Ep 53. Instagram’s New Interactive Stickers

Instagram has just rolled out four new interactive stickers for Instagram Stories.  In this Snackbox episode, we explore each one and give you ideas on how to leverage them for your business. 

Here’s what we’ll cover:

1. Add Yours Music Sticker 🎵
What it is: This new feature allows users to add a song to another user’s story, similar to the original Add Yours sticker but with a musical twist.
How to use it:

• Engagement-driving/connection prompt: Ask your audience, “What’s your pump-up song before working out?” or “What’s your Friday evening jam?”
• Industry/profession-based prompt: If you’re a wedding planner, prompt with, “Favorite first dance track?” or “Unique songs for walking down the aisle.”
• Community-based prompt: Encourage followers to share a song that best represents their profession or a specific time period.

2. Reveal Sticker 🤫
What it is: A sticker that blurs the story content and only reveals it once the user DMs you.
How to use it:

• Tease a new product, service, or offer.
• Reveal new branding or a website soft launch.
• Share an “Outfit of the Day” or a finished makeup look.
• Provide a discount code or exclusive content to engaged followers.

3. Cut Outs Sticker ✂️
What it is: Create a sticker from any photo, akin to background removal in Canva or iMessage. Instagram saves these in your sticker tray for reuse.
How to use it:

• Highlight a podcast episode or eBook cover.
• Personalize your stories with your branding.
• Customize stories with unique elements to create a scrapbook-style collage.

4. Frames Sticker 📸
What it is: Turn any image into a polaroid-style photo, where you shake your phone to reveal the image.
How to use it:

• Focus on aesthetics, throwbacks, and highlighting specific story elements.

Join us as we explore these fresh features and how they can boost your engagement and connection with your audience. It’s time to get creative and make the most out of Instagram’s newest tools!

Don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more marketing tips and tricks!

Connect with us:

• Connect with Kryshla (on all platforms) at @shallwesocial and follow @firstclasscontentpodcast to be notified when the new podcast goes live
  
