Instagram poll stickers are one of the easiest ways to engage with your Instagram community. From collecting feedback to gauging interest for an upcoming launch, this quick interaction can help you inform your content strategy. Okay, we're breaking it down. I am giving you exactly what you need to do on how to use polls on Instagram stories plus, In this episode, I'm also giving you five fresh ideas to drive engagement.
Alright, let's go.
Hey. Hey, it's your girl, Emmy Cornwell, Instagram biz coach and social selling expert. Welcome to the Hey, hey, Emmy Show. This is a podcast where we talk about all things that will be helpful for you and your business. Everything from Instagram tips and tricks to health hacks to relationships, and definitely some Jesus.
Basically everything in between Proverbs 31. And Tupac. I am so excited to party with you in each and every episode because ain't no party like a Hey, hey Emmy party. Can I get Amen. All right, let's get into it, sister. Hey, hey. What's going on? How are you? Welcome back today. Hey, hey, Emmy Show podcast. I am your host, Emmy Cornwell sister girl.
I am so glad you're here. I say that every episode, but it's true. So hopefully you believe me. I'm guessing you do because you keep coming back if you are new to the show. Hello. Welcome. Hey, hey, I'm so glad you're here as well. And it is a party here on the, Hey, hey Emmy show. And today we are talking about Instagram.
Of course, that's not always what we talk about. On the podcast, you know, we talked about Facebook a month ago. We talk about health. I actually wanna do an episode, this is like a tangent. I wanna do an episode about our experience with getting your son circumcised by a rabbi. Now whether you, you know, you can have your own opinion or.
Thoughts or what you feel is best for your family? I have friends that have their son circumcised, and I have friends that aren't, that's not what this is about, but either way, I wanna share with you my experience because it was, dare I say, one, a very enjoyable experience and pleasant, despite what I heard, the trauma it could be.
So it was really, really cool. If you're following along on Instagram stories, When we did do it a few weeks ago, I shared a little bit about it and it was just really cool. Anyways, that was a tangent. We are not talking about that, but what we are talking about today is Instagram stories, my jam, and specifically how to use Instagram full stickers.
That is a engagement feature that Instagram has given you to utilize it as a tool for your business, and it's not just something that you just willy-nilly throw up in your stories. And you know, you don't put a bunch of them back to back to back to back. That's annoying. Think about how you consume content.
Do you get annoyed when you're watching someone's stories and all they do is ask polls and they seem to have like no purpose. I don't know about you, but I'm not watching your story because I just want to answer a random bunch of random polls. If I wanted to answer a bunch of random polls or random questions, I'd like join one of those like sites that I always think are.
Like scam. So probably not where I can go and like review products or like give you my opinion and do like those quizzes or whatever and get paid 5 cents. I'd rather get paid 5 cents than answer your poll on your stories. That makes no sense, just because I know that you're trying to just do it just to get engagement here.
In today's episode, I'm gonna share with you more of the intentional purpose of, of how to utilize these things for both you. And your ideal client because yes, there are reasons why strategically you should be using polls. Don't just use so willingly. Okay? That was basically a long about round way to say don't just throw a poll up.
Be be specific, be intentional. Don't try and like game in the system and just utilize it for how it's gonna be utilized. And if you don't know how, then good thing you're here, I'm gonna tell you. Okay? Because they're pretty straightforward. But if you can tell in my little kind of like soapbox rant, not a lot of people know how to use them.
So I'm gonna teach you and tell you and give you everything you need to know on how to use Instagram polls so that yes, you can increase your engagement, but also move the ball down the court in some of your other business goals, okay? At the end of the day, really all they are is a way for you to pull your audience in stories.
But why and how and when, and all of those questions that you may be asking for polling your audience we're gonna talk about as well. Okay? What's cool about how they do the polls now? Because back in the day they used to just give you only two options. Now, aesthetically, I liked that better and how it showed up on Instagram stories.
I'm curious if you remember those. If you've, if you've been on Instagram long enough, you should remember the poll. It was basically an A or B option. And like one, one side of the pole was like a color red, I think. And the other was like blue. Um, or they had different colors. And now the pole feature, gosh, I just remember the mayhem that everyone was up in arms when they started to roll out this new feature, cuz not everyone got it at the same time.
And that's how features come out on Instagram. It's not. They're rolled out. It's not all at once. I mean, there's over a billion users on Instagram. You know, techno technology is cool and it's really like up to speed, but that's not how it works. You gotta roll it out slowly and sometimes they roll out features that they end up not rolling out to everyone cuz they don't work.
They call, it's called beta testing. Anyways, when this new pool feature is rolling out, I still have the old feature and people are like, how do you still have that? I want that. Partly is because people don't like change. You know, maybe that's you. Change is hard sometimes. But change doesn't necessarily mean bad, and change doesn't necessarily mean good anyways.
