Instagram Story Questions and Poll Stickers: Everything You Need to Know

Instagram Story Questions and Poll Stickers: Everything You Need to Know

Instagram stories are used by 500 million people every single day. They are popular because of two reasons. One is that they last just 24 hours. This triggers FOMO and people want to see it before it vanishes forever. The other reason is stickers, which make it easy for anyone to make creative content.

Two amazing stickers you should try out are, questions and polls as they get people to interact more with your stories. Your followers love these stickers as they get to share their opinions.

How do Instagram story questions and polls work?

Here’s a quick guide to help you understand and use story questions and polls...

Posting an Instagram story question

It starts with the same process you use white posting any other story on your Instagram account. You simply take a photo or video or gif from your Android or iOS phone and upload it to a new Instagram story, click on stickers and choose the question sticker and overlay it over the content.

Instagram stories question sticker

The question will then be displayed along with an answer box and your followers can type in their answers.

instagram question

They can type the answers in how many ever times they want. You will see the answers in the story viewers list.

If someone asks a question, you can tap on it and create a new story with an answer. When you see answers in your viewers list, you will be able to see who wrote it, but when you display it publicly in a story people won’t be able to view the username and photo.

Posting an Instagram story poll

Here again, you follow the same process, the main difference is that you need to choose a poll sticker and overlay it. After that, you can add the question and customize the options.

instagram poll

Right now, you can only add two choices.

After your followers poll, they will be able to see the number of votes each answer got in real-time. You can look at the results in the viewers list. Here, you will even be able to see what each viewer chose.

Followers will only be able to see answers for the first 24 hours, but you will be able to access them forever.

You will usually get more interactions with polls as people can instantly choose an answer. But with questions, you get more quality answers from people who are most passionate about you as they take the time to think things and leave an answer. This is why you should use both to reach as many followers as you can.

3 Ways to Use Instagram Stories Polls and Questions Stickers

Here are a few ways you can use Instagram stories and polls…

To research your audience:

One of the keys to success on Instagram or any other social media is a good understanding of your audience’s needs and interests. If you know this you will not only be able to create more engaging content but also products they will want to buy.

The usual route people take is to create long surveys with 8 to 15 questions with a survey tool and then ask people to spend several minutes answering questions.

While you can take advantage of story questions and polls to do this. You can take each question and post it as an individual question story and poll and gradually get the answers. You will also be able to use the viewers’ list to see what each person posted. You can contact them via DM to get even more answers.

A good example is this one from Hubspot.

instagram question idea

They simply asked their followers for their favorite marketing tips. This can not only help them understand their followers’ interests but also gather marketing tips they can use in their own marketing.

Another thing you can try is to create a story with a single question or poll and link to the full survey on a website. Make sure you include a call to action in the story that asks people to check out the full survey. This will only work if you have more than 10,000 followers as you can’t share links in stories if you have fewer than 10,000.

Run an AMA

You might have heard of AMAs [Ask Me Anything(s)] on Reddit. This is where a celebrity or a thought leader on a subject or any person with a unique experience publishes an original post and asks people to ask him or her, anything.

People do that in the comments and the original poster responds.

This is something you can do with Instagram questions too, as people can ask the owner of the account or the social media manager or CEO or product creator or another person at the company questions and they can answer them. The only difference is that it will be private as you will need to respond to them via DMs.

You have the option to respond to stories with answer stories as I mentioned earlier, but you should only do this with one or two posts as you don’t want to make too many of them.

Another option is to wait for this story to expire and after that, you can create a stories slideshow where in the first slide you tell people about the question story you made and include all the answers in the rest of the slides. If you feel that your future followers will find these answers helpful, you can highlight them.

Sometimes these questions and answers will make great additions to the FAQ page.

An example is this one from Ali Fedotowsky.

instagram poll idea

Ali organizes AMAs on a regular basis where people can ask her questions.

Get creative:

You can also get very creative with stories polls and questions like Netflix did here.

creative instagram story

They created a poll and asked their followers whether Ross Butler, an actor from one of their tv shows should do standing crunches or ping pong crunches. People picked ping pong crunches, of course, and he did it.

instagram stories

This is a fun way to get a lot of followers involved. More people will usually respond to stories like this as there is a reward in the end. In this case, the reward was one of their favorite actors listening to their exercising instructions.  

