Instagram polls have been around for a while now, and the sticker has remained largely unchanged. As a result, so has the way people use poll games on Instagram stories.
A typical Instagram user would be following hundreds of accounts, and at any given point in time, a LOT of them would have Stories put up. You have to make your stories stand out from the rest.
This way, your followers will have a higher inclination to view your Stories more than others. Following this, the Instagram algorithm will place your Stories before most other pages! That’s the goal, right? That’s exactly where you want to be with your Instagram Stories.
We’re going to discuss how you can keep your Stories fresh with Instagram poll games and other great ideas. Before that let’s talk about how to add a poll to Stories.
How to Create a Poll on Instagram Stories
Step 1: Add the image for your Insta Story
A swipe to the right of your Instagram scrolling feed will navigate you to the Stories tab. Additionally, here, you can choose to click an image or upload one that’s already on your image gallery.
You can access the images from your image gallery on the bottom-left of the Stories tab.
Step 2: Navigating to the Stickers menu and select the Poll sticker
After selecting your image, tap on the Stickers button, as shown below.
You’ll then see a colorful menu with diverse stickers. Locate the Poll sticker, and tap on it.
Side note: If you want to keep your content fresh, don’t forget to experiment with ALL of these overlays. They’re dynamic, and usable in many contexts.
After this, all that’s left to do is to add your question and poll options!
Alternatively, you can leave the question blank on this sticker, and style your question with the Add Text option on your Story.
You’re done! You can play around with this glorious sticker now.
Fun Instagram story ideas with polls, and other great overlays
1. Tournaments and showdowns
If you’re a reviewer of things, you could consider having a mega, full-fledged tournament or comparison between products/services, right on your Instagram stories. The idea is to pit the considered products side-by-side and get audience opinions on which ones are superior.
One of the biggest showdowns of this kind was arranged by MKBHD, probably the best-known tech reviewer on the Internet today. He called it the Blind Smartphone Camera Test, and this was conducted in 4 distinct rounds. To start, the first round featured 16 phones, with two of them competing against each other in each of the eight Stories. Identical images were clicked with each, along with a poll through which viewers could indicate which ones they preferred.
After 4 total elimination rounds, a winner was decided. As a result, this showdown went viral amongst the global tech community, and just shows the potential Instagram Stories have, in terms of generating excitement and buzz.
If you’re planning a showdown like this one, make sure to keep a time interval between rounds to build up anticipation, and to allow for any discussions that have to be taken up. A well-executed set of Stories can give your account a lot of views and attention.
And remember, what made this possible was a humble Instagram Polls sticker.
2. The classic Instagram poll quiz
Okay, so poll quizzes on Instagram Stories are mainstream now, but this doesn’t make them any less fun! Quizzes are Instagram poll games that everyone loves, regardless of whether it’s for a quick brain exercise, or to find out if they’re smarter and sharper than others.
Of course, when you answer an Instagram poll games quiz correctly, it makes you feel like a winner, and this can create a good impression of your brand.
There are a couple of ways of carrying out quizzes on Insta stories. You can either use the poll sticker to receive answers (and then reveal them on the next slide) or use the dedicated Quizzes sticker shown below.
3. Polls to keep your viewers in suspense
If there are exciting things going on with your brand, don’t be in a rush to reveal them! Building anticipation and suspense works great, and it gets people talking. Instagram Stories is a great platform to generate. A good, attention-grabbing hook won’t fail you, and will only bring more people to your profile.
For example, if you’re collaborating with someone you think your audience would be excited about, tease the collab on your Instagram Story, and put up a poll asking your audience to guess the brand/influencer you’re collaborating with! You can also do this with new products, events, and general updates to get people talking.
Instagram also has a great sticker for building suspense and anticipation. It’s called the countdown sticker, and it’s been there for a while now. If you’ve been actively viewing Instagram Stories in the past couple of years, you would have seen profiles posting Stories counting down to the time of their friends’ birthdays! The sticker can be used for brands as well. Here’s an example:
Isn’t this cool? What’s great is that when your followers view Stories with countdown stickers they’ll have an option to set a reminder for the time you’re counting down to! This is one of the niftiest features on Instagram Stories if you use it right!
