My 4 design rules for 5 million views on LinkedIn

_{Day 164/100}

Hey—It's Tim. 

I love a good swipe-fest - I’ve done 5 million views on LinkedIn carousels and still brag about it at parties. (I’m that guy….)

But somewhere along the way marketers decided every slide needs to carry the weight of War & Peace.

Tiny fonts,
triple-stacked paragraphs,
arrows pointing to nowhere.

I end up squinting, scanning, and finally bailing because I still don’t know what you want me to see.

Somewhere along the line we forgot that carousels are visual.

The design needs to hold my attention whilst you spoon feed me the details.

I do enough work with my job.
I shouldn’t feel like I have to clock into my lunch-break doom scroll.

The four rules I had to hit 5 mil impressions

Here’s what I learnt after posting over 100 carousels. Once this clicked I was easily hitting 50k impressions daily.

1. Begin with a bone-simple template
   Two text layers, one image layer, max. Guardrails > inspiration when you’re on deadline.
   

2. Supersize your text
   

   

   180k impressions. First version did nearly 230k

   
   If Grandma can’t read it on her iPhone Mini, it’s too small. Make the headline scream, let the subhead whisper.
   

3. One idea per slide, no exceptions
   

   

   The Penfriend launch did nearly 4m impressions over the three founders LinkedIns

   
   Think billboard, not blog post. Slice your narrative into bite-size beats your audience can swallow mid-scroll.
   

4. Chain hooks across 2–3 slides
   

   

   90k impressions

   
   Tease ➔ reveal ➔ payoff. Those mini-cliff-hangers are what keep the swipes (and dwell time) piling up.

Run that checklist before you hit “post,” and watch the swipe-offs turn into saves, shares, and sweet, sweet DMs.

✌️ Tim "I Have Scrolled Enough" Hanson
CMO @Penfriend.ai

Same brain, different platforms: X, Threads, LinkedIn.

P.S. I think I need to get back on LinkedIn…. I used to enjoy making carousels, even though they take hours…

Penfriend.ai
Made by content marketers. Used by better ones.