There’s nothing we marketers love more than first party data, right? Instagram is one of the best places to get feedback directly from your customers. But then you have to deal with the 400 DMs crowding your inbox after you ask for it…
Enter: Instagram question stickers.
The questions sticker for Stories collects and organizes responses, and allows you to turn real feedback into valuable public content.
Here’s how to use the Instagram questions sticker, plus 14 creative ideas to inspire you.
Bonus: Download a free checklist that reveals the exact steps a fitness influencer used to grow from 0 to 600,000+ followers on Instagram with no budget and no expensive gear.
What is the Instagram question sticker?
The Instagram question sticker is an interactive form you can insert into an Instagram Story. You can customize it to include any question you want to ask your audience. The Instagram users who view your Story can tap the sticker to send you a short answer or message.
Instagram Story question stickers allow you to easily engage your audience, as well as start conversations. Responses are stored together in the Story insights tab, instead of with your regular DMs.
You can publicly share sticker replies as new Stories, which is perfect for Q&As or FAQs.
How to use the Instagram question sticker: 7 steps
1. Create an Instagram Story
You can add a question sticker to any type of Story, including video and photo formats. Create your Instagram Story as you normally would by tapping the plus sign at the top and selecting Story.
2. Add the question sticker
After you’ve created your Story photo or video, tap the sticker icon at the top. Then tap Questions.
3. Type in your question
Tap the placeholder “Ask me a question” to replace it with your own text. Or, leave it there if you want your audience to ask you questions.
4. Position the sticker
You can move the question sticker around your Story like any other element. Pinch it inward with two fingers to shrink it, or outward to make the sticker bigger.
Pro tip: Don’t place it too close to the sides or bottom of the frame. People may miss tapping the sticker and instead scroll to the next Story.
They could go back to try again, but may decide it’s not worth it and move on. Maximize responses by making it as easy as possible for people to use.
5. Share your Story
That’s it!
6. Check responses
Five seconds later, check for any replies. Kidding! Don’t obsess: Your question sticker will collect responses for the entire 24 hours your Story is live, and you can still see them after your Story expires. You don’t need to worry about missing any.
To see replies, open Instagram, then tap on your own profile photo to open your Story.
You can swipe through them until you get to the one with your question sticker, or swipe up to scroll through faster.
Swipe up to see responses sorted from newest to oldest. Tap See all to scroll through all the responses so far.
7. Share responses
Tap an answer to respond either publicly with Share Response or privately with Message @username.
When you respond publicly, the answer becomes part of your Story. You can create any kind of Story behind it—video, photo, text, etc.
It won’t include the submitter’s photo and username, but they receive an in-app notification that you answered their question.
Want to share more than one answer?
Take screenshots of all the answers you want to share. Go to your phone’s photo editor and crop each screenshot so that only the question sticker you want remains.
Create a new Story, then add each cropped screenshot to it by tapping the sticker icon and choosing the photo option.
One drawback of this method is that no one will receive the notification that you shared their response, like they would have if you followed the first method.
You’ll see Replied for ones you’ve shared or messaged which is helpful if multiple people manage your Instagram account.
8. Optional: Check responses after your Story expires
Been over 24 hours and your Story’s gone? No sweat, you can check question sticker responses anytime from your Archive (as long as you’ve turned on the Story Archive feature in Settings).
Tap the 3-line menu at the top right, then go to Archive. Scroll through until you see your question sticker Story. Tap it, then swipe up to see all the responses.
14 creative Instagram question sticker ideas for brands
1. Run a Q&A
Yep, you can use the question box to collect questions from your audience — and not just answers to your questions.
Bonus: Download a free checklist that reveals the exact steps a fitness influencer used to grow from 0 to 600,000+ followers on Instagram with no budget and no expensive gear.
Instagram question stickers are a super simple way to host a Q&A, since it’s so easy for your audience. Throw a question sticker into your Stories, then answer the responses publicly for everyone to learn from.
2. Connect over shared values
As a company, B Corporation is all about values. Their certification program is one of the best known for verifying the social and environmental commitments of its enrolled members.
By asking their audience to suggest individuals doing great work, they bridge the gap between their corporate purpose and values and the community at large.
3. Host a takeover
Instagram takeovers can boost your engagement and bring in fresh eyes. Adding a question sticker is a good jumping off point for your guest to start creating content with, and your audience will love the chance to interact directly with someone they look up to.
Of course, it has to make sense for your brand. Being a regular sports sponsor, Redbull knew their audience would love this takeover with Olympic skier Eileen Gu.