4. Engage Your Audience Weekly with ‘This-or-That’ Poll Games
As far as Instagram poll games go, this and that ones are fairly common. However, this doesn’t take away from the fact that they are super engaging. As long as they contain topics that your audience cares about, you can expect more than a decent interaction on these Stories.
Sometimes, even when users don’t have an opinion or an answer to your poll, they will choose an option just out of curiosity to know what the majority of people are in favor of.
One way of doing this is by tying it to an event or an occasion. For example, on National Read A Book Day, 9GAG had a series of Stories with polls about whether people preferred the movie version or the book version of a particular Story.
It’s little touches like this that make 9GAG one of the most popular memes/entertainment pages on the platform; they just never fail to keep their audience engaged.
Alternatively, you can also use the ‘this-or-that’ format in the context of your own products, or your products pitted against your competitors. This acts as informal market research, and the information gained from Stories this way can be surprisingly insightful.
5. Use the Instagram Stories Question sticker for unstructured answers!
In fact, take it a step ahead and post some answers on your subsequent stories! This will motivate people to participate and answer your questions.
What should these questions be about? Anything, really.
For instance, you can ask your followers about their thoughts on your industry, your brand vs. competing brands, recommendations for future products, etc. The fact that you are considering the opinions of your followers will make them feel valued and will increase their admiration of your brand. At the same time, you are gaining valuable insights into your target market!
Alternatively, you can post a question without sticking to the context of your industry. Simply putting up a “What’s on your mind? Vent it out below!” can garner an amazing response. Some people just need an outlet for their emotions, and doing this through your brand can generate very positive associations.
6. Host a mini-giveaway on your Insta stories!
Giveaways are a great way to provide an incentive for your followers to interact with your profile. While you can run a full-fledged campaign and give away expensive, valuable assets, you can also host a mini-giveaway on your Stories! Basically, the idea should be to give away items (that are smaller in value) to the first few people, or even to everybody that gets the poll answer correct. An example of this for a coffee marketer is shown below.
Doing Stories this way can increase engagement, while also encouraging and incentivizing purchases of your products! If you run a giveaway like this one weekly, it can also prompt more people to keep an eye on your Instagram, thus increasing your follower count!
Apart from directly increasing engagement, some contests and giveaways can also expose your brand to a wider set of Instagram users. When you ask for submissions from your followers tagging you, their follower base will see your content as well and will get an opportunity to hear/learn about your brand. A well-thought-out giveaway has a great potential of going viral, so make sure you design and ideate on these Instagram poll games thoughtfully!
7. Excite Your Followers with Exclusive News Reveals
If you have big news to share about your brand, your followers should be able to absorb it fully. For this to happen, just presenting information in a written/spoken style may not be your best alternative. Most people would passively absorb information if it is delivered like this.
Instead, make it interactive! For example, here’s a Story design we had put up on the Predis.ai Instagram handle, about an update to the app.
This was a very simple idea, but a lot of actions were taken on this Story, and there was a lot of curiosity generated. Subsequently, after the update was rolled out, we uploaded a few Stories on what exactly the update was, and how many respondents answered correctly! Furthermore, some traffic was diverted to Predis.ai when it was an absolute crunch moment for the app.
Generate a buzz in this way before delivering information, so more people would actually be willing to absorb it.
8. Make it fun with an Emoji Slider!
An Emoji Slider is as fun as it sounds. It is a cool way to engage with your audience and ask light-hearted fun questions using fun emojis in your Instagram Poll games. The very first step is to choose the image you wanna share with your audience. It can be anything exciting you have to show the world. Then after that swipe up and you will find a slider with a heart-eyes emoji. Select that and you will get the section where you can type anything you want.
You can also change the color of the text depending on what you like. Once you are done with that tap the heart-eyes emoji and select whatever you want. There is a plus sign where you can choose any emoji you want. It is fun and quirky and you can see the reaction of your audience once you post it.
