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It’s October? Q4 is here? Didn’t we set New Year’s Resolutions, like… 3 months ago? No clue how 2024’s slipping away at this rate, but I hope everyone’s staying cozy with your holiday content plans locked… or at least well underway…

We’ve got some tactical social for you today, along with:

• TikTok’s holiday advertising guide for brands

• A $5 tool to help you start writing on LinkedIn

• A bunch of pictures of hot dogs.

—Jack Appleby

Social Breakdown: Netflix’s 20-slide Instagram Carousel featuring… hot dogs?

I love simple, effective, tactical social moves. We can talk strategy & conceptual til we’re blue in the face, but those big ideas flop without proper execution through each platform’s native features.

Take Instagram Carousels. Meta just expanded Carousels’ capabilities to allow 20 slides per post, so Netflix used the format in a fun way to promote their hot dog eat-a-thon.

But this post’s smart tactical strategy runs much deeper than just using a new feature.

The Content

Netflix needed some content to promote Chestnut vs. Kobayashi: Unfinished Beef, a live hot dog eating competition between two legends known for stuffing franks down their gullet.

Their move? They used Instagram Carousels to create a long, long image portraying how many hot dogs it takes to break the world record.

Here’s the first slide:

Netflix didn’t just make a carousel, though. With Instagram upping the max length to 20 slides, they extended the gag as far as humanly possible.

Here’s what the entire carousel looks like side-by-side.

There are bunches of tactically smart plays within this one post, so I’m just gonna call ‘em as I see ‘em, along with a few minor changes to give it a lil’ extra mustard.

Tactic 1: An obvious social hook

Netflix is promoting a hot dog eating contest. What’s the best way to make us curious how many hot dogs will be eaten? The good ol’ “world record” social hook. Great feats & never-done-before attempts are forever a great way to grab audience, even when it’s about sausages.

Tactic 2: Simple, text-first, highly-readable design

It’s a high-res hot dog on a yellow construction paper background with big bold black text and a bright red arrow. It’s the most readable asset you’ve ever seen. We know exactly what the point of the post is + what they want us to do.

And in its simplicity, the image is striking. That yellow background contrasts the wedding engagements & baby photos in your feed well, grabbing your eye.

Tactic 3: The clearest CTA ever

Carousels perform well algorithmically because a carousel swipe counts as an engagement, so when Netflix decided to use a carousel for this post, they explicitly told us what to do: “swipe to find out” with a big ol’ red arrow. No way to confuse that! And because the hook is so strong, we’re gonna do just that.

Tactic 4: Second CTA on Pic #2

One of Instagram Carousel’s best features: if a user is scrolling IG and doesn’t engage with your carousel the first time around, often the algorithm will put it back in their feeds again, this time with the second image showing first.

Because of that bonus bump, when your carousel has sequential storytelling*, you’ll want your second post in the carousel to offer similar instruction to your first post. In this case, Netflix threw “Keep Swiping” with the red arrow up a second time—so, so smart. If this post popped in your feed with pic #2, you’d see the CTA, a bunch of numbered hot dogs, read the caption, then start the swiping.

*Yes, I’m outlining the hero’s journey of these hot dogs with social analysis. Welcome to 2024 social media strategy.

We’ve got 4 more tactics + 3 of my own strategic recs, but a quick word from our sponsor:

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Okay, more hot dogs.

Tactic 5: Going ridiculously long with the carousel

Dragging out the bit is usually a bad thing in social—a poorly-paced video can kill watch-through and engagement—but when your bit’s all about showing a colossal amount of something, committing to an extremely long carousel is the move.

Viewers just keep on swiping and swiping and swiping to see just how many hot dogs it’ll take the hit the record. More swipes = more engagement = more algorithmic push = more understanding of how impressive the feat is.

Tactic 6: Everlong visual format

Once we get into slides 3, 4, 5, the goal is for the users to furiously swipe to see just how many hot dogs hits the record. That means we don’t want a user thinking about anything else but that swipe, which makes the consistent format essential—we’re processing more and more hot dogs on that yellow background with no mental interruptions from design changes or messaging interruptions.

