The idea of using Instagram for business promotion isn’t new.
Once the platform got popularity among people from all over the world, businesses (both big and small ones) started marketing their products in-app to reach a wider audience of their potential customers.
However, the days when businesses used Instagram only for brand promotion are far behind us. With 1 billion monthly active users, 90% of whom are actively interacting with businesses in-app, collecting customer feedback is one of the most effective Instagram trends for businesses that want to improve their products, increase customer satisfaction, and bring their business to the next level.
If you’re looking for the best way to understand your customers better, collect their thoughts on your products, and much more, use Instagram polls–an interactive Instagram Story sticker that gives your followers an easy way to share their thoughts by tapping on the answer of their choice.
In this article, you’ll find out the top reasons why brands use Instagram story poll, as well as seven best practices for doing it. Let’s dive into it!
Why Brands Use Instagram Polls
In 2017, Instagram introduced a two-option poll sticker that allowed users to create a customizable Instagram story survey and interact with their followers. It gained popularity among ordinary users and brands. But most of you might be unaware of how to add poll to Instagram story. Now, Instagram polls offer businesses the ability to start a conversation with their fans in-app and achieve their business goals, so more and more companies are catching on.
Just imagine: around 60% of businesses use an interactive element like the poll sticker in Instagram Stories each month. If you wonder why this feature is so popular, take a look at the top three reasons why brands use Instagram polls.
- Interact with engaged viewers: With a short lifespan of 24 hours, Instagram Stories create a sense of urgency that encourages users to watch a Story from accounts they follow. However, adding a poll sticker is one of the best ways to boost Instagram engagement as people love sharing their thoughts, so it helps to grab their attention and interact with engaged viewers.
- Improve brand communication: Modern customers have a great variety of options, so they buy from brands that listen to their thoughts. As a result, it’s important to communicate with your consumers, and the poll sticker is a great way to start a conversation and therefore improve brand communication on Instagram. Before that, you need to learn how to share poll results on Instagram.
- Collect customer feedback: Practically every business aims at understanding their customers better through collecting customer feedback. With the polling feature, you can see the results in real-time with the users’ names that gives you an opportunity to gather customer feedback and get in touch with selected voters to ask more nuanced questions.
With the right Instagram Story ideas, you can use the poll sticker to achieve your business goals while keeping your following hooked and engaged. Let’s find out seven best practices of using Instagram polls.
Grab the Attention of Your Audience
Ephemeral content has quickly become one of the most popular content forms on social media. Today, 500 million people use Instagram Stories daily, so it can be difficult to cut through the noise and grab your audience’s attention. However, using the poll sticker is a great way to do it!
Why? People love sharing their thoughts and they want to be heard, so most of them are more likely to vote on their choice when you share a two-option poll sticker.
For instance, ASOS posts a series of Instagram Stories that show off various products and adds a poll sticker that invites viewers to vote on the best place to wear the featured item. Here’s how it looks like:
Are you a blogger or Instagram influencer? It’s high time to make money on Instagram as you can design your own merch and market it with Instagram Stories, adding an interactive poll sticker to hook your following’s attention to it. As a result, Instagram polls help not only businesses but also individual influencers who want to interact with their followers in-app.
Understand Your Followers’ Product Preferences
All customers are different, so their needs and wants vary, too. However, most business owners want to understand what their customers crave, so they send customer satisfaction surveys and ask consumers to share their product preferences to understand what products to produce.
With Instagram polls, you can also understand your followers’ product preferences in a fun and creative way. Example? J.Crew is interested in their customers’ preferences on sneakers’ design:
There are many ideas on how to ask about followers’ preferences with the poll sticker, but it’s always a good idea to create Stories that match your social media calendar. For example, you can ask about the customers’ gift preferences before the holiday rush to understand what gift boxes to create. Not only does it help to satisfy customers’ needs, but it also allows you to increase ecommerce sales.
Spark Interest in Your Products or Services
Who else wants to pique customers’ curiosity about your products or services? With the poll sticker, you encourage followers to share their thoughts, so they are more likely to pay attention to your message. As a result, it helps to hook their attention and arouse their interest.