So, don’t be afraid to think outside the box and come up with something unique. The more unique your question or poll is, the better the response rate will be. And include a reward to get more responses. It can be as simple as you publishing a silly photo or video.

4 Creative Instagram Question Story Ideas You Should Check Out

Here are some creative ways you can use the Instagram questions feature.

Ask people about their day

Asking someone about how their day was can seem generic, but people like questions like this as they can simply answer with a line or two or write a whole essay ranting about their day. People are lonely right now because of all the social distancing. Try posting this question on a Monday or Friday to see the response you get.

To encourage people to respond, you might want to write a bit about how your day is going. You can just overlay it on the image or record a video with you saying it. It will help you establish a strong connection with your followers.

A good example is this one.

instagram questions how to use

She’s asking about her followers’ day but in a very non-generic manner. This question can also work for Thanksgiving.

Ask niche-specific questions:

To get maximum responses from your ideal audience you can ask niche-specific questions. For example, if you are a fitness supplement company, you can ask your followers a question like “How Did Your Workout Go Today?” or “How Much Water Do You Drink in a Day?”

If you are a perfume company, you can ask people a question like “What Is Your Favorite Flower?”

The questions you can ask are endless. Niche-specific questions like this will help you understand your audience better and the answers will give you both post and product ideas.

Invite an influencer for a takeover:

A very powerful way to generate engagement is to invite an influencer your audience likes and ask the influencer to post on your account. This could be an AMA where your followers ask the influencers about their life and they answer the questions or the influencers can ask your followers questions about theirs.

Make sure you get the influencer to promote the takeover on her or his account as this will attract the influencers’ followers onto yours. A good example of a takeover is this one between Harpers Bazaar and Jamie King.

instagram takeover example

To get takeovers right, you need to work with the most relevant influencers. So, make sure you pick them wisely. Otherwise, you will end up with low levels of engagement and a loss of followers.

Run a contest:

You can run a caption contest, where you share a meme or a comic and ask your followers to caption it. You can award the person who wrote the best caption a prize. This can attract a lot of followers as your followers will invite their friends to take part.

It will also give you a lot of content to post in the future as you can create a story slideshow with the best captions. An example is the one from WeWork.

instagram question contest

They simply asked their followers to guess where they work.

These are just a few types of question stories you can create. If you look around online, you will find many more. You, yourself can brainstorm and come up with unique ones.

3 Creative Instagram poll ideas you should check out

Now here are some Instagram poll ideas…

Run a quiz:

People will jump at the chance of showing off their knowledge. This is why you should run some polls where you ask a question in the image or video and place the answers below with the poll sticker. People need to pick the right answer.

You can offer a prize, but these types of quizzes don’t require one as people just enjoy the experience and it takes a couple of seconds. They just need to tap the right answer.

An example is this one from Vanity Fair.

instagram poll example

The royal wedding was trending, so they created a fun poll around it.

For best results, try to ask questions related to your niche, especially on trending topics. If you are in the travel niche, you can ask them about the capital of a country and offer two choices. While if you are in the pet industry, you can share pictures of dogs or cats and ask people to vote for the right breed.

Ask people to vote for their favorite new products:

If you’re developing products and want an opinion from a third party, you can create a poll asking people whether they like the product or not as Mimi Hammer did here.

instagram poll idea

This will help market your product even before you launch. And it will even prevent you from launching a product that won’t sell. Feedback like this will make it easy for you to create products that people want to buy.

Drive traffic:

You can use polls to drive traffic. In the first slide of a story, you can ask a question and ask people to vote. While in the next one you can ask people “Do you want to know the answer?” and ask them to click on the link in the story (you will need to include a link) to find the answer.

To get this to work, make sure you write a detailed answer on the page they go to and optimize the post for lead generation by adding option forms. If you don’t do that, at least, add the retargeting pixel as you can retarget this audience later with conversion-focused ads that promote relevant products.

Creating visuals like these might seem like a lot of work, but there are several story templates that help you create beautiful images that stand out in the Instagram feed.

Conclusion

Instagram story questions and polls make it easy for everyone from bloggers to marketers to small business owners to create highly engaging posts. If you want to get more exposure, followers, and sales from Instagram, make sure you begin using them today. You might also want to play around with some of the other stickers such as emoji slider, hashtag, quiz, and countdown as they make Instagram stories fun too.

You can actually create a question story to find out what stickers they like the most.