How to take a poll on instagram


a Complete Guide to Polling Your Followers

  • To make an Instagram Poll, start by creating a new Story post by swiping right on Instagram's home screen.
  • Ask a yes or no question or any question with two options, then share the poll to your Story.
  • View the results of your poll at any time within 24 hours of posting by swiping up on the Story slide.

Whether they're just for fun or for informal research purposes, Instagram Polls are a fun way to interact with your Instagram followers. You can customize the question and the two responses (or stick to a straight-forward yes or no) and choose a background from your camera roll.

Once responses start rolling in, you can see how your followers voted, and even get a breakdown on how many people voted for each option and who exactly voted for each. After you collect responses, you can share the results with your followers so they can also see how people voted overall (but not who voted for what).

Here's how it's done.

How to create an Instagram Poll on your Story

1. Open the Instagram app. Tap your profile icon at the top-left of the screen or swipe right to add a Story. 

If you don't have any live Stories, you can create a new one by tapping your profile icon. Abigail Abesamis Demarest

2. Take a photo by tapping the circle on the bottom of the screen or choose a photo or video from your camera roll to post by tapping the small picture icon at the bottom-left of the screen. You can also tap the "Aa" Create icon to pull up a blank background.

Choose a blank background or a photo from your camera roll as the backdrop for your poll. Abigail Abesamis Demarest

3. Tap the Stickers icon, which looks like a square smiley face, at the top of the screen to pull up a menu of post additions.

Tap this icon to add a poll, location tag, GIFs, and more. Abigail Abesamis Demarest

4. In the pop-up menu, tap the Poll icon to ask a question with two answer prompts. To ask a sliding scale question, tap the Sliding Scale icon, which should be located next to the Poll sticker option. 

Select "Poll" or the sliding scale from the list of options. Abigail Abesamis Demarest

5. Tap the Ask a question… field, then type your question or a quick phrase on whatever topic you want people to vote on. For a regular poll, tap the Yes and No boxes to change the responses, or keep the boxes as-is if that works for your question. For a sliding scale poll, select an emoji to add to the sliding scale. 

You can edit all three fields in a poll. Abigail Abesamis Demarest

6. When you're finished editing the question and response fields, tap Done.

7. Tap Your Story to share your poll with all your followers, or Close Friends to share the poll with your Close Friends list. You can also search for a friend or choose one from the Suggested list to send the poll via direct message. 

Once your poll is ready to be posted, tap "Your Story" to share it with all your followers. Abigail Abesamis Demarest

How to view and share results of your Instagram Story Poll

1. To view the results of an Instagram poll you've created, open the Instagram app and tap your profile icon at the top-left of the screen to view your Story.

2. On the Story slide with the poll, you'll see the overall results. For more information on how many people voted and what each person voted for, swipe up on the Story slide or tap Seen by on the bottom-left of the screen.

After people start voting on your poll, you'll see the overall results on the Story slide. Abigail Abesamis Demarest

3. To share the results of your poll to your Story, tap Share Results, then select Your Story or Close Friends.

You can see a detailed view of the poll results, with an option to share them. Abigail Abesamis Demarest

Ideas for Instagram Polls For sliding scale polls, you can customize the emoji used. Abigail Abesamis Demarest
  • This or that: Give your followers two options and ask them to choose which one they prefer. Poll your followers about fun, random topics or ask them what types of content or formats they prefer on your feed.
  • Yes or no: Ask a yes or no question to gauge how your followers feel about specific topics. Again, you can go the random route or ask more curated questions to gauge interest in specific subjects when it comes to your content.
  • Sliding scale: Rather than a straightforward yes or no, or having to choose between two different options, a sliding scale allows your followers to choose where they fall on a sliding scale in response to your question.

How to send an Instagram Poll via direct message

1. Open the Instagram app on your device and tap the Messages icon in the top-right corner. 

2. Select a recent conversation or tap the New Message icon in the top-right corner. 

3. On the message screen, tap the blue camera icon next to the textbox at the bottom of the screen. 

Tap the blue camera icon to take a picture and add a poll to it. Grace Eliza Goodwin/Insider

4. Take a photo or select one from your camera roll, and tap the Stickers icon, which looks like a square smiley face, in the top-right corner of the screen.  

5. Select Poll in the pop-up menu. 

6. A poll box will appear over your image — type your poll question into the Ask a question section, and tap inside the Yes and No boxes to change the answer options. 

7. When your poll is ready, tap Send at the bottom-middle of the screen. 

Note: When you send an Instagram Poll through direct messages, the poll is not interactive, meaning the recipients will not be able to answer the poll by selecting an answer option in the image. They will have to give their answers via a separate message beneath your poll message. 

Abigail Abesamis Demarest

Abigail Abesamis Demarest is a contributing writer for Insider based in New York. She loves a good glazed donut and nerdy deep dives into the science of food and how it's made. 

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How To Create a Poll on Instagram

Social networks are always trying to come up with new ways to engage you and keep you from switching to the competition. Snapchat has Snap Maps, Twitter has just increased the character limit for some users and Instagram has recently introduced polls. If you want to know more about them and how to create a poll on Instagram, this tutorial is for you.