Sephora knows how to spark interest in its products with the poll sticker. The company asks followers about their cosmetics brands and then adds a clickable Story link that redirects interested users to the landing page where they could learn more about these brands, their products, and much more.
Once you’ve reached 10k followers on your account, you can add a clickable Story link that allows you to land users to the right page and therefore drive website traffic, so it gives many benefits for your business.
Encourage User Engagement
The main idea of Instagram polls is to collect customer feedback, but it also gives you an opportunity to start a conversation and spark curiosity. With the Instagram repost feature, it can also help to boost user engagement as you can draw viewers’ attention to previously-published posts.
Check out how Booking did it. The company posted a beautiful photo on its main feed and wrote a post about the destination. Then, Booking reposted it to Instagram Stories and invited viewers to guess the post, including a clue on where to find the right answer.
To encourage more viewers to tap on your repost, it’s a smart idea to promote something that is beneficial for your customers. For example, if you have a customer loyalty program, you can write about its details in a post and then repost it to Stories, asking your followers to guess about its nuances with the poll sticker. Not only can it encourage user engagement, but it can also drive customer loyalty and trust.
Ask Nuanced Questions With The Emoji Slider
Using Instagram polls, you’re not limited to the poll sticker; you can also use the emoji slider to receive richer feedback from voters. Not only does the emoji slider add a layer of emotional context, but it also helps brands to get a relative intensity of opinion.
What is more, you can see a list of participants and their answers along with the average answer which gives you an opportunity to ask more nuanced questions. Check out how Oreo asked its followers about their favorite creme colors with the emoji slider:
The best thing about the emoji slider is that it gives a 15% higher interaction rate and you can choose an emoji that matches the context of your question best. As a result, you can add emotional context to your Instagram poll and establish an emotional connection with your viewers. Pretty good, huh?
Brainstorm Content Ideas for Instagram
No matter how good your social media marketing team is, you may have trouble making up engaging and useful content for your profile from time to time. Obviously, it’s important to use Instagram analytics to understand what posts work best for your followers, but you can also ask your followers to share their content preferences and the poll sticker is a great way to prepare the right content for your audience when you’re in doubt.
Learn from Whole Foods Market who asks its audience about their preferences on content ideas for their profiles, just like in the example below:
If you have more than two options for your audience, you can also use the emoji slider and offer several content ideas so that followers could choose the most interesting one for them. After all, followers are more likely to read your post and interact with it if you publish something that resonates with their interests.
Boost Interactivity in Instagram Story Ads
In the last few years, Instagram has become an important marketing tool for 25 million businesses who market and promote their products in-app. Since more and more companies hope for the attention of the same target audience, the competition is getting high here which means brands should find new ways to reach their potential customers and get more followers in-app. As a result, they create and run Instagram ad campaigns.
However, the number of Instagram ads that bombard users from all sides is growing, too. So brands test new ways to grab the attention of their target audience and encourage interested people to learn more about their company and its products.
The solution? Interactive Instagram Story ads! Adding a poll sticker in your ad is a proven way to grab audience attention and start a conversation with people who don’t follow your profile.
In honor of its new gender-fluid product line launch, Collusion added a poll sticker to ask viewers about their thoughts and therefore start a provocative conversation with potential customers.
But if you are afraid of a great number of inbox messages after publishing a similar ad, you can consider using social media engagement tools to manage all of the messages and comments from potential customers. It can give you an opportunity to promote your company outside of your following while keeping interested users engaged and satisfied.
Know How to Use Instagram Polls
With the growing popularity of Instagram Stories, brands get more and more ways to interact with their hooked followers and achieve their business goals. There are a great number of Instagram Story features that bring benefits to your business, but new Instagram polls offer a new and engaging way to start a conversation with viewers, collect their thoughts, and spark their interest in your company.
Companies of all sizes use Instagram polls and we have collected seven best practices of using Instagram polls for business growth, so it’s your time to choose the best way to interact with your audience and make the most out of this feature.
Have we left something off the list? Let us know how you use Instagram polls on the platform in the comments below.