  
• Find Clem on TikTok @honeybeesocial or on Instagram @honeybeesocial_au

Transcript

0:00

Hello, all you mad marketing listeners. This is one of our next little snack box episodes. And today we are going to be discussing the new interactive stickers that have just popped up on your Instagram. So if you haven't seen them yet, when you go into your stories and you create a new story, you're going to see the stickers look a little bit different. But you have four new interactive stickers that shows that they are Really I think, doubling down on getting that engagement back up again, I think, for their users. But Krisha, why don't you take it away and tell us about that first sticker that we both a little bit. Yeah, this one's really fun. And like you said, I think this is really in response to people complaining about declining engagement on the app. So these four stickers will definitely help. We hope to boost that engagement. So the first one is the add yours music sticker. Now there's been an add yours sticker for quite some time now, and like the original, what it does is you add your own piece of content, your own story. To somebody else's story. But in this case, instead of adding a photo or a video, you are adding some music. If you see a prompt and it's asking you to do that, you can pop in your favorite song. And we've been having a bit of a chat about how we would use this beyond just sharing like. your favorite song because that's a little bit boring. So yeah, I think we've come up with kind of three different ways that you could possibly use this starting off with something that is just purely about getting that engagement, getting that connection happening on your stories and that is to ask, a prompt or a question along the lines of What's your favorite song? What's your pump up song that you listen to before doing XYZ? So before doing a workout, before starting your workday, before I don't know, a sports game or whatever it is. What's your favorite kind of song to get you really pumped up and get you in the zone? Likewise, you could do something perhaps what's It's like your relaxing song or your calm down song. So it could be, what are you listening to at night as you're having a cup of tea and getting ready for a sleep or Clem's suggestion, what's your end of the work week that pump up Friday evening song, you're finished work, you're walking out the door, what are you putting on and blasting at full volume in your headphones? Yeah, mine personally right now is Dua Lipa's Houdini. I cannot get that out of my head. As a friend calls it, that's on my rinse cycle, where you're listening to a song so much, you're rinsing it out of your brain. That right now is my Friday evening pump up song. Oh, I'm all about Dom Dollar at the moment. I am just thrashing anything and everything of his. I just love him. I'm a, I'm being a bit of a cougar cause I've got the hots for him too. But, love that heavy electro bassy moment. Just so good. So good. But yeah, so that's a really fun one, a way for you to engage with the audience and you can make it relevant to your brand as well. So tell us a few of those examples, Clem, that you come out with. yes. One of them that we came up with is from an industry profession. This song, like songs have so much meaning and there's one particular event. in Most people's lives where it's like this is the epitome of that event and it is weddings Wedding planners could use this as what is the song that you walk down the aisle to or what's your favorite first dance track? You know that sort of thing of where a song really symbolizes that moment in time for someone's Important life event what that would be like one way I think you could use it and you could just do this like You Once a week do it over and over again that same prompt as well. If you're a wedding planner, what about What about community based ones krishla? Yeah, and I actually, just thinking back to that last one. If you want to be really morbid, you could do like I do. I have a funeral playlist. True story. That I've shared with my husband. So in the event that I pass away, there will be songs that I like played at my funeral. So you could absolutely lean the other way. With that as well. And I think that's what makes it really fun. Like you said, songs really bring about emotion, that connection. They can take you to certain places as well. And we were thinking, as we were doing this, what, how else could we use this? And I think as like a prompt to signify like a profession or a community. So something along the lines of what song best represents what you do or, what you're interested in, or, defines a particular generation or a period of time or an event for you. If I were to say to you, what song defines the 90s. What would immediately come to mind? I'm thinking like something by Nirvana. That's my first gut feeling. What about for you, Clem? Oh, mind was sir mc sir mix a lot I like big butts and I can't lie. I don't know why I don't know why yes. like the song but i'm like 90s It's that Yep. Oh my goodness. There's a number for the nineties, right? Because that was our formative years. So clearly, there's a lot of songs that would resonate with Yes. 90s, our adolescence, but that's the kind of thing that you can do with this. So I think have a bit of fun with this. Make this a Friday post, people are so willing to share their favorite songs. It's like sharing your opinion. You know how people just love to do that. So I think that this is a really good and easy way to get a bit of traction on your stories, to make them engaging, to connect with your audience. And the best part is You can see people's responses. And so you can go back to them, start a chat and the DMS and be like, Oh, why did you pick that interesting choice? Oh, Oh my gosh, I would never have thought of that. XYZ. I think that's a really great way to start a conversation. Now, the next sticker that we have to reveal. Is titled exactly that reveal and this is a sticker where you create your story once you add the reveal sticker it blurs out the story so people can't see what it is until they send you A direct message. So I tried this out yesterday for my account to reveal a new service that I am offering. And so you could hear me talking about it in the background, but you couldn't see what I was showing until you just sent something in messages. So I had a few people try it out, which was nice of them to give it a go. But what do you think about this one, Clem? This one I think is my favorite of the four because it keeps an element of secrecy. now while you could write anything in the DM to reveal the story, it's really playing on people's curiosity. I would say go for your life and using the sticker to reveal anything new. So new product, new service, new offer, new branding, new website. It'd be perfect for soft launching something. Now when we say soft launching, we mean say like you've got a new product that you're about to launch. And before you