Instagram Posts With Several Photos

Ten photos, one post

Since yesterday, a single Instagram post can hold up to ten photos or videos. People see the first in their feed and swipe sideways for the rest.

Until now, a business with a finished project had two poor choices: post one photo and leave out the story, or post eight over a week and fill followers' feeds with fragments.

Advertisers have had a swipeable format for some time. Now every account can use it in an ordinary post, with one caption and one set of likes and comments for the lot.

For a business whose work happens in stages, that changes what a single post can show.

How it appears

In the feed, the post shows its first photo with small dots beneath it, one for each item. Plenty of people will never notice the dots.

On your profile, the grid shows only the first photo, with a small icon in the corner to say there are more.

Every item in a post shares the same shape, so photos taken at different angles need to survive the same crop. Filters can be applied to all at once or one by one.

Good uses for a small business

• Start to finish: one project, from bare site to handover.
• Before and after: the result first, then where it began.
• A range: one product in every colour or size.
• Step by step: how something is made or done.
• One event: an open house, a market stall, a team day.
• The people: one member of staff per photo.

The first is the one most trades and makers are already sitting on. The photos exist on someone's phone, and until this week there was no good way to post them together.

The first image does all the work

Only the first photo competes in the feed. It decides whether anyone stops, and nobody swipes through a post they have already scrolled past.

That means leading with the strongest image, not the earliest. A muddy site on day one is the start of the story and a poor reason to stop scrolling.

For a before and after, put the after first and say in the caption to swipe for where it began. The contrast works in either order; the stop only works one way.

Fewer, better, in order

Ten is a limit, not a target. Five or six strong photos make a better post than ten with four fillers, and people give up on a sequence that repeats itself.

Each photo should show something the others do not: a new stage, a new angle, a detail up close.

Check the order before sharing. It is far easier to get right before the post goes up than after.

A worked example

A log home builder with a yard outside a small Interior town builds handcrafted homes.

Each shell is assembled log by log at the yard, every log numbered, then taken apart, trucked to the owner's lot and raised again on the foundation.

For years its Instagram account showed one photograph every few weeks: logs on the peeling deck, a crane, a finished porch. Each was good. Nobody scrolling past could tell they belonged to the same house.

This week it posted its most recent home as a single post, with the finished house at dusk, lights on, as the first photo.

Then came the logs arriving, the shell rising at the yard, the numbered logs on the truck, the crane on site and the great room.

The caption opened with where the house stands and how long the build took, then gave each photo a numbered line.

The yard crew now photographs the same stages on every build, so each home gets its own post at handover.

Shoot the sequence on purpose

The best sequences are planned before the work starts, not assembled afterwards from whatever turned up on someone's phone.

For a before and after, take both from the same spot and the same height, so the only thing that changes is the work itself.

For a project, list the stages worth showing and photograph each one as it happens. A missed stage cannot be taken later.

One caption for the whole post

One caption covers every photo, and only its first line or two show before the word more.

Use that opening to say what the post is and that there is more to see: a finished home, start to finish, in six photos.

Then number the photos in the caption, one short line each, so someone on photo five knows what they are looking at.

Video in the sequence

Any item can be a video instead of a photo, and a short clip between stills works well: a crane lifting a log, a door swinging shut, a machine running.

Videos in the feed start without sound, so the clip has to make sense silently.

Keep video out of the first position unless it really is the strongest thing you have. A still photo is quicker to read at a glance.

The website still tells the full story

An Instagram post is a glimpse, seen for a few seconds by people who already follow you.

The full project, with the location, the materials, the timeline and the photos that did not make the cut, belongs on your website, where it can be found in search and where you decide how it looks.

Post the sequence on Instagram and put the whole story on a project page. Each does a job the other cannot.

The counter-case

Not every business has a sequence to show. An accountant, a consultant or a clinic whose work is private has little to put in ten photos, and should not invent a story to fill them.

A single strong photograph remains a perfectly good post, and a feed of nothing but long sequences asks a lot of followers.

Use the new format when the story genuinely needs several pictures, and lead with the one that stops the scroll.

Your first sequence

1. Pick one finished project with photos at each stage.
2. Choose five or six that each show something new.
3. Put the strongest image first, not the earliest.
4. Check each photo survives the same crop.
5. Write a first caption line that says what follows.
6. Number the photos in the caption.
7. Add the full project to your website.

Step three is the one that decides whether the other photos are ever seen. Nobody swipes through a post they did not stop for.

Facebook's change for businesses last week is covered in job posts on your Facebook page.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.