Stories have become a lot like the like button. At one point, every social media app had one. Now that almost every social media app has stories, they need to try and differentiate the feature on their own respective platform. Instagram is doing this by making its stories interactive. It’s added a new feature that lets you add questions to your Instagram story. It works via stickers. Here’s how you can use Instagram story questions.
Make sure you’re running the latest version of the Instagram app. The feature appears to have rolled out to all users so it should be available if you’ve got the latest version of the app. It’s available on both iOS and Android.
Open the Instagram app and tap the camera button at the top left. Take a photo, or select one from your camera roll. You can also record a video, or pick one from the camera roll. Once you select a photo or video, tap the sticker button i.e., the smiley face button. This will open the slider with all the stickers. There should be a Questions sticker. Tap it.
Once you add the sticker, you can type your questions. You have the usual color options available for the text color.
Anyone who views the story can choose to answer the question you ask. To view their replies, tap your story and then tap the number of views at the bottom left. The replies aren’t public however, if you tap a response you will see a ‘Share response’ option. When you share a response, it takes you to the Story screen. You can add a video or picture and the question, along with the response, appears as a sticker on top. The response is shared to your story though you can probably send to to your friends too.
You can limit who can reply to your Instagram story questions. To limit the audience, go to the Story controls. Under the ‘Allow Message Replies’ section, you will see three options; Everyone, People you follow, and Off. The Off option allows you to disable replies to questions but that also makes the question feature useless unless it’s a rhetorical question you want to ask.
The feature isn’t bad. It compels people to do something other than just view a story. It’s definitely going to be great for brands but for ordinary users, it’s an easy way to interact with followers.
