Quick backstory — Instagram Carousels

Back in 2019, I was one of the pioneers in Instagram Carousel creation along with a few designers like Chris Do, Michael Janda and Dain Walker. It wasn't really a thing back then (this was pre-Reels era), so we had to kind of teach people to read these things.

One of the things that we figured out with Chris was that we needed to write the carousels in a way that they flow easily in the beginning, and then slow people down at the end.

If it was front heavy, people scrolled through.

As context, on Instagram, you can upload up to 10 images per post. So what we started to do was using that as a 10 slide Keynote presentation to teach things.

They looked something like this and you could swipe through them in a good flow:

Then ChatGPT came along...

So when I started using ChatGPT in 2022, this was the first thing I wanted to create with it.

But no matter how I tried to format my "mEgApRoMpT" it wouldn't give me a useful output.

So I had to break down my thinking and creation process.

First, I had to teach ChatGPT what's the overall structure of an IG carousel like this one. Like, there is a thumbnail slide, a hook, maybe a story, and then heavy hitter slides toward the end, and last slide is a CTA slide.

Then, I had to explain how I like to think, how I write, and so on.

And within a single chat thread, with my prompts saved, it worked flawlessly. But if I wanted to wrap it in a GPT, it didn't quite work the same.

So what I did was that I simply wrote down everything the GPT needs to know about my kind of Carousel structure and writing style, and saved it as "Rules of Writing" and "Rules of Structure" in the prompt.

Then my Custom GPT instructions ended like this:

Steps to achieve goal:
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1. First, just tell the user what you will include in the carousel post in 3-5 bullet points maximum. Don’t worry about slide numbers yet. User will say “next”, then proceed.
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2. Create an outline now with slide numbers. User will say “next”, then you should proceed to next step.
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3. Write the entire carousel.

And if you've taken our Prompt Engineering course before, you know that this is the 6th and last key element to a prompt.

How this changes things

What I love about how this prompt makes the GPT operate is that we can pause at each step, think, give feedback, ask for modifications, and then we can move on to the next step without having top copy-paste prompts from a separate document.

So the key thing in this prompt is to tell the model that "user will say NEXT, then proceed" or something similar, like "Wait for the user to confirm your response or give feedback, only then move on to the next step."

I'm sure just by reading this, you already have a lot of ideas on work or personal processes you could configure a GPT for this way.

If you want to try my Carousel creator GPT, I just launched it, here is the link to it. If you try it and it doesn't work so well, please let me know by just replying to this email with a shared chat link, and I'll incorporate that into the GPT as I refine it.

Taking it a step further

Another use case for this trick is to save your prompts or personas into a PDF file, and upload that as a knowledge file into the GPT, and refer to just the headings or titles in the PDF in the Instruction prompt.

That way, your GPT could handle hundreds, or even thousands of pre-defined prompts.

You can also put in conditions — if statements — into the prompt in plain English (I also call this pseudocode - maybe it deserves its own email).

For example, in one of the steps I could tell a GPT to only do things if certain conditions are met. Like "if the user provided a certain CTA to include in the post, include that, otherwise include a CTA to follow them for more."

Let me know how you like the Insta Carousel GPT (and this email, I really loved and appreciated the feedback I got from dozens of you for the Monday email!)

Talk soon,

Dave

P.S: Wanna build your own Custom GPT?

I have a 4 hour course on building and launching Custom GPTs, that can help you go from idea to published Custom GPT in a few hours. It's part of our Prompt Master Course and you can already watch this course among many others instantly if you sign up by clicking HERE.