a very

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  clear pulse on what is working right now. And this is where I see a lot of creators struggle or get stuck is because they don't adapt to their strategy to what's working right now. And they end up staying stuck in this loop where they keep posting the same stuff they've been posting for an extended period of time because it's easier to post that stuff. Like if you're used to doing grocery store videos, it's easier to do that. Or if you're used to your videographer coming over to your house, you know, once every two weeks, it's easier to do that. Once you have like a flow for how you create content, it's very difficult to change your habits around content creation, even when the evidence is showing you otherwise. And so it's like, it's so important to be willing to pivot your strategy and adapt to the new algorithm changes. Otherwise,

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  like your content ends up falling on deaf ears. And all of that time that you end up spending creating content ends up being a waste because ultimately like as a business owner, when we're creating content, our like the number one goal for creating content as a business owner is to generate revenue and drive traffic from that content. And if we're not generating revenue and driving traffic and like getting our Instagram inbox busier, it's like ultimately, we are just completely 100% wasting our time.

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  What's going on fam? It's your boy Brian Mark. If you didn't know, we just launched the $10 Instagram funnel blueprint and became a three time national best seller within the first week of us launching. You can get the book, the $10 Instagram funnel blueprint. That is my literal start to finish complete guide on how to make money with your social media account on amazon.com. So search out the $10 Instagram funnel blueprint by Brian Mark and get your copy. Guarantee you best purchase you've ever made.

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  And so I want to tell you guys how I'm using carousels right now, and then I'm going to give you guys some sauce that you can steal. Okay. So first things first, the way that I'm using carousels right now is this is the easiest way and anybody can do this is I literally will take a fucking selfie of my face and I'll put take a selfie of my face and then I'll just write on my Instagram stories on like the selfie of my face, whatever I want to put in the carousel. So I just did one like literally two days ago. That's like 60,000 views and it's just like controversial takes that might piss you off. And that was the first slide. And then the other slides are literally the same selfie of my face. And I just wrote down a bunch of like controversial takes about the industry that I have that might piss people off. So like, that was so easy. It took me literally 15 minutes and I just wrote on my Instagram stories. So that's one way I'm using

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  carousels. Another way I'm using carousels is I'll take my viral talking reels, like reels that I've created that have proven to go viral. Like if they're just like me telling a story and I'll take those and I'll turn those into a top bottom carousel. So I'll grab still images from any video that I've created and it doesn't even have to be the same fucking video. Like it's not even like you have to grab the same video of you talking. Like I'll grab still images of like a YouTube video or a podcast that I've done. And then I'll take a viral storytelling reel that I've done, put that viral storytelling reel into the carousel. So I'll just write one line on the top of the screen, one line on the bottom of the screen, and I do like a top bottom split screen with the viral reel. So that's another way. Another way I'm using carousels is I'll take one of my value reels that have gone viral before, like an example of one of those is I've got a reel where I talk about posting schedule to hit 100K a month. I'll take that posting

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  schedule and I turn that into a carousel. So like, you know, there's usually like a five to 10 second value piece of the carousel. So I'll put the hook as the opening slide and then the second slide is the five to 10 second value piece. And then the entire carousel is a reel that I've already created. So I'm just taking content that I've already produced on social media and I'm turning that into my carousels. And that's been working super, super well for us. In terms of the carousel structure, what I recommend for your guys is carousel structure is the way that I try to do it is I do a strong opening slide. And so like I try to make a bold statement or a bold claim in the opening slide, something that's going to capture people's attention. So a strong statement. And then the second slide is usually a rehook. So I'll do strong opening statement and then I'll do a rehook in the second slide. And then after I do

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  rehook, then I'll get into that carousel. And so if I think about like the, one of my carousels that went super viral, it was like 6.7 million views. The opening slide says, in 2019, we almost broke up because I cheated on her and it's a photo of me and curse. And then the second slide was, I went out to a nightclub, I got drunk and I kissed a girl. And then, so like, the opening slide was like a fucking bold statement. People are like, oh, what the fuck? And then the second slide was like a rehook and it like goes deeper into the story that really like captures our attention. And then I talk about how, you know, 2019, I was still drinking and partying and da, da, da, da, da, da. So yeah, what I would recommend from this podcast is it's like, it is difficult to think about changing content strategies, but I just want to encourage you to really start testing and experimenting the waters with carousels. And I guarantee that my

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  goal with these podcasts are to give you guys so much value that you could get results for free without ever hiring me. Like ultimately that is the goal. So my goal of this podcast is that you just test it out for yourself and you will see very quickly that even the bad carousels that you make are going to outperform the good reels that you make. And I'm not saying you should abandon ship on reels because for me, it's like, I think that there's nothing better to develop a relationship with your audience and to communicate with your audience and to give value to your audience and demonstrate that you are an authority in a specific area by getting on camera and speaking. But I think if you are going to get on camera and speak, and again, this is fucking good news for you. The best way to get on camera and speak is to open up your fucking iPhone and talk to the camera, which is like, again, if we think back to 2024, 2025, it was like opening up

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  your high quality camera with a videographer and doing a shoot. But in 2026, it's like, that's not the game. Like the game is like, pull your fucking iPhone and talk to the camera. So that's a wrap. You guys, that's all I wanted to share with you guys today. I did watch an Instagram video today that has 100% confirmed that Instagram carousels are the number one format to be posting on social media. And so I felt like it was my responsibility to share that information with you guys and so that you can take this information and do with it what you will. This has been confirmed by Adam Mazari, this Instagram CEO. So I would highly recommend that you start experimenting with carousels. If you would like some content on how to create carousels, you guys can go to my page right now, Instagram at the real Brian Mark. And I've got a ton of content on how to create carousels, how to use AI to create carousels. There's a bunch of stuff on my page where you guys can grab and experiment with it. And if you're watching this and you'd like some

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  support with your content strategy so you can stay on top of the algorithm, you can stay ahead of the curve, then just send me a DM on Instagram that says info and let's have a conversation about your business. Oh, there's one final thing. If you are my client, all right, you're my client right now, that we are, there's access to a shitload of Black Friday deals. All right. So make sure you guys check out the community because for those of you guys that are in my audience who know that we're not doing Black Friday sales at all anymore. In fact, for the month of November, my prices are increasing on all of my programs for the public. And so on Black Friday is the official date that all of the program prices increased by 25%. If you are in my audience and you're interested in locking in my current rates, you can DM me lock in on Instagram. But if you're my client and you want access to some of the Black Friday deals on the inside, which by the way, if you're in my audience and you want to get access to the Black Friday deals, you just

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  got to be my client. Check out the Facebook community. You guys will see the deals. Peace, love and protein. Have the best day of your entire life and I'll talk to you guys soon. Cheers. Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. Hopefully you got some value. If you did, and you want to learn more about how me and my team can help you scale your online fitness business to $10,000 a month, DM me 10K on Instagram at the real Brian Mark for more information and I'll reach out to you to see if I can help you grow an online coaching business.