Here's how the poll feature is. Now you can actually share up to four different options, which I think from a standpoint of really, um, you know, we're gonna talk about the five different things that you can use polls for. You are able to actually get more information because you can ask more with more options.
Now before with that, that whole, how it was when it was like A and B, if you were intentional about your words, you could get what you wanted in regards to like the information that you're seeking. But also with those only two options, they have very limited characters. This gives you, you can basically write a sentence as opposed to just a word, right?
So if we are doing this or that, which we're gonna talk about, Has still, you know, something that you can still do there. There a while ago was like, that was like the Instagram igniter hack that I would share with you is do a this or that series at the beginning of your stories after you took a 24 hour break that is old intel.
You don't do that anymore, but you can still do this or that because they're fun, but you're doing it for a different way Anyways, it would be like, I would ask something like, Stories are reals, right? It was just one word. Now you can actually do a whole sentence and I think it's better. Okay?
So get on the train cuz that's where it is. That's what Instagram has for us. Let's utilize what they have for us. Okay? So you are collecting your data through these polls and then you're gonna drive engagement based off of what you're asking into something that you're offering maybe, or something that you are, you know, a piece of content.
Or an offer. Let's, let's just jump into it. Let's talk about that, because I'm not gonna teach you how to use the Instagram stories stickers. Hmm. If you don't know how to do that, maybe YouTube. It. YouTube University is good for some things if you don't know how to see the results on your Instagram polls.
Hmm. Okay. Again, maybe just YouTube it because I really wanna spend the time here in this episode. About the five ways to use these polls on Instagram to increase your engagement. That's the goal here is we do wanna increase your engagement, but there are like sub goals, like funneling people into an offer or into a community or gaining knowledge in Intel so that you can then go create content in the future.
The first idea is you're gonna use them to promote maybe a blog post, a, a freebie that you have. Some other piece of content essentially you wanna share with people, you're going to utilize the polls to promote it. And a really great example of this is if I, for instance, cuz let's see, when did this episode come out?
It is not a podcast episode. It isn't. I, I'm trying to think of where I can direct you to get this information. Oh, I know. Make sure you swipe up and you're on the Instagram Insider scoop. That is my free community that gives you a weekly dose of moneymaking tips sent straight to your inbox. It's gonna give you sales scripts, story sequences all the different things that you need to make money on Instagram.
With your business, you want to be on it, it's free. Swipe up an email is coming out soon. If not, I don't know exactly the date right now. I'm having mom brain, but you wanna be on that because I have an email talking about the key to basically what you need to be doing in your Instagram bio, and I'm offering and inviting you as listeners and part of the Instagram insider scoop community as well.
To do. We're gonna do a live IG Bio audit on the podcast, which would be really cool. And you could be one of those people where I would audit your bio. Okay, so say I wanted to promote that. Well, I could do an Instagram story with a poll on just like a solid background color of my brand color. So that would be orange.
Okay. Hopefully, you know that. And I could just a pull that, say something like, what's the key to a fire Instagram bio or like an optimized IG bio. And then I could give for examples of what people, and with my ideal client, a lot of times they, what they think they need in their IG bio is actually not what they need in order to convert.
Like I've been reworking a lot of bios recently as part of A program that I'm a support coach for, and I have been auditing at least 20 something bios over the last couple weeks. And again, hashtag job security. People still are missing the mark when it comes to their bios. They're not clear, they're trying to be too cute.
There's nothing that's really tangible, very much airy, fairy and using language at their ideal client, it doesn't resonate with them. Anyways, if I wanted to lead you to the email where I help you with your bio, I would use that poll. And then on the next story series, so it would be like one story slide, two story slides.
You could do it like one to three story slide series. I would share where they can click the link using the link sticker where they can then join the Instagram insider scoop community, or where they could listen to the podcast episode or where they could X, Y, and Z. Okay, so whatever you are promoting currently, and it doesn't have to be a, a paid offer, right?
My Instagram insider scoop is free. The podcast is free. There, there are places that you can be pro or there are things that you can be promoting that don't have to necessarily be paid offers. Now we are gonna talk about paid offers, but. This is a really cool way to utilize the poll feature that increases your engagement, but also then again, the sub goal, right?
And really honestly should be the main is to lead them into the next start, next point of their journey of the customer journey. The path, the goal is for not you, not to just get engagement. Again, engage engagement does not pay your pulse. It's what are you gonna do without engagement? Okay, so creatively introduce your audience to your content.
