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If you’re anything like us you’re probably skeptical of a lot of social media updates (Eh, Snapchat Geofilters anyone?) but we thought this was worth a mention. On October 3rd, Instagram announced they were introducing interactive poll stickers in Instagram Stories, that would allow users to ask their followers a question and see how they vote. It’s a handy addition, one that offers a lot of value to higher education institutions.
How does it work?
Once you’re happy with your photo or video, you select the poll sticker and place it anywhere you want – you can write your own question and customize the poll choices.
After sharing your poll, followers can start voting and see real-time results. Also, once someone votes on your poll, they can see which choice is in the lead at any given moment. If they come back to your story later on, they can see the latest and most up-to-date results.
You can only have one poll per story and there is a character limit for the poll (27 characters)
You will also be able to see full analytics on how people responded and who responded with what answer.
There’s an infinite number of ways that universities could benefit from using Instagram Polls. We’re excited to see just how creative you all get!
Ideas to get the creative juices flowing include:
- Gauging the temperature on campus on a particular subject
- Post on various platforms after to publicize results
- Get feedback on what content your audience would like to see more of
- Run competitions and ask students to vote to be entered
- Market Research – find out what students think about the services you offer
- Get students involved in decision making
- Polls during student takeovers
- Don’t forget the fun factor – hold a poll just for the fun of it!
We haven’t spied any higher education folks using an Instagram Poll Sticker yet but if we see anything good, we’ll be sure to let you all know.