Instagram Poll Games – Ideas, Examples and Templates

First thing’s first: you’re going to want to decide what your game will be about. The most successful Instagram poll games will focus on either the niche of your account, or something more generally topical. Here are a few examples:

By picking a theme that focuses on your niche, half the battle is already won, as it’s likely your followers will already fit within that interest. By picking a topic that is trending, a wider audience will be more likely to get involved as they find it particularly relatable in that moment of time.

Before we get onto the ideas, you’re also going to want to know how to create an Instagram poll game. First, you’ll need to upload a photo or photos of your choice – usually with poll games, you are selecting between two different options.

Open up Instagram Stories, and use the ‘layout feature’, selecting the layout that allows you to upload two images. Upload and adjust your images before confirming. Next, swipe up and select the ‘poll’ or ‘question’ sticker, and overlay this onto your photo, so people can easily vote on your Stories!

 

 

Now you know where to access everything you need, let’s take a look at a few fun ideas you can use for your next Instagram poll game…

One of the most popular Instagram games (which is also one of the easiest to format) is a little game we like to call ‘this or that’. It asks your followers to pick between two options, voting for their favorite, and it is the easiest to build out. You can do this by either using the layout feature to upload two images for your followers to choose between, or you can just put your poll on a basic background and let them pick based on text. Here are two examples of what we mean:

This or that is a really fun and easy way to get your followers involved without too much legwork. You can bank a selection of images that you want to use, and easily reach for them when you decide to run a poll game. You can also make it into a series, by running them every Thursday evening, or Saturday morning for example, to encourage your followers to continue to come back to your Stories. Another idea, is integrating user-generated content into your ‘this or that’ polls, which allows you to celebrate and foster your community as well as extend your reach. By tagging people in their image on the poll games, they may reshare to their Story, which encourages more votes, and therefore more eyes on your Stories!

If you want to take it a step further, you can create or use templates from a platform like Canva, to post a more ‘stylized’ game. Encourage your followers to screenshot the slide, upload it to their own Stories and circle their ‘this or that’ choices, tagging you in their responses. You can pop your username on the template in case it goes viral, so everyone knows exactly where it came from. 😉

A popular way for brands to get their followers excited about new launches, is by creating aesthetic Stories that show off their new collection or product, by allowing people to get involved and vote for their favorites. This option also means you can mix up the features you use, as you can weave in a variety of question stickers, poll stickers and slider stickers to allow users to make their choices. This format of the Story also allows you to add product swipe ups or links, so you can track how effective it is as a means of generating sales.

On the flipside, you can also use Instagram poll games for market research. If you are in the beginning stages of creating a product, or just want audience feedback, using the same format as above allows you to collect valuable information, directly from your potential customers.

Another idea for your Instagram poll games that increases engagement and interaction even further is by getting involved in the game yourself. Much like the books you might have read as a kid where you get to pick the outcome of a story, you can execute the exact same idea on Instagram Stories. An example could be by allowing your followers to dictate what you eat in a day, or where you go, by giving them two options to choose from, and picking the most popular one. You can then upload a follow-up Story, showing you doing the option that they chose, before uploading your next poll, where they vote for something else.

This adds the element of personalization, as your followers can get to know you a little more through live videos and Stories, that you can later repurpose and upload to your feed, encouraging more people to tune into your Stories for the next Live poll.

Our final idea for creating Instagram poll games is by connecting it to your followers’ own lives. People are more likely to respond to content that directly addresses them, or that they can specifically relate to, so a strategic idea to ensure you get active responses, is by framing it around relatable topics. For example, you could ask people to vote on things their boyfriend or girlfriend would rather do, or ask them which holiday destination their best friend would pick, to ground it more into their daily lives and increase shareability.

We hope you picked up some new ideas for your next Instagram poll game on your Stories! Let us know what tips you want to hear next on our Instagram. And, if you want to know how to change the background of your Instagram Stories, and more creative tips, read this post!