Instagram Polls: a complete guide to polling your customers

When you are active as a brand on Instagram, gaining insights from the platform is crucial. Instagram is a social media platform that you can utilize in countless ways, and one of them is to gain information on your target audience and existing customers.

Before you start learning about polls, it’s ideal to know how to post on Instagram and how to post a video on Instagram, so you’re familiar with the basics.

An Instagram story poll is ideal when you poll your customers about an upcoming product launch or their existing favorite products. It can keep your customers engaged and enable them to learn more about your brand too. You might have seen the poll icon at the top, or you might have missed it, but here’s why you should care about it:

What Are Instagram Polls

An Instagram poll is basically like any other survey. However, you don’t get to add multiple options (unless you’re framing it as a question with a determined answer). You can only put two options, and viewers end up choosing whichever one they prefer more. You can also repost the most-liked Instagram post on your stories and ask a poll question regarding that. The possibilities are endless. Learn how to share a post on Instagram so you can share your post and poll it simultaneously.

Instagram polls are a recently introduced feature, and you can currently only add a poll to your story and not on your permanent feed. There are various templates and designs available online that can make poll designing easier. If you’re looking to use results in real-time or plan your next marketing campaign, polls are the way to go. Choose the best time to post on Instagram for the best results. You might need to know how to see liked posts on Instagram so you can add that to polls too.

Creating a Poll

If you’re wondering how you get started creating a poll, it’s pretty simple. Once you open the Instagram app, you swipe left. Your story section comes up, and you can access your camera roll or take a photo. Once you’ve determined the image for your poll, you can tap the stickers icon (top of the screen) and find the poll icon.

Once you select the poll sticker, you have to input the question you want to ask your potential and existing customers. Below the question, you will be given two options. You can go with the traditional ‘Yes/No’ or customize the sections with your options.

A sliding bar is also available, which can be used as an alternative to a poll. When you just want to know if people would like or be excited about a potential product, this sliding scale icon is optimal to use.

Innovative Ideas

There are innumerable ways to get started on creating your polls. As a brand, you want to ensure that your poll graphics engage and motivate users to answer the questions you’re posing. You might also want to search does Instagram notify when you screenshot a post to see if your poll is generating any traction.

Some ideas you can utilize when framing a poll for your brand include:

This or that (which one they like better)
Quiz-format questions
Asking suspenseful questions
Making a ‘trending’ poll (what users think is trending today)
Would you buy this or not (product launch-type questions)
Face at the top followed by poll question (human interaction through stories gets higher click rate)
Learning how to post a gif on Instagram so you can include it in stories too

Images play a critical role in determining how many users end up responding to your polls. If you don’t have attention-grabbing photos and strong content, users will swipe through your stories without realizing that something was being asked. Consider using an Instagram post template if you don’t know where to start. You can also learn how to post a GIF on Instagram to connect to your users more. Here are other things you should know when you’re planning on being active on Instagram

How to Utilize It

Once you have created the poll, you can share your poll with a few people (through making custom lists) or everyone who can see your story. Depending on the type of engagement and results you’re hoping to get, you can toggle around with who you plan on sharing the polls with.

Polls can help businesses to:

Interact more with their audience
Get real-time results
Boost engagement
Garner interest for an Instagram post or product
Determine caption for Instagram post ideas

You could also consider having a simple question and response format where users can reply with comprehensive answers through the story itself. Keep your options open when you want to utilize your polls in more ways than one.

Analyzing the Results

One of the best things about polls is that they disappear after 24 hours, but that’s not the case with results. You can go into your Stories archive and access the results of any of your polls at any time. It ensures that you have a consistent database that you can always refer back to.

Your marketing team can use the results of your poll to push campaigns, direct ads, and more when you want to make the most of them. You can export data to other programs to ensure that you can create comprehensive user insights based on them. Share the results with your entire team if need be for better analysis. If you’re planning on releasing a new product, it can help you know whether your customers will be interested or not.

Polls are a great way to engage with your audience and know more about them. You can access each user’s answer individually, which can help better personalize your brand. You can send out targeted emailers and promotional newsletters to customers who prefer one thing over another. Learn how to post multiple photos on Instagram and use it for your polls too.

Keeping It Consistent

When you plan to introduce polls to your account, you must ensure that you’re keeping it consistent. No user would like it if you’re bombarding them with 50 polls a day. Understand the right number and how you can work around it.

Consider using polls to research, gather market data, and know more about customers. Don’t use it as a way to fill up your stories without any real engagement happening. Ensure that the content and graphics you are using have consistency and do not overlap. It would be best if you knew how to post a live photo on Instagram and how to add music to Instagram post so you can have more variety when it comes to your Instagram feed.

Targeting Your Customers

The polls feature undoubtedly a great way to target your customers. You can push products, gain data and understand what makes your customers engage with you through polls. When utilized the right way, they can become one of the main drivers for your business growth.

Different types of content marketing can garner different responses, especially once you view the results. Don’t spend money without conducting thorough research first, which polls can do. You can also learn how to post a youtube video on Instagram after polling users on which types they like.

Making Your Business Flourish

Anytime you need some insight on your customer’s mindset, swipe left on your Instagram app and go to the top right corner to select polls. A poll can take a few minutes to set up when you have the resources. From knowing the Instagram post size, Instagram post template, and more, you can design a poll in various ways.

There are many ways to utilize social media for your business, and with advancing features, it’s likely to increase. Adapting to new features and trends ultimately means better success for your business. Don’t miss the chance to get inside the brains of your average customer, and all it takes is a tap on the poll icon!

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