The New Question Sticker by Instagram
Last year, Instagram added an interactive, entertaining feature to its social media platform – the ‘Questions’ sticker. The new feature makes it possible for your followers to post questions on stories that are shared on the platform. In the same way, your followers can submit questions about your business or products. The platform allows you to share stories with your followers and answer every question they ask on social media– which makes it highly conversational.
For businesses, the question sticker by Instagram can be a highly useful customer engagement tool that is both fun and fast. If your business is looking to boost customer interaction on social media, here are some ways the new question sticker can come in handy:
1. Initiate Conversation with your Audience
The Instagram question sticker serves as a great tool for getting your followers to begin interacting with your business and talking about it. It is a great way of showing them that you are approachable and proving that a real person is actually running your account. With these stickers, you can initiate conversations to find out what is really important to your audience, seek their advice or even create space for them to share their thoughts. When initiating conversations, find a way of ensuring they remain relevant to your product or business.
Consider keeping your questions fun – the kind that your followers can respond to without thinking too much. Airbnb is a good example of a company successfully managing to keep its questions easy. Mindbody has also started engaging its followers by asking them to share their intentions for the following month. As you initiate conversations with your followers through an Instagram questions story, your long-term goal should be to build a lasting relationship with them. It is advisable to interact with them more and more so they develop a personal connection with your business.
2. Curate Frequently Asked Questions
Businesses receive numerous queries from followers about their services and products. Using the Instagram sticker, they can organize the frequently asked questions (FAQs) and make their customer service easy. This process will enable them to compile a list of FAQs that can be actually pinned on the top part of the company profile in the form of a highlight.
The University of Toronto has used this strategy to respond to questions that new students ask frequently on its profile by placing an ‘Ask Me’ tag. Besides FAQs, businesses can use this feature to share information they consider important with their followers – like return and exchange policies, shipping information among others. Adopting this strategy can significantly reduce the time your business spends answering regular questions that keep popping up on its emails or social media pages.
3. Host Question & Answer Sessions
One of the easiest ways that your business can use Instagram’s question sticker is to engage your customers in a question & answer session. Although this might seem obvious, there are various ways your business can go about setting up Q&A sessions that encourage your followers to engage with your story. For instance, you can pick a broad topic that allows you to discuss specific aspects of your business.
If you choose to regularly run Q&A sessions on Instagram stories stickers, consider making them consistent. Host them at a specific time and inform your audience in advance. This makes them aware that you will be responding to their questions and they can log on to get the answers they need. Whichever way you choose to run your Q&As, ensure the content of these sessions is well aligned with your business goals. When you invest time in thinking through answers that your audience wants, you are likely to have better engagement.
4. Get Feedback from your Audience
Since Instagram’s question sticker enables you to engage with people who follow you on the platform, you can use this feature to get feedback from your audience. The questions sticker can be turned into a great tool for collecting testimonials, getting feedback about your products & services, and crowdsourcing ideas on how you can improve them from your followers.
One company that has already started soliciting feedback from its customers using question stickers is Calpak that engaged its audience on where they should move next. Another company, Thinkific launched a new logo and engaged its audience to get feedback on its new look while Starbucks sought feedback from its followers on their favorite iced coffee orders. If you decide to use question stickers to gather feedback from your audience, ensure that you ask the right questions and engage in the conversation actively so that people know you are listening to them.
5. Showcase your Expertise
Instagram’s question sticker provides a great space not just to begin engaging your followers, but also to show off your expertise. Whether you are an SEO expert or a pet care specialist, you can use the sticker to provide free advice to your followers by responding to questions they ask. Doing so gives you a chance to curve your niche and position yourself as an expert in your area of specialization. Providing free advice also gives you an opportunity to build reciprocity with your followers. Often, the more generous you are with your advice, the more your followers are likely to engage with you.
Conclusion
The question sticker is a simple but highly interactive feature on Instagram. For businesses that want to enhance customer experience, it can provide the much-needed space to engage on a continuous basis. If you choose to use this feature to increase interaction with your customers, ensure that you do not overdo it, because that will get your followers fatigued. Consider using questions creatively but in a deliberate and sparing manner.
Further, ensure the content of your story is consistent with the style and voice of your brand. Be clear on the goal that you want to achieve with your audience, whether you are collecting feedback from your customers, building trust or just increasing the momentum of your campaign. Finally, always remember to respond to questions that your followers submit to you. Similarly, create time to monitor and respond to questions that your followers submit to you.