And yes, this tactic’s title is just an excuse for me to drop a Foo Fighters reference.

Tactic 7: Summarizing the posed question

We’ve swiped and swiped, but we probably didn’t count. Explicitly stating how many hot dogs we’ve chowed down is important—don’t make the users do any work!

Tactic 8: Endslate promoting the show

Remember, we’ve gotta get the swipers back to the show. By ending the carousel with a transition towards the hot dog eating contest, we get a clear social-to-show promotion line, which users will fully understand when they read the caption. We have a chance to watch all these hot dogs get eaten LIVE. Lucky us! (that’s not sarcasm, have you SEEN these guys eat?!)

A couple things I’d tweak…

Net net, I love this post. It’s smart strategy, cost-effective, it cleanly promotes the product in a socially engaging way, and Netflix remains one of the best-in-class social brands. But hey, this is an analysis newsletter & there’s a few tactical tweaks I think are worth considering.

Always prioritize story & purpose over social features

This carousel uses all 20 slides Netflix offers in the feature update, but all the analysis above is actually only hitting the first 13 slides + the final pic. After those 76 hot dogs with buns on yellow, they repeat the gag again, this time without buns, adding another 7 slides to the post.

It’s just kinda unnecessary, especially considering the Chestnut vs. Kobayashi eating competition used hot dogs with buns. And with the yellow background ending for the black background behind the bare hot dogs, I suspect there was a huge drop off at slide 13—the “story” ended when we found out the world record. Could’ve & should’ve ended the carousel with slide 13.

My guess here: maybe Netflix wanted to be the first brand to post a 20-slide carousel either for potential PR pick-up or to be recognized by Instagram as an example of 20-slide carousels. When I was Senior Director of Creative Strategy at Laundry Service, a big client ask from Beats By Dre was for “First Evers”—they wanted to do things on social that had never been done. We’d occasionally sacrifice picture-perfect social strategy for it, knowing the social platforms would feature our work in their sales decks, promoting our brands + our agencies. I’m willing to bet something similar happened here.

The last pic in the carousel should sell the post + the show

I mentioned summarizing the posed question & promoting the show on the endslate in tactics 7 & 8? Both are good, but the most perfect version of this post does both within a single post. I’d have love to see “Yep, that’s 76 hot dogs in ten minutes… and on September 2, two men will break that record.” Still compelling, accomplishes more per post, and doesn’t risk losing the audience’s understanding of the post 7 slides after the world record reveal.

Adding a promotional poster as a final slide

One of my favorite Instagram accounts is @DinosAndComics. They make these incredibly wholesome tales of dinos chatting about life. For you, though, they use a social tactic I rarely see—tossing merch posts at the end of their carousels. See below:

Throwing the actual promotional poster for the Netflix Live Event as the final carousel post likely would’ve made understanding crystal clear + given an additional shareable asset (you can imagine the “LOL we gotta watch this” DMs between bros").

BUT, all of these things are nitpicky. Amazingly done, Netflix. Let’s all chomp a dog.

Social Cues

There are so many social big thinkers out there, writing all kinds of amazing strategies, analysis, and breakdowns. All ships rise with the tide, so here are a few reads from other places I think you could learn from.

7 apps JT Barnett uses every day to run his content service business

I’ve always looked up to JT’s drive & disclosure—he gives away all the creator & content thinking to us! I’m also a sucker for a tools list, so check out what your favorite creator’s favorite creator uses to run the biz.

TikTok’s Holidays For You 2024 Guide For Brands

TikTok’s dropping bunches of white papers lately. This one’s hitting the best ways to blend trends and seasonal needs into your TikTok ads, and it’s a good read.

A $5 tool to help you start sharing your brain on LinkedIn

I wanna help professionals get comfortable sharing their wonderful experience on LinkedIn. Content’s a whole lot better move for finding your next job than cold applying. Check out Break An Egg, the $5 tool I built that’ll help you craft some LinkedIn content that’s about YOU.