4. Get feedback on a product or service
Sometimes your customers may have a simple product question, but not need to know enough to make it worth contacting your customer service team. Or, a potential customer is almost ready to buy, except for that one thing they want to know first.
Instagram question stickers are the perfect low-friction way to engage these people. Glossier’s social team sourced answers from company executives and skincare experts, adding credibility and transparency to their responses.
5. Get silly
Your social media shouldn’t be all sell and no swell. Have a little fun once in awhile. Isn’t that what being “social” means?
Ask your followers something unrelated to your products. Not to mine for data points about their personality type so you can tailor better ads to them, but just for some good old fashioned conversation.
Bonus: Screenshot your Story and share it as a post to spark even more conversations on your main feed, too.
6. Build hype for a launch
Tease a new product or store location in your Stories and have your audience guess what it is, or when it’ll launch. Or, announce the new product and get people to submit reasons they’re excited about it to build up social proof even before it’s available.
It can also be an opportunity to clarify details about your launch, like opening hours, location, or all the finer details people may miss at first. Save these as a temporary highlight while your launch is going on.
7. Save responses to a FAQ highlight
Save time answering DMs and give your customers access to the info they need 24/7 by creating a FAQ highlight. Add previous Stories from your Archive where you answered a common question.
Better yet, post an Instagram Story every month or two to ask your audience if they have any questions and add any new ones to the FAQ.
The easiest way to ensure that happens? Schedule your Instagram Stories in advance with Hootsuite—plus Reels, carousels, and everything in between. Here’s how fast you can set and forget your Instagram content:
8. Get to know your audience
People love talking about themselves. Give them the opportunity to do so and you’ll get increased engagement metrics and potentially valuable marketing data, if you ask something related to your business.
Penguin knows their audience are book lovers. Asking what they’re reading now is topical, but could also be a good segue to talk about their upcoming book releases, or to encourage followers to sign up for a launch email list.
9. Influencer marketing campaigns
Most Instagram influencer campaigns ask for a feed post, a Reel, and/or a Story. As part of that, ask your influencer to include a question sticker in their Story.
Allow your influencer partner to answer the questions that come in. Answering in their own unique voice builds trust between their audience and you.
10. Test your customers’ knowledge
Turn key features of your product or service into a fun quiz. You can use a mix of the polling stickers (for quick multiple choice taps) and question stickers (for text/freeform answers) to create a series of Instagram Stories highlighting key marketing messages.
Best of all, it doesn’t matter if people answer correctly. Share correct answers and (nicely) acknowledge wrong ones to educate everyone. Save the quiz as a Story highlight for maximum reach. Then, automatically turn that highlight into a Reel. Boom.
11. Answer questions on Live video
Live video is effective for reaching your audience (30% of people watch at least one live stream every week) and effective at converting them, too. Nothing shows off your genuine expertise better than going live.
Use Instagram question stickers to gather questions either ahead of a live event, or while you’re live. Posting it ahead of time allows you to start your livestream with valuable information right away. You can also share it to your profile (and other social accounts) to direct people to your Stories to submit a question.
When you’re live, users can ask questions in the regular chat bar that comes up on their screen but it’s easy to lose track of those.
In order to see questions while you’re live, you need to post your question sticker Story first, then go live. You can scroll through and choose questions to answer that appear on screen for your viewers. After the live, download the video and use it in future social content or other marketing materials.
12. Get leads
When hosting a Q&A about your business, or when someone asks you about your products, use it as an opportunity to direct people to your lead magnet or landing page.
You can even encourage these responses by asking leading questions, like, “What’s your biggest business challenge right now?” or, “Do you struggle with [insert the thing your product/service solves]?” When answering questions, offer real advice and pop in a link to a related opt-in, event, or other entry into your sales funnel.
It’s old school and it works.
13. Run a contest
Instagram contests are powerful engagement boosters. Photo caption contests are popular because they’re easy to enter and all those extra comments are great for your metrics.
We’ve all seen posts like this:
But this type of contest works even better with Instagram question stickers. All your entries will be in one place, and all those engagements will help your Stories show up sooner in the algorithm.
Make a question sticker to collect caption entries, like this (except asking for captions, of course).
Share your favorites publicly while the contest is still on to get more entries, then share the winner after.
14. Ask people what they want
Sometimes simple is best. Just ask your audience what they want to see.
If you’re attending a local event or an industry trade show and covering it on Instagram, use a question sticker for your peeps to tell you what to show them.
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