You're gonna, you, you do it this way, you're bound to have more traffic driven to your site, driven to wherever again, that you were leading them. Okay. Did you know that you can also, like I said, we're gonna get into paid offer, so let's, let's just get into there. Okay before you talk about your paid offer, and I have an episode that I just did about this like a couple weeks ago, secrets to Successful Launch.
You want to, and this is ID idea number two for today, to help you utilize Instagram polls to increase your engagement, but you're gonna create suspense for your upcoming launch or your collaboration or you know, whatever you have going on, right? If you have something exciting in the works, you need to be sharing that in your Instagram stories.
You need to be taking people behind the scenes. You need to be taking them on the journey so that. When you, when it does come time to sell, you're not just out of the blue selling something because hello, that is spammy Tammy. You need to have people in. This is how you get people invested because you show them what you're working on.
You show them the long hours, you show them the hard work, you show them the commitment. You show them the mishaps and the failures. You show them the victories, right? So utilizing Instagram poll, For building excitement for a launch is super, super easy and you should be doing, like, this should be definitely a part of your content strategy in regards to your stories when it comes to launching.
So say you do a story slide of you, maybe like a boomerang or it doesn't have to be ring. It could be a video. It could be a photo, but maybe there's something in that photo. Let's say you're a product-based business, there's something in that photo that you've never really talked about before and you're not gonna, like, it's not gonna be the main focal point of this story, but it's in there.
And you could say something like, something, you know, something cool is really, something really cool is coming in the future. And then you could create the pull, basically like go, you know those things when you're a kid and you try and find them the hidden. Objects. Like you could basically do that same thing with your stories and utilize a poll and give them maybe four different options of what's coming, right?
So like, um, a new oil or a new t-shirt or a new collagen product. I mean, I, there's so many different product pace businesses out there, but that would be a really cool way to. Utilize excitement and utilize the poll if you're launching a new product or other things. Okay? Now, you could also use the countdown sticker.
That's another engagement sticker that you could utilize as well, so that your followers will get notification of when your launch or your collab goes live. But this way that I've showed you, Builds hype. Could you do the hype story that I just shared with you without the pull? Yeah, but remember there's twofold goals with this.
One. You do wanna increase engagement, which increases your story views and for people coming that are already following you or coming then to look at your stories. But also, we wanna make money and we wanna lead funnel funnel into our paid offers. So, super easy way to do that. Is it, are you, is this making sense?
Hopefully. You're like, whoa, I didn't realize polls, actually, there was strategy behind it. Yeah, there is. Here's number three. Okay. You're gonna gather feedback from your community. I like to call it market research, but Instagram polls are a fun and informal way to learn what your audience wants, and again, help you develop offers in the future.
Help you create content, right? If your audience is gonna tell you what they need and what they want, go create content that's gonna help them. You know, in addition to what content you know, they actually need, because usually your ideal client, what she thinks she needs is to like get to her desired outcome.
And her, you know, preferred future is not what she actually needs, right? If someone wants to be more confident, they're not walking around, I wanna be more confident. You know, they're walking around being like, I wanna lose 20 pounds like yesterday. So help them lose 20 pounds and then also on the back end, help them.
Increase their confidence. By the way, guess what, when you do lose 20 pounds, your confidence just automatically increases. I'm so pump to get back on my fat blasting, putting liquid collagen. I've not been on it since second trimester. And the reason why is, um, because I had c l A in it, which it, which helps like block fat absorption.
I'm, I am pumping, and so I don't know how it's gonna affect my milk. It's a personal decision. I totally could, if I wanted, I mean, I have a lot of milk supply. Maybe this is TM I, but I am pumping for all the moms. You're gonna know this, I'm pumping anywhere from a hundred to 200 milliliters, which is anywhere from five to 10 ounces of pump every three hours.
That's not every time, but on average at least a hundred milliliters, at least five ounces. It's crazy. I definitely do not, you know, I am blessed with the milk supply, so if I wanted to taper that off, I could start taking the trim and then I would, you know, it would help me with some of my health goals and physical goals after postpartum.
But I'm also not in like a huge rush. I feel really great with I, where I'm at with my body. Okay. That was another tangent. Anyways, I am a squirrel today. I. No, I'm not sorry because this is all relevant. This is all relevant to what we're talking about. Again, what I share with you could totally be content if I wanted to for my stories, and I probably will.
So the idea number three, we're gathering feedback. We're getting market research from our audience. We're gauging their interest on new content ideas or, uh, potential things that you're gonna do in the future. You're doing what? By you doing this, you, you're letting also your audience know when you do this intentionally, that you value their opinion.
Right. Um, I used to do this even when I used to get my nails done, I would. I would have a really hard time deciding, and so I needed help and what better place to get help with than from you and my Instagram stories. So I would do that. It, so again, it doesn't have to be business related all the time. In fact, I would really encourage you for it to not be, but I also know that the pendulum can swing like to the extreme where then you don't do any polls that are related to your business.