Instagram polls: What are they?

Instagram polls work inside stories to create another level of interactivity. You can add a poll sticker to an Instagram story in order to ask a question and get feedback. The sticker will show you the results of your poll in real time as your friends vote and can act as a simple way to get validation, advice or feedback as required.

They work for both the pollster and the respondents by keeping everything within the story. Rather than having to leave to direct message, you can respond to the poll within the story and never have to leave. Expect companies to take this up in a big way. Anything that increases engagement between a brand and their fans is going to be rinsed dry before we all get tired of it.

Creating a poll on Instagram

Creating a poll on Instagram is very straightforward. All you need do is take a picture, add a poll sticker, add the question and publish it.

  1. Open the Instagram app and create your story. Take a picture of something or use an existing image if you prefer. Something that places a context to your poll to avoid confusion.


  2. Add any filters or text and remember to leave room for the poll sticker.


  3. Select the stickers icon from the app and select the Poll sticker.


  4. You will see a Yes and No page with ‘Ask a question…’. Type a question in the text area.


  5. Select the Yes and No boxes to edit the response. This will need to be tailored to the question you ask.


  6. Select “Done” to finish editing and place the poll sticker where you want on the image.


  7. Share the story post as you normally would.

Once live, anyone who sees the post will get a popup alert that there is a poll and will be able to respond. They can then make a selection depending on the responses you added at Step 5 above.

Notifications and Statistics

As people respond to your poll, Instagram will notify you via push notifications. This will happen every time someone votes. If you’re expecting a lot of people to respond, you may want to turn those off. You can go to your story post to see the results if that works better for you.

To access the statistics just open your story post and swipe up to access analytics. You will see a list of the people who responded and how many people voted either way. If you select the eye icon for detailed statistics you can also see who voted what way too.

Instagram polls will stay live as long as the story is live, so 24 hours. The statistics are only available during this time and will be removed when the story is removed. No long term records are kept so make sure to check the results of your poll before the story expires.

Wrapping Up

Using Instagram polls is a cool way to get feedback on all manner of things. Most are likely to be mundane or frivolous but some are also likely to be more imaginative and useful for content creators.

Have you seen any interesting Instagram polls yet? Clever wording? Interesting choices? Tell us about them below if you have!

How to conduct a poll on Instagram?

An Instagram account is considered good if it has a high User Engagement Rate (ER). To raise this figure, many resort to interactive posts, including polls. This post is about polls.

How to conduct a poll on Instagram?

Instagram is such a social network where activity is very important. For this reason, you can often find various interactive posts here, with calls to action and questions that touch on a variety of topics (even very intimate ones). Instagrammers go to great lengths to force a subscriber to leave a comment under their post.

Among other types of posts, polls are often used on Instagram. You can conduct them here in several formats:

  • Post in the main feed with or without answer options in the post description,
  • Stories with the ability to choose one answer out of two (survey sticker),
  • Stories with the ability to indicate your answer to the question (question sticker),
  • Possibility to indicate inaccurate answers (scrolling sticker).

Each of these cases has its own peculiarities of choosing a question and designing a post with a survey. Below I will tell, how to conduct a poll on instagram , how to choose a question and design for it in order to get the maximum effect.

How to conduct a poll in the main feed.


The 5 main rules impossible to pass. In addition, the survey must match the subject of the account. Below are 5 rules to make these 2 components as effective as possible.

A picture that says that there is a poll in the post

Regardless of what type of poll you are conducting in the main feed, with a choice of ready-made answers or with your own answer, the subscriber should immediately understand that this is a poll. The point here is that the majority likes to express their opinion and users respond well to polls. Therefore, first of all, you need to make sure that your picture accurately indicates that the post is a poll.

Not everyone likes to spend time scrolling through the gallery. Therefore, it is better to have all the answer options in one picture. For example, if you offer to choose your favorite handbag from the new Gucci collection, you can take a photo that shows all the options, and only then put each one in the gallery separately (for those who still want to take a closer look at each option). Otherwise, only the most interested users will take part in the survey. Sometimes this is necessary, but most often you want to involve as many subscribers as possible in the survey.

Polls related to the topic of the account

If you run a lingerie store, and suddenly a post with a poll appears in your feed - “who did you root for, Khabib Nurmagomedov or Conor McGregor, in UFC fights?”, Then you risk being misunderstood . This can work in the story feed, but not in the main feed. Your polls should be relevant. For example, which of the new summer lingerie collections that were exhibited at the Gucci show do subscribers like more? That is, the thoughts immediately come that you are not just selling, but also follow the industry trends.

Simple and unbanal

The choice of question for the survey should be approached very carefully. The question should be simple, interesting and not banal at the same time (simple questions are the easiest to ask, so they are asked by everyone who is not too lazy). For example: “Do you like pizza?” (Fuck! Who doesn't love pizza, bitch!) vs “Top 3 pizzas you love and where you've eaten them.”

