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Top 10 Instagram Story Sticker Tips
Updated August 28, 2019.
Instagram Stories are cool, popular with millennials and Gen Z, last for 24 hours, and can help you market your business more effectively on social media. New interactive Story features, called Story stickers, were recently developed to tweak Instagram’s interface to expand their 500 million daily users’ engagements. With these new Story stickers, local Hawaii businesses can use them to increase brand awareness, connect with their audiences, and enhance their feeds. Brands can also track the effectiveness of the stickers and use the data to help their business thrive.
Keep on reading to learn how to use interactive Instagram Story stickers—technically as well as strategically—in our complete guide to creating authentic, engaging Stories to attract interactions, increase engagements, and drive web traffic.
How to Access Story Stickers
Before we dive into our guide on interactive Story stickers, we will show you how to access them!
The easiest way to add Stories on Instagram is by swiping left on your main feed page. You can also create a Story by tapping on your profile picture in the top left corner on the main feed page or your profile page.
After you capture a photo, video, or boomerang, or upload content from your phone, you can swipe up or click on the sticker icon to add the interactive stickers to your social media post. Add the necessary information (like a hashtag, text, etc.) to the sticker, then tap on the sticker to change its color and look.
Attract Local Audiences With A Location Story Sticker
The Location sticker is ideal for gaining more local exposure and targeting a wider audience for your brand. Not only will your Story be featured in a larger location based Story feed in the Explore tab, but anyone can discover your Story by doing a location tag search. For example, if you type in “Honolulu, HI” in the Explore tab, it will show you all the top and recent Instagram posts and Stories that tagged this location.
For our Stories, Team Vision Marketing uses the Location sticker to reach a wider Hawaii social media audience. If we are posting one of our amazing Hawaii drone photos from our #TVDroneSeries, we will tag the locations that match each image we post.
To use this sticker on your Stories, just tap on the Location sticker (pictured below) and type in the name of your desired location.
TIP: We suggest adding the Location sticker to all of your Stories to make your content even more discoverable by a local audience.
Extend Your Post’s Reach With A Hashtag Story Sticker
Instagram’s exclusive Hashtag Story sticker also extends the reach of your Story post, operating similarly to a regular hashtag. However, business pages are allowed to use only one Hashtag sticker, so to gain as much exposure as possible, use a popular and wide reaching hashtag, like “#socialmedia” or “#Hawaii.”
When you use the Hashtag sticker, your Story will be automatically featured on the Explore tab and when users search for content by hashtag. Users can also subscribe to the hashtag directly from your Story just by tapping on the sticker.
To add this Story feature, tap the Hashtag sticker (pictured below) in the Story sticker menu and type in your desired hashtag.
TIP: We suggest using the Hashtag sticker to encourage people to follow/subscribe to your brand hashtag – just be sure to make it noticeable, maybe add a GIF arrow to highlight it.
Make Sales On Stories With Product Stickers
Now available through the Shopping on Instagram integration, business accounts can tag products in their Instagram Stories, which can be placed on both images and videos. Your followers can tap on these Product stickers to see the price, description, and product name. If they tap again, the sticker will lead them directly to the product page to make the purchase. See Later.com‘s example below.
You do need to connect your business profile to a Facebook catalog to use this Story feature. This can be created and managed on Facebook Business Manager, or through Shopify or BigCommerce.
TIP: Use the Product sticker without being too sales-y or spammy by combining it with engaging Story content that isn’t too focused on selling the product. For example, fashion brands and bloggers can post a “5 Ways to Use/Wear…,” “My Top 10 Favorites,” or a back-to-school look book Story with a couple of Product tags.
Connect People To Your Web Site With The Swipe Up Sticker
What’s the best way to seamlessly drive web traffic to your web site via Instagram Stories? By using the new Swipe Up sticker, which will direct users to a landing page. This sticker is ideal for connecting your followers to a product or shopping page, or your brand’s latest blog post. See HubSpot.com‘s example below.
You can access this Story feature by tapping on the link icon (?) on the top right corner – just add the desired URL to the button. Forewarning, this feature is only accessible to Instagram business profiles that are verified or have at least 10,000 followers.
TIP: If you do not qualify for the Swipe Up sticker, you can always direct your audience to go to the “link in your bio.” We suggest tagging your own profile with the “@Mention” sticker and encourage people to tap it to see your featured URL link.
Create Hype With The Countdown Story Sticker
Another Instagram exclusive Story element, the Countdown sticker is awesome for 3 reasons:
1) It’s a fun way to create hype for a new product or to promote an upcoming event. For example, the opening of a new residential community or the launch of a brand new hotel!
2) Instagram will send you countdown reminders, so you can continuously post updates on the countdown.
3) Your audience can subscribe to this countdown and receive notifications on the approaching date.
