5 ways to make Instagram stories more interactive for your followers

If you’re a business owner who’s intent on growing your brand using an Instagram account, you may be worrying about how you can start doing this.

Instead of worrying about yet another thing, you may want to delegate this task and collaborate with agencies who can help boost your company’s Instagram account to lessen the things on your plate. And to do so, you have to take extra care and time to read reviews like this one to find the best agency partner that aligns with your vision for your brand.

If, however, you’re mulling over which agency to work with and would like to kickstart the process of creating more engagement from your audience, here are five ways to make Instagram stories more interactive for your followers.

1.  Use Interactive Stickers

Instagram stickers aren’t just cute images you add to your stories.  Knowing how to maximize these stickers can help you increase interaction with your audience or followers. Instagram story stickers can provide prompts that start the conversation rolling, making your brand more relatable and interesting to your target market.  Some activities you can do with these stickers to increase audience interaction include:

• Creating An ‘Add Yours’ Thread
  One of the newest additions to Instagram’s sticker gallery is the ‘add yours’ sticker.  Using this sticker on your Instagram stories is a strategy you can use for organic Instagram growth.  Using the ‘add yours’ sticker is a fun prompt to get in touch with other users who can relate to the themes and topics of the ‘add yours’ threads you create.
  Moreover, using this sticker to increase engagement is another way to get insights into your followers and potentially use some of their answers in future content.
  Examples of prompts you can use can range from asking others to ‘drop your fave superhero’ to ‘show us your pet.’
   
• Starting A Poll
  There are two Instagram stickers you can use when conducting a poll.  You can either use the poll sticker or the emoji slider.  
  Anyone who sees your Instagram stories can use this interactive sticker by sliding the emoji or tapping an option in the poll. Results can be seen in real-time and can be used as a prompt to create a connection with the people who see your stories. These stickers allow people to become part of the conversation, increasing brand awareness and engagement for your business.
  You may use this sticker to ask which colour scheme looks better for a bedroom you’re decorating. You may also ask how much they like a particular product you’re selling.
   
• Adding Your Location
  That cute location sticker you can add to your Instagram stories is clickable.  This sticker is another way to generate traffic and interaction with your account.  Adding this sticker to your stories can make you and your business discoverable, thus, drawing engagement from your followers and other Instagram users.
  Using the location sticker with a local hashtag and a location tag can make you appear on the discover page of people in the exact location.  Aside from getting automatically geo-tagged, this tactic is an excellent way to encourage interaction with people who’d like to go to your tagged site or make people aware that your business exists in their area.  
  Location tags help you find local influencers who may want to collaborate and help your customers find you online and offline.  

2. Add A Tap For More Prompt

Viewing Instagram stories can be a passive experience. If you intend to push for more engagement from viewers and followers, you need to come up with tactics that will open up opportunities to make them think and want to become part of the conversation.
One of the ways to increase interactions is to add ‘tap for more’ prompts in your stories.  Tap for more prompts can help you improve interaction by:

• Triggering viewers to actively go through your stories
• Making them anticipate something entertaining or informative once they tap to go to the next part of the story
• Giving them a sense of control as they can either get involved in the progress of the story or swipe to view another story

This strategy is all about asking viewers an intriguing question that will increase their anticipation for the next part of the story slide.  It’s also essential to include a fascinating video or image to maximize the attention you’ll get from your Instagram viewers.

3. Share Behind The Scenes

Being relatable is one way to encourage people to follow you and eventually engage with your account.  Sharing some behind the scenes (BTS) clips on your stories is another way for people to interact with your account.
Sharing your step-by-step recipes, giving your followers a glimpse of your office space, and introducing your team is the type of content that can benefit the growth of your business.  
Of course, it will immensely help to include a call to action on your captions to prompt more meaningful discourse with your audience, such as ‘tag me if you made this recipe’ or ask them what other BTS things they want to see.  

4. Customer Spotlight

Another way to make Instagram stories engaging is to highlight customers.  Stories may be about insights your customers got from your business or testimonials about products or services from your company that changed their lives.  Other ways to bring in more eyeballs to your stories are shoutouts that mention customers who have the biggest orders or say thanks to loyal customers.

5. Go Live

Perhaps one of the activities that maximize the features of Instagram is going live.  It helps your account get preferential treatment from Instagram.  Live broadcasts are prioritized and pushed to the top of your audience’s feed.  Another benefit you can get from going live is real-time engagement from your audience, which is a great way to make candid conversations and increase your relatability to others.

So, how does going live fit in with your stories?  Live streams you do will, later on, appear on your Instagram stories so people who missed your broadcast can still catch up.  Going live gives you breathing space, especially if you’re having difficulty coming up with new content for your stories.

Wrap Up

As a business owner on Instagram, you have to look for ways to make Instagram’s algorithm work for you. One of the fun and simple ways to get engagement is by using stories. This feature is a great way to initiate a two-way conversation with your audience that will eventually help you boost your online presence. So, if you’re still on the fence, this is the sign you’re looking for to start maximizing Instagram’s stories feature.

Article by Pankaj Shah: DCP London Web Designers