So, Let me just make this clear. Don't do all polls that are just for your business and do do all polls that are not business related. You need both and obvious. Pam, Tammy. Okay, so here is an example of market research as well, is maybe you're trying to come up with an offer and you wanna know how people would want to like digest that information.
Or how people would wanna work with you. Would they rather you give them, um, something that's a DIY like already or that they do themselves or something that's already done for them? Would they rather it be, you can even do it as your content? Would they rather see the information that you wanna share in a reel or would they rather see it in your Instagram stories?
Bloggers do that all the time. Okay. So there's so many different options you can do by utilizing the poll. That's getting your followers involved and letting them guide your next post, your next piece of content, your next offer, really getting them involved okay. Number four on how to use Instagram posts to increase engagement is you are going to get to know your community through this or that this, this is not as big quote unquote as it was before. Because it's not a hack anymore, but it's still a really cool way to do exactly what I shared. Get to know your audience.
This is not a one-way street. This is a two-way street. This Instagram stories should be a conversation. It shouldn't be a uh, a monologue. It should be a dialogue. And the best way to do that is through these polls because you get to learn, learn and know about people. And then when people answer your polls, you know what you should be doing on the backend money Hit.
Money hit means this is actionable piece of item that you can take and put into your business, into action. Right now. You should be responding back to them in Messenger, in the dms. You should be continuing the conversation. So this is a really great way again, to yes, increase engagement, but then continue the conversation.
Conversation equals cash. That's what you're here for, is to cash in on the gram, see how, like see how it's more. There is more to it. So this or that, essentially, um, I gave you an example earlier of like Instagram versus Facebook or stories versus reels or um, Instagram versus TikTok. Or you could even be like chocolate versus vanilla or uh, red versus pink.
I mean, these are some really, really basic ones. You have to think about your. Instagram and your brand, and your content and your goals for what you would be asking at this or that, but utilizing this, again, super easy, all of them, super simple. But there is still a place for this or that type of content in your stories utilizing the poll.
So do it. Okay? And here's the fifth way to increase your engagement with Instagram polls. You're gonna ed, educate. Educate your community. How much does your community, how much does your audience, how much do your followers, your raving fans know about you and your niche, know about what you do, test their knowledge, you know, with a handful of polls if you, um, you know, have, um, a, a product-based business.
Again, we'll just stick with that. What is your, what is your followers about the different parts of your brand? Like maybe they don't know that you. Have X, Y, and Z. Maybe, you know, for instance, I guess collagen, right? I am an affiliate for a wellness company. That liquid collagen is our main product. But I also take things that I love, love, love, called phytonutrients.
I also utilize a collagen skincare, but I don't really share those in my stories much like I really focus kind of on the hero products in the local collagen is one of them, but if I'm not, Maybe I quiz people, right? And maybe they don't know that that is something that I do as well, right? So it's a bonus cuz you're plugging your products, but you're also doing it in a way that's educational.
So it's, it's really organic and it's quite genius if you ask me. Okay, so there you have it. Those are the five ways that you can utilize Instagram polls to increase your engagement and build brand awareness. Have people learn about you more you're creating relationships. You're creating conversations.
This should be fun. I said it on the last episode. If you ain't having fun, you ain't doing it right. Instagram polls are one of the ways actually, you can have a lot of fun on Instagram and specifically in stories. So utilize them. Don't do them willy-nilly. Take what you learned in this episode. Have an intention with those Instagram polls and you will, I will.
You will. I promise you. Increase your engagement. Here's what I want you to do, cuz I know it's gonna happen. I want you to take a screenshot of this episode that you're listening to. Thank you, by the way. And tag me the, Hey, hey, Emmy. Share it in your Instagram stories. And I want you to, I want you to do it with like a poll, like maybe your, maybe you have a podcast or maybe you have, uh, maybe you're sharing some of your favorite things, and this podcast is one of 'em.
And then you could ask your followers. If they listen to podcasts, that would be a great utilization of a poll. And then if you do have your own podcast, then you could lead them in the next story to your podcast, right? So you're sharing someone else's podcast, you're asking your followers, you're sharing mine, right?
That's who someone else is. Then on the next story, you are asking your followers if they listen to podcasts, yes or no. And then you could even do a second story and be like, Hey, did you know I have a podcast? Speaking of you. And then the next one, lead them into your podcast. Now that's just an example.
Um, if you don't have a podcast, there's other ways that you can do this. But I'm excited to hear from you. I'm excited to continue the conversation. Thank you so much, sister, for being here. I value you. I love you. I honor you. I respect you, and I am so excited to see you on the next episode.