In recent years Instagram’s story function has grown to be just as popular as posting within the feed. It is a great way to increase your engagement with followers. As Instagram continues to introduce new story tools, the opportunity to make more refined and interactive content grows every day!
From Polls, Links, Quizzes, Countdowns, and Questions, Instagram’s stickers can help to stimulate business growth and create a more immersive experience for your followers. Read more to learn about these fun and helpful extras!
Polls
Polls are an interactive, customisable feature that allows you to pose any question to your followers, providing them with two options to choose from. Whichever answer they’ve chosen is delivered straight to you, allowing you to also share the results back to your followers.
Why? Great for you and your followers
Polls give your followers a straight-forward and instant way to interact with you beyond conventional likes and comments. The personable tone of posing a question also creates a deeper connection than they’ll value. It lets them know that their opinion matters to you. The simplicity of polls means you don’t have to invest resources to gain insights. When you’re looking for a pulse check from your audience, it’s the easiest way to see what resonates with your customers and what doesn’t!
Question Stickers
Question stickers prompt your followers to ask you a question. The sticker box displays your question and a typing box for them to respond. You will find their questions as a reply to your stories, which you can share for your followers to see.
Why? For Insights and Content
Q & As can entice your followers and stimulate insights. Many brands use this function to collect data or to complete routine general feedback but Q & As can form valuable content for your page.
For example, a beauty brand could answer questions regarding treatments or products and integrate videos in their story response. You could implement shoppable tags too to make respective content more accessible. This is a subtle, cheeky way of marketing your products or services without being as obvious as the traditional feed.
Link Stickers
As of August 2021, Instagram has retired the swipe-up feature and created a new link sticker for Stories. This sticker allows you to connect to any external source of your liking. Even better is that Links are now available for ALL users, not just those with 10K followers or verified accounts!
This new sticker feature means you have more creative agency over how links appear within Story frames, making it easier to drive your followers to where you’d like them to go. Link stickers means more visibility to your call to actions, leading to more clicks and conversions!
Countdown Stickers
As the name implies, a sticker that counts down to a date and time that you set. Countdowns are perfect for building momentum surrounding a product launch or an event of some sort. Your followers can also subscribe to your countdown event which will set them a reminder when time is up!
They’re also able to share the countdown with their own followers boosting your reach beyond your own community.
GIFS: A little bit of fun, a lot of added value
Finally, Instagram offers a wide array of animated and static graphics that you can overlay onto your image or video. This is an easy way to highlight the fun, playful side of your brand personality, without compromising the aesthetic of your beautifully curated content.
Remember you should be offering your followers value every time you post, so a light-hearted moment will definitely go a long way for maintaining interest and engagement.
Information Sourced From Social Media Today and AgoraPulse