9. Use it as a Distribution Channel
In this day and age, Instagram is not just a photo-sharing site anymore. It has become a full-blown marketing tool. You can use it as a Distribution channel and showcase your products or your services to your audience more efficiently and in an entertaining way.
One of the most used features for Instagram stories is the “Swipe up” feature, where you can lead the audience to your online store, your website, your new video, or anything on the internet that you have to offer. It’s excellent and super easy to use.
You first have to create a story and use whatever media you want to use, then tap the icon that looks like a chain at the top right of your screen. Then tap on “+URL” and enter the link of the website you want your audience to go to. When you are done, just simply post the story and you will see a swipe-up option.
But a big bummer is that not all can use the Swipe up feature, you must have a business account with more than 10k followers or have a verified account, then only you can use this feature.
10. Know your Audience
Instagram is not just a social media platform, it is like a virtual market. You can take advantage of the crowd on this platform and make a loyal customer base out of it if you do the marketing properly.
But to make a strong audience base, you have to know them better and understand what your audience wants from you and why are they following you.
And that’s why these Instagram polls and creative stories are important to keep your audience engaged and entertained by your posts. This helps in understanding your audiences and why they follow your account. Many brands do this on Instagram and that is what keeps their fans excited for their new posts.
Tips to Make the Most out of the Instagram Poll Games and Increase Engagement
Instagram is not just for sharing photos now, it is a business tool and it is a no-brainer that people are using it to promote their services and brand. One of the best ways is to post engaging and fun Instagram stories and polls. Here are some tips to make the most out of the polls and increase engagement.
1. Use polls to promote your products
If you are planning to launch a new product and want your audience to pay attention to it, the best way is to use an Instagram poll or something fun like that in the story with the product info as it creates direct engagement of the audience with the product post and might drive them to looking for more of what you have to offer.
2. Ask your followers what they want through the polls
Polls can be a great way to reach your audience in a fun way and understand what they want from your brand or business. It can be helpful to cater to the audience and craft products or services that will be a hit amongst your followers.
3. Make Polls into Fun and Engaging Games
Playing games and doing fun little quizzes can be awesome and super engaging for the followers. It can increase your following and overall engagement which is something hard to get on Instagram when there is so much competition.
Benefits of using Instagram Polls
Instagram polls can be fun to use and also very effective when used properly. It can increase followers and engagement which is every online brand’s dream. Here are some of the benefits of using Instagram polls.
1. Increases Engagement
Instagram polls increase engagement as it makes the followers directly interact with your stories and attracts them. This is great as it leads to the followers spending more time on your page and overall leads to the promotion of your brand.
2. Community Building
It is also a great tool to build a community online and spread brand awareness. Targeted polls and stories that cater to your community can be beneficiary and can be worth it in the long run.
3. Distribution Channel
Instagram can be a great distribution channel as it showcases your brand and services and attracts potential customers. It also works efficiently as it keeps existing customers loyal and attracts new ones if the content posted is interesting enough.
4. Create hype for your upcoming projects
Instagram stories can be a great way to create hype for your upcoming launches or projects. It can be done by teasing it and slowly revealing it on your Instagram stories. This creates awareness amongst the followers.
Essentially, if you haven’t started using Instagram’s brilliant stickers and overlays, you should seriously consider doing so.
Your ideas will only build on each other as you experiment with these, and you’ll find newer, fresher ways to keep using them. For other ways of increasing your Instagram engagement rate, check out this blog! If there are any Instagram poll games that have clicked with your audience, let us know!
Another thing to keep in mind is that you shouldn’t use Instagram Stories too extensively or too sparingly. If you only post one Story randomly every few days, it will look awkward and come off as poorly planned. It also may not show up in the first few Stories for many people, and they may have to swipe for a while to see your content. This is not ideal, and it can seriously affect your Story impressions and engagement.
On the other hand, if you post too many Stories in a single day, you’re giving your followers far too much to digest at once. They may even get bored in the midst of tapping through your Stories and swiping to the next account.
Thus, it is important to find a good balance between the two. Generally, a few Stories daily works best, but you should experiment before settling on an ideal number. What resonates most with your followers is what will work best for you.
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