Short questions and answer options

It is better to refuse a survey with answer options in the form of large sentences in the description of the post. So you will not be limited only to those subscribers who like to read on Instagram and have time for this. And those are usually in the minority. If the answer options are too large, then try to present the survey in such a way that subscribers write their opinion, and you just have to write the question as briefly and clearly as possible.

Informative questions

The quality of the answers depends on the content of the question. Here is an example: “Celebrating Halloween?” and “Who are you dressing up for Halloween?”. In fact, the second question contains the first one and is more meaningful. In the first case, the comments with the answers will be - “Yes”, “No”, “No”, “Yes”. In the second - “I’m not celebrating”, “I dressed up as a witch”, “I didn’t notice, but I saw what a kick-ass costume!”, “I put on my hat with a bell”. Do you want quality comments? Give them a reason to write!

How to conduct a poll in Stories

There is no need to make plans to conduct surveys in Stories. Stories is the tape where we can be ourselves, and not a showcase of our business, brand or our image. And given that the interfaces of stickers with questions are as simple as possible, you can even involve the user here with banality. So, ask subscribers about everything you see fit! Emotions are more important here than content and thoughtfulness.

Stories are viewed at high speeds, so the stickers with questions should be large enough for the scrolling user to “take a look” at the question. If the survey is really interesting, then you will get a large number of responses. You can find a large number of interesting polls in the post - “Interesting polls on Instagram”.

If the poll stickers are placed on an attractive picture, then the chances of getting more participants increase dramatically.

Important advice! Don't post too many polls in stories. Especially if it's a question sticker with the ability to leave your answer, and you plan to post the answers to the story feed. You can confuse subscribers, but Instagram does not like to stand on ceremony!


How to take the Instagram Stories Poll

How to take the Instagram Poll to ask questions or poll your followers. Instagram polls allow your followers to participate in your story.

To create an Instagram poll, start by creating a new Story post by swiping right on the Instagram home screen. Ask a yes or no question, or any two-choice question, and then share the poll in your story. View survey results anytime within 24 hours of posting by swiping up on the story slide.

Whether just for fun or for informal research purposes, Instagram polls are a fun way to connect with your Instagram followers. You can set up a question and two answers (or stick with a straight yes or no answer) and choose a backdrop from your camera roll.

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As soon as the answers start coming in, you can see how your subscribers voted and even get a breakdown of how many people voted for each option and who exactly voted for each option.

Once you've collected the answers, you can share the results with your followers so they can also see how people voted in general (but not who voted for what). Here's how to create an Instagram poll.

How to create an Instagram poll about your story

  1. Create an Instagram poll about your story Open the Instagram app. Tap your profile icon in the top left corner of the screen, or swipe right to add a story.
  2. Take a photo by tapping the circle at the bottom of the screen, or select a photo or video from the camera gallery to share by tapping the small image icon at the bottom left of the screen. You can also click the "Aa" icon "Create" to view a blank background.
  3. Touch the sticker icon, which looks like a square smiley, at the top of the screen to open the menu of added entries.
  4. In the pop-up menu, tap the poll icon to ask a question with two requests for answers. To ask a question about the escalator, tap the escalator icon, which should be next to the poll sticker option.
  5. Tap the Ask a question... box, then enter your question or short sentence about the topic you want people to vote on. In a regular survey, tap the Yes and No boxes to change your answers, or leave the boxes as they are if you agree with your question. For an overview of the escalator, select the emoji you want to add to the escalator.
  6. When you have finished editing the question and answer fields, click Done.
  7. Click My Story to share the survey with all your followers, or Close Friends to share the survey with your list of close friends. You can also find a friend or select one from a list of suggested ones to send a direct message survey.

How to view and share poll results in Instagram Stories

  1. To view the results of an Instagram poll you've created, open the Instagram app and tap your profile icon in the top left corner of the screen to view your story.
  2. On the story slide with the survey, you will see the overall results. For more information on how many people voted and what each voted for, swipe up on the story slide or click Viewed from in the bottom left corner of the screen.
  3. To post the survey results to your story, click Share Results, then select My Story or Close Friends.

Instagram Poll Ideas

  • Either: Give your followers two options and ask them to choose which one they prefer. Ask your followers about fun and casual topics, or ask them what types of content or formats they prefer in your feed.
  • Yes or No: Ask a yes or no question to gauge how your followers feel about specific topics. Again, you can choose to go random or ask more elaborate questions to gauge interest in specific topics when it comes to your content.
  • Escalator: Instead of a simple yes or no answer or having to choose between two different options, the escalator allows your followers to choose where to take the escalator in response to your question.

How to send an Instagram poll via direct message

  1. Open the Instagram app on your device and tap the message icon in the top right corner.
  2. Select a recent conversation or tap the New Message icon in the upper right corner.
  3. On the message screen, tap the blue camera icon next to the text box at the bottom of the screen.
  4. Take a photo or select one from your camera roll and tap the stickers icon, which looks like a square smiley face, in the top right corner of the screen.
  5. Select Survey from the pop-up menu.
  6. A poll window will appear on your image: enter your question in the "Ask a Question" section and tap the "Yes" and "No" fields to change the answer options.
  7. When the survey is ready, click Submit at the bottom center of the screen.

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