Top 5 Instagram Stories features you need to try next time
How do you add stickers and polls to your Instagram Stories and why should you do it? Here’s the five most useful features at the moment.
Everyone is using Instagram Stories these days. And sure, there’s a reason for that.
Instagram Stories is great for sharing casual, fun and easy-going content, as well as communicating with your audience in a relaxed and less formal way.
If you love Instagram Stories, you’re not alone. The format has by far surpassed Snapchat and today, there are over 400 million daily active Instagram Stories users.
Amongst marketers, Instagram Stories has become a popular choice and it’s no wonder, considering the amount of new features constantly being pumped out.
You’ve probably already tried some of the features, but which ones are relevant to use from a brand perspective and which oneswill help you increase engagement and awareness?
Let’s take a look, here are the five features we think you’ll get the most use of during this year:
Table of contents:
- Music stickers
- Carousel ads
- Emoji slider
- Story poll
- Shopping stickers
Music stickers
No more quiet Stories. Instagram has partnered with Spotify, and you can now add music clips to your Instagram story videos and have them play in the background. How cool is that? Social media is about telling a story and the more senses you can utilize, the better your chances are of captivating the audience.
This feature was launched June 28 last year, and if you’re not familiar with it yet, we recommend you to give it a try. For you as a brand, it won’t boost your sales but it will make your Stories more entertaining and it will make your brand message more memorable, if used in the right contexts.
How to:
1. Open the Instagram app and click the ‘Stories’ icon.
2. Add your photo or video, and when you’re done, click the stickers icon in the upper right-hand corner.
3. Choose the ‘Music’ option.
4. Search for music to add, you can search for a specific artist or song, or you can search by what’s popular, moods and genres.
5. Select what part of the song you want to use.
Carousel ads
Did you know you can create Instagram Stories ads? Yes, since February 1 last year you can. And if you haven’t tried it yet, we recommend you to give it a shot, especially if your campaign goal is to increase brand awareness or promote sales.
With the carousel ads format for Instagram Stories you can include up to three swipeable images or videos. This should give you enough space to tell you story and it’s probably a good idea to utilize all three frames, since your audience is normally used to multiple images or videos in this format.
Carousel ads in Instagram Stories is a more interactive way of advertising as users can swipe through the frames, pause or click and tap through them just like they normally do. For your audience, this means a more engaging and fun experience. When you utilize the interactive nature of Instagram Stories when you create your ads, you’ll get the most out of this new feature.
How to:
1. Open Facebook Business Manager.
2. Select Ads Manager.
3. Click the green ‘Create’ button to create a new campaign.
4. Select your marketing objective.
5. In the Placements section, you can whether to let the system automatically choose placements for you or to manually edit placements to fit your objectives and preferences. If you only want your ad to be visible on Instagram Stories, select the Edit Placements option and uncheck the boxes where you don’t want the ad.
6. In the Format section, select the ‘Carousel’ option.
7. On the left side of the window where you edit the ad, there’ll be three buttons labeled 1,2 and 3. Click on each and select one image or video for each button.
8. Add a headline, description and destination URL for your ad.
9. Click Confirm.
Emoji slider
The emoji slider is probably one of the most useable Instagram features. It’s really easy to use and a great way to engage your audience and let them share their opinions.
As a brand you can use this feature to ask your followers a question or state something and then let them slide the emoji right or left, depending on whether they agree or disagree with what you said. Or share exclusive content or previews, and let your audience decide whether it should be launched or not.
Your followers and customers will love being an active part of your brand and seeing that their opinions actually matter. Don’t forget to customize the emoji, choose the one that resonates the best with your community!
How to:
1. Open the Instagram app and click the ‘Stories’ icon.
2. Add your photo or video, and when you’re done, click the stickers icon in the upper right-hand corner.
3. Scroll down to the emoji slider icon and click it.
4. Write your question or statement, and select an emoji.
Story poll
If the emoji slider seems too generic and doesn’t give you the kind of detailed answers you’d like, we suggest using polls instead. Some people might find it too time-consuming to answer a whole question. When you give them two options to choose from, you’ll probably get more engagement.
For more detailed poll results, try using the poll sticker in several story slides where you can narrow down options or ask follow-up questions.
For more detailed poll results, try using the poll sticker in several story slides where you can narrow down options or ask follow-up questions.
How to:
1. Open the Instagram app and click the ‘Stories’ icon.
2. Add your photo or video, and when you’re done, click the stickers icon in the upper right-hand corner
3. Scroll down to the ‘poll’ icon and click it.
4. Write a question and two options that your viewers can choose from. It doesn’t have to be ‘yes’ or ‘no’, be creative!
Shopping stickers
Yes, you can now sell your products through Instagram Stories! For ecommerce companies, and especially B2C brands, this feature should be very appealing. To access the shopping stickers, you need to have a Facebook Business Manager account and connect your profile to a Facebook catalog.
Getting your catalog set up and running is the tricky part, but once that’s done, the rest is easy!
How to:
1. Set up a Facebook catalog in Facebook Business Manager. In the next step you’ll connect it to Instagram, but you have to first create it in Business Manager.
2. Connect your catalog to Instagram. Open the Instagram, app and select Settings > Business Settings > Shopping. Choose the catalog you created in Facebook earlier.
3. Open Instagram Stories and select and image or video featuring your product.
4. Tap the stickers button and choose the ‘product’ sticker.
5. Select the product from your catalog.
6. Done! You can change the color of the sticker or move it around, but if you want to edit the product name you need to do it manually in your catalog.
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