How To Increase Engagement on Instagram Stories

You may have noticed those little stickers on Instagram Stories or voted in a quick poll and not thought much of it, but they’re more powerful than you think. In such a saturated market, it’s difficult to make your content stand out on social media and even more difficult getting users to engage. Instagram Stories can be a powerful engagement tool for businesses when utilized effectively.

Why Should I Use Instagram Stories?

Instagram Stories and the clever use of a variety of stickers is a great way to engage with your audience, spread/gather information, and drive traffic to your website. The myriad of options to play with on Instagram Stories allows you to show off your creative side and humanize your business. Light-hearted, playful content helps a company to build trust and a rapport with their audience without having to bog down your actual Instagram feed.

Posting lots of content to your Instagram account might sound like a great idea, but overusing this platform can decrease your engagement and impressions, and ultimately annoy your audience. Instagram Stories only stay active for 24 hours and they do not obstruct your main newsfeed, allowing your audience to interact and absorb the information without it affecting your feed. 

What Are Instagram Stickers And How Do I Use Them?

Instagram stickers come in many shapes and sizes, but are ultimately graphic elements that can be added to image and video Stories. Some stickers are animated, some are clickable links, some allow users to interact with the Story directly. Stickers add a visually stimulating and engaging element to your Stories, ultimately making them more interesting to users and increasing the possibility for engagement. Luckily, Instagram stickers are incredibly easy to use. Once you have added the photo or video you would like to use, click the little smiley-face-square-guy in the top right corner, and voila! Stickers. 

Geolocation

Geotags allow you to add a clickable location to your Instagram Stories. Once selecting the geolocation sticker, a search bar will pop up and you can tag nearly any location in the world. Using geotags and location Instagram hashtags increases local discovery and leads to 79% more engagement, allowing you to reach people outside of your following. 

Polls

Users dedicate 80% of their social media posts to their thoughts and beliefs, making polls a great way to gather feedback from your followers. When users tap on the poll, not only can they vote and share their thoughts, but they can also see which choice is in the lead after voting. The possibility to learn more about other customers’ preferences motivates viewers to take part in polls and, in turn, boosts engagement. 

Quizzes

Quizzes are a great tool to engage with and educate your audience about your company, products, and services. Whether you’re looking to build brand awareness or learn more about your target audience, gamifying the education process helps to generate engagement, conversation, and interaction with your followers.

Shoppable

Instagram is a powerful sales machine with 83% of people using this platform to discover new products. Business accounts with their Instagram Shopping channel enabled can add product stickers to Stories. Users can tap the sticker to view the product, price, description, and be directed to the product page to purchase. Shoppable stickers allow viewers to not only discover featured products with ease, but they also help to improve customer experience. 

Questions

The discovery phase is one of the most important in the customer lifecycle as customers are deciding whether or not your products/services suit their needs. Inviting your followers to ask questions encourages them to interact, shows that they are being put first, and is a great way to answer FAQs.

Linking

If you use Instagram for business, you may intend to drive users to another website. With the link feature, users can be directed without ever having to leave Instagram. This feature helps to provide your followers with simple, accessible information, making them more engaged and interested.

Like what you hear? Learn more about Stout Heart’s social media management offering or feel free to get in touch. We’d love to chat!