Adding Music to Instagram Carousels Will Get You More Reach

With yesterday's news about carousels came an interesting new strategy recommendation for Instagram posts.

In both Adam Mosseri's post and the Creators account on IG, they recommend adding music to your posts and carousels, saying: "Photos and carousels with music are now eligible to appear in the reels tab, helping you reach new audiences"

And, yes, I checked this out, and I did see multiple posts appearing in the Reels feed that were not Reels. They were single images that had music on them.

THIS IS A BIG DEAL!

Now, you can increase the reach and distribution of your photos and carousels to Reels viewers - both followers and non-followers - by adding music to the post. If you're someone who prefers to create photo posts, not Reels, you could simply add music to your feed post to help get it distributed into the Reels feed to reach those viewers who prefer the Reels feed.

But... the skeptic in me wonders about the longevity of this strategy... If they're going to put feed and carousels in the Reels tab, why not just combine the feeds altogether? If this works "now", and marketers (who ruin everything lol) start putting music on all single image posts and carousels to get reach, will they continue to get that reach and distribution months from now?

And this only works if posting natively on IG. Third party tools don't allow you to add music from the IG music library.

Regardless, for now, this seems like a strategy worth implementing when you can.