Social Media Carousel

Automate and integrate engaging social media carousel content creation workflows

Category: content-creation Source: inference-sh-9/skills

Social Media Carousel is a community skill for creating multi-slide carousel posts for social media platforms, covering slide design, content sequencing, visual branding, text formatting, and export for Instagram, LinkedIn, and other platforms.

What Is This?

Overview

Social Media Carousel provides tools for designing multi-image carousel posts optimized for social media engagement. It covers slide design that creates visually consistent pages with branded backgrounds and typography, content sequencing that structures information flow across slides for story-telling engagement, visual branding that applies consistent colors, fonts, and logo placement across all carousel pages, text formatting that sizes and positions text for readability on mobile devices, and export that generates correctly sized images for each target platform. The skill helps creators produce engaging carousel content.

Who Should Use This

This skill serves content creators building social media posts, marketing teams producing branded carousel campaigns, and educators sharing information through visual slide sequences.

Why Use It?

Problems It Solves

Designing carousel slides individually in graphic editors is repetitive and slow. Maintaining visual consistency across multiple slides requires careful template management. Different platforms have different image size requirements that complicate exports. Content sequencing that drives engagement requires deliberate structure.

Core Highlights

Slide designer creates branded pages with consistent styling. Content sequencer structures information flow across slides. Brand applicator maintains colors, fonts, and logos throughout. Platform exporter generates correctly sized images for each target.

How to Use It?

Basic Usage

from dataclasses import (
  dataclass, field)
from PIL import (
  Image, ImageDraw,
  ImageFont)

@dataclass
class SlideContent:
  title: str
  body: str
  slide_num: int

@dataclass
class BrandConfig:
  bg_color: str = '#1a1a2e'
  text_color: str = '#fff'
  accent: str = '#e94560'
  width: int = 1080
  height: int = 1080

class CarouselMaker:
  def __init__(
    self,
    brand: BrandConfig
  ):
    self.brand = brand

  def make_slide(
    self,
    content: SlideContent
  ) -> Image.Image:
    img = Image.new(
      'RGB',
      (self.brand.width,
       self.brand.height),
      self.brand.bg_color)
    draw = ImageDraw.Draw(
      img)
    draw.text(
      (80, 200),
      content.title,
      fill=(
        self.brand.accent))
    draw.text(
      (80, 400),
      content.body,
      fill=(
        self.brand
        .text_color))
    draw.text(
      (980, 1000),
      f'{content.slide_num}',
      fill=(
        self.brand
        .text_color))
    return img

  def generate(
    self,
    slides: list[
      SlideContent],
    prefix: str
  ):
    for s in slides:
      img = self.make_slide(
        s)
      img.save(
        f'{prefix}_{s'
        f'.slide_num}.png')

maker = CarouselMaker(
  BrandConfig())
slides = [
  SlideContent(
    '5 Python Tips', '', 1),
  SlideContent(
    'Tip 1',
    'Use list comps', 2)]
maker.generate(
  slides, 'carousel')

Real-World Examples

from PIL import (
  Image, ImageDraw)
from pathlib import Path

class TemplateCarousel:
  PLATFORMS = {
    'instagram': (
      1080, 1080),
    'linkedin': (
      1200, 1200),
    'twitter': (
      1600, 900)}

  def __init__(
    self,
    platform: str
  ):
    dims = self.PLATFORMS[
      platform]
    self.w = dims[0]
    self.h = dims[1]
    self.images = []

  def add_text_slide(
    self,
    title: str,
    body: str,
    bg: str = '#0f3460'
  ):
    img = Image.new(
      'RGB',
      (self.w, self.h),
      bg)
    draw = ImageDraw.Draw(
      img)
    draw.text(
      (60, 150), title,
      fill='#e94560')
    draw.text(
      (60, 350), body,
      fill='#ffffff')
    self.images.append(img)

  def export(
    self,
    output_dir: str
  ) -> list:
    out = Path(output_dir)
    out.mkdir(
      exist_ok=True)
    paths = []
    for i, img in (
      enumerate(self.images)
    ):
      path = (
        out /
        f'slide_{i+1}.png')
      img.save(str(path))
      paths.append(
        str(path))
    return paths

carousel = TemplateCarousel(
  'instagram')
carousel.add_text_slide(
  'Design Tips',
  'Keep it simple')
carousel.add_text_slide(
  'Tip 1',
  'Use whitespace')
files = carousel.export(
  'output')
for f in files:
  print(f'Saved: {f}')

Advanced Tips

Start carousels with a hook slide that creates curiosity to drive swipe engagement. End with a call-to-action slide that prompts follows, saves, or shares. Use consistent visual elements across slides while varying content to maintain brand recognition.

When to Use It?

Use Cases

Generate a branded carousel post with tips formatted for Instagram square dimensions. Create a LinkedIn carousel summarizing key findings from a report. Produce a series of educational slides with consistent styling for social media distribution.

Important Notes

Requirements

Pillow Python package for image generation and text rendering. Brand guidelines including colors, fonts, and logo assets. Target platform specifications for correct image dimensions.

Usage Recommendations

Do: design for mobile-first since most social media consumption happens on phones. Use large, readable text sizes that remain clear on small screens. Test carousel flow by swiping through all slides before publishing.

Don't: use too much text per slide since social media users prefer visual and concise content. Mix different visual styles within a single carousel since consistency builds brand recognition. Forget to include branding elements on each slide for attribution.

Limitations

Programmatic text rendering with Pillow lacks advanced typography features like kerning and OpenType support. Each social media platform has different dimension requirements that need separate exports. Carousel engagement depends on content quality and platform algorithms beyond slide design.