How Instagram Stickers Can Boost Engagement

Key Takeaways 

• Highlight the benefits of using Instagram Stories to connect with followers without cluttering the main feed.
•  Explain the various interactive stickers available, such as countdown, link, location, hashtag, question, GIF, poll, and music stickers.
• Mention the utility of specialized stickers like weather and time stickers, donate stickers for non-profits, and support small business stickers.
•  Emphasize the collaborative potential of the account mention sticker for creating engaging posts.
•  Advise against over-cluttering with stickers and recommend using fun and relevant stickers to increase interactions and signal engagement to the Instagram algorithm.
• Promote Barker Social Media as a partner to extend reach and engagement on social media platforms, including developing an engaging Instagram marketing strategy and customizing stickers to match the brand.

Why Use Instagram Stories?

Instagram Stories let you post as much content as you want without cluttering your Instagram grid, so that it continues to highlight the most important things you want followers to see.

A high majority of Instagram users post Stories daily to reach followers that don’t always have time to scroll through a newsfeed, or simply prefer not to.

Types of Instagram Stories Stickers to Increase Engagement

An Instagram Story is content that disappears after 24 hours. Good photos and videos boost viewings, but using stickers can further drive engagement with interactive elements.

Interactive stickers are like action buttons, and encourage viewers to engage or do something, while other stickers are useful for highlighting or enhancing content. 

Using the right sticker icon can attract attention, drive web page traffic, and generally boost your brand. An interactive sticker drives the most engagement; luckily, a wide range of interactive stickers offers the choices you need to get viewers interested and involved.

Countdown Sticker

The countdown sticker is great for generating hype and excitement for events and product launches. This sticker shows a live countdown, and followers can subscribe to it for reminders. You can also pair this with the swipe-up feature for virtual events; once countdown is down to zero, a swipe-up link conveniently leads to the event.

Link Sticker

The link sticker is a new sticker available for Instagram Stories which allows viewers to link directly to outside content. The link sticker promotes your other content, and is effective for sharing promotions, blog posts, newsletters, and other content.

Location Sticker

For business accounts that have a physical location, location stickers let you tag a location, so your story shows in public stories feeds for it. A location sticker will increase your visibility to audiences in the area who may benefit. This is a good way to broaden your audience, promote brand awareness, and increase visibility to online and location-specific sites. Be sure not to tag a too-large area so your post gets lost or your content is not as relevant.

Hashtag Sticker

A hashtag sticker links to the results page for that specific hashtag. While the hashtag sticker is great for broadening your audience and adding interactivity to increase engagement, conduct hashtag and market research, and be strategic in your linked hashtags, to make sure they are both popular and relevant. 

Question Sticker

The questions sticker is another way to get information, but is more open-ended and detailed than poll stickers. You can ask fun questions, and gain valuable feedback, while creating a stronger connection.

You can use a very broad question to allow flexible customer feedback, or a more specific one. Because this allows for open-ended input, you can gain greater insight into your audience. You can even learn new information you wouldn’t have known to specifically ask for.

GIF Stickers

Try adding GIFs that are available from the search bar. Choices are limited and best for generic GIFs like shapes or simpler pictures to highlight something, but they are good for catching the eye and calling attention to a key point.

Poll Sticker

Asking opinions is great for making people feel involved and gain interest, as well as a good way to get valuable feedback. You can pick either a two-choice sticker for the simplest questions, or a multiple choice box for more varied feedback.

Music Stickers

The music sticker lets you pick from a variety of songs to set the mood for your Instagram Story and add interest, drawing the viewer in more emotionally.

Other More Specialized Stickers

Although these may not seem that useful, weather and time stickers are excellent for sporting events, outdoor product launch events, or other outdoor occasions. Adding these stickers to such events can create engagement.

The donate sticker is useful for charities and non-profits organizations. The bonus is that no transaction fees are charged, and donors receive an ‘I donated’ sticker for further marketing reach.

The support small business sticker, quiz sticker, and other stickers that are more specialized may not be relevant to everyone, but are excellent for the situations where they are relevant. You can use these effectively to encourage engagement in the right places.

Account Mention Sticker

Mention stickers let you tag another person or business Instagram account. This is an excellent way to create a collaborative post. 

Emoji Slider Sticker

Emoji sliders are another fun and easy type of poll sticker. You can use it to gain graded feedback from customers using a sliding scale for visual appeal and to attract more attention.

Strategically Use Stickers to Increase Engagement on Your Instagram Stories

So how Instagram stickers can boost engagement? Well, don’t over clutter with stickers. You can use however many stickers you want, but adding too many can be confusing. A couple of more relevant stickers has more impact. Keeping the stickers fun and relevant increases the likelihood of interactions, which signals to the Instagram algorithm that the person has a relationship with your brand or business.

Barker Social Media can help you extend your reach and engagement on your social media platforms, and develop an active, engaging Instagram marketing strategy tailored to your business and image. We can also help you customize stickers to match your brand and catch the eye.