Just select the Countdown sticker (pictured below) in the Story menu, give it a fun title, and add the date you’re counting down to. The sticker will create the countdown accurately—down to the seconds!
TIP: Make your brand’s upcoming announcements even more exciting with the countdown sticker. Keep your audience at the edge of their seats with cryptic messages, a blurred photo, or maybe some emoji-themed hints to add to the mysterious countdown.
Use the Polling Story Sticker To Increase Engagements
Ask interesting polling questions both on your brand’s Instagram Stories as a strategic way to drive audience interaction and engagement. With its easy, one-click format, Polling Stories are easy to interact with and audiences find it exciting to see if their pick was part of the majority. With our clients and on our own profile, we’ve seen a lot of success and high interactions with this Story feature. See the Castle & Cooke Hawaii‘s polling Story posted on Instagram on what makes a house a dream home example below, which received 141 unique views and 29 interactions.
TIP: Repost the polling results as bonus content! Share the desired Polling Story from the Story Archive in your profile. Heck, why not run the same poll on your Facebook and Instagram social media channels, then share and compare the results from both platforms.
Have People Rate Something With The Emoji Slider Sticker
This sticker is a fun, more flexible way for your audience rate how they feel about something without having to leave a detailed review or description. For example, we use the Emoji slider to ask our followers to rate how much they love our Hawaii Marketing Tips Blog!
The emojis are even interchangeable to add emotional context to the Story, but your options are limited.
TIP: You can use this for a polling Story by having users stop the scrubber for the option they agree with most. See the example below from IconoSquare.com via The Knot‘s Instagram social media page.
However, when you read the results, it can get a little tricky to determine what people voted for since Instagram only reports where the scrubber stopped for each participant. We highly suggest using 2 or 3 options at the max for the poll.
Test Your Audience With The Multiple Choice Quiz Sticker
The newly released Instagram exclusive Multiple Choice quiz sticker is great for adding more interest and driving engagement to your Stories. Test your followers’ knowledge on all things about your brand, industry, and more with the Multiple Choice sticker. Then, sit back and see how they respond.
Team Vision Marketing is using this new Story sticker on our ongoing Instagram and Facebook Story trivia campaign. The goal of these mini Multiple Choice quiz Stories is to share our knowledge and expertise in the advertising and marketing industry and to test our follower’s advertising knowledge. Using the trivia format has resulted in a major increase in per Story engagements versus previous Story posts.
TIP: To further showcase your expertise, share an in-depth explanation for the correct answer as seen in the example below.
Connect With Your Fans Using The Fill-In-The-Blank Sticker
The Fill-in-the-Blank sticker, AKA the “Question” sticker, is unique to Instagram where brands can ask open-ended questions. The Question sticker is great for building a deeper relationship with your social media followers.
Whether you use the Story sticker to ask interesting questions or you want to have your audience ask you questions, make sure to keep it engaging. From our experience, Team Vision Marketing has found that our clients’ and our own social media followers are more likely to participate with a Question sticker if we’re asking something worth putting in the effort of typing out a response. You should also reward your followers’ interactions by sharing their responses and replying to them. For example, on Dole Plantation’s Instagram Stories, we use the Fill-in-the-Blank sticker to ask fans what their favorite Dole Plantation activity or memory is, then repost their replies.
Please see our Fill-In-the-Blank Story example below that we posted on Dole Plantation‘s Instagram page asking, “What was the highlight of your Dole Plantation adventure?”. We also shared our audience’s responses. This Story earned a combined total of 3,381 unique views and 16 responses!
TIP: You can also use this Story feature to crowdsource ideas or to receive helpful feedback on your products or services. By asking for your audience’s opinion about your business, you are establishing a more personal relationship and empowering your audience to contribute their input. It also shows your followers how much you care about them.
Support Non-Profits With The Donation Story Sticker
Instagram Stories are all about sharing engaging social media content that connects with your audiences. Stories give companies a great opportunity to not only market their products and services but to also share their brand personality and build a deeper relationship with followers.
Stories now enable brands to connect with their followers on a philanthropic level by posting the Donation Sticker to promote and raise funds for their favorite charities. Just tap on the sticker (see below) and type in the charity of your choosing.
Not only do social media-based fundraisers make for great content, they can also boost your brand’s reputation by sharing your mutual passion for supporting local and national non-profits that help the community. Your fundraising efforts can be made more impactful if they’re combined with an office community-service event.
If you are involved in promoting a non-profit charity, click here to see how your organization can become eligible to receive donations through the donation sticker.
TIP: Develop a fundraiser Story campaign that explains the mission, story, and your relationship with the non-profit. Include moving testimonies and statistics to help increase donation participation. Post the established goal amount to be raised, how much your brand is donating, and mix in updates on the status of how close you are to the fundraising goal.