start your big campaigns with, your ads and all of your contents, All about that new product or service. You do a soft launch. So say to your VIPs are usually ones that are going to be engaging in your stories quite a lot. So this is perfect for them to get that sneak peek into that new product by, Hey, you want to see what I've come up with. Here you go. Send me the, put in a DM and then, you're going to have that product revealed. You could do it even so much as something super simple your outfit of the day or your finished makeup look, what, someone wants to see what that new makeup look that you're doing what does it look like? Your finished product. But we thought also a really good one that you could do also for, again, your VIPs, the ones that really engage in your stories. Use this to share a discount code for something that you're offering for a service or whatnot, or even exclusive content. So I think you tested it out where you could have the sticker when someone responds into the reveal sticker, it shows the discount code, or you can use the link sticker so they can click on it to go to exclusive content that you've created for them. Is that right? Krishla. Yeah, so you can build your story out as you normally would. So if you wanted to write a discount code. on the story. You can also add other links and stickers as you usually would to your story. And then once you put that reveal sticker over top, it blurs everything out. So you can have multiple stickers on there, which is really cool. So you can mix these features together. But yeah, the discount code's a really good one. Or exclusive content, like you said. And the best part is, again, It's getting people to engage, starting that conversation, and then you can go back and follow up with them afterwards and ask them if they had any questions about the things that you've revealed. I think as always with any content, make it about the people watching your stories rather than you. So I think what we'll see, and I've just been a cynic here, I think what we're going to see is a lot of people revealing stuff about themselves. That's nice, but what can we do that's actually going to get people to send that DM? What value are they getting by doing that? I think if we start with that audience first, putting it in a way that they really want to engage with, you're going to see a lot more success with this feature. Yeah, I think it's all about playing around with it, but really just think about who you're talking to, or who you're speaking with and trying to engage with and drive the conversation, put the conversation back onto them. The next sticker is cutouts. Now, cutouts are, you can create a sticker. From any photo. So Instagram keeps this sticker in your sticker tray so that you can use it again and again. So if you're a bit of a savvy iPhone user, you could already do this in iMessages. It's something that you, that most people actually do in Canva as well, where you can put a photo on top of a photo and just remove the background. So now you can do that within Instagram Stories. and have your own little cutout stickers. But how would you use it for yourself, Krischler? How would you advise people to use this? Yeah, so I've actually been doing this for years. For anyone who's been watching my stories, you'll often see that I have my own custom stickers. Most of these I have made in Canva, and then I've just downloaded them with a transparent background, sent them to my phone, and I keep them in a folder. I also use a tool called Wibble, W I B L. And that does the same thing whereby it'll remove the background from a particular photo, but you can also then animate it. So it takes it a step further, but I love now that you can just do this with an Instagram. And this really leans into one of the trends and predictions that we spoke about at the end of last year, and that is Instagram actually bringing a bunch of features. in house. So they're taking things that some of these external apps have previously done. We saw it was scheduling. Now we're seeing it with Canva features and they're bringing it in house so you don't need to leave the app in order to be able to do all of these cool things. But here's some ways that I would absolutely use it. So If you are doing a story, you're talking about a particular product that you have, that could be a digital product or a physical product, you can make a little custom sticker showing that product, showing that ebook showing that podcast episode and put that onto the screen beside you to give that visual of what it is that you're talking about. So easy to do and just a cool way to bring your branding in. I would also be using this to personalize your story. So if you're sharing stories that don't have you in them, talking to camera, you could still have a little sticker cut out of yourself, like pointing to the story or just there with maybe a call to action or something just to add you and your face into your content. Now, this is especially important if you are going to share somebody else's content. to your stories. It can be a great way to insert yourself into that. So when people are scrolling through the stories, they know that it is your content. As I mentioned a moment ago, it's a good way to bring in your own branding, your unique colors, or if you have elements or icons that you use a lot in your content, you can create little stickers for these and pop them in. And another one that we just thought of as we were brainstorming was really to use these stickers because you can create more than one and you can use the same sticker multiple times. So you can create a bit of like a scrapbooking style kind of collage which I think would look really cool as well. Yeah, I had no idea that you could use the same sticker multiple times within a story. That goes to show how often I actually do stories. This is a new feature though, so that's okay. This is a new feature. But yeah, you'll have to do it now. Have a play with it. I think it's a really fun one. And again, you can combine it with some of these other features as well including the next one, which as far as I can see, this is really all about aesthetics, although there is an element of fun to it. So take us through this one, Clem. I think this one's going to appeal quite, quite a bit to, say, the Gen X early millennials. Because I've got a feeling that quite a few Instagram users around the world are going to start shaking their phones like a Polaroid picture. It's Frames. It's this new sticker called Frames where they make an image into a Polaroid style photo. Now, where does the shaking come in? You have to shake your phone when you're looking at that story to reveal the image. Just like you used to have to do when you're shaking a Polaroid picture. Exactly. Now, if you're watching the video, both of us are just shaking our hands like a Polaroid picture like OutKast taught us to do. But yeah like he said I think it is a little bit, this is more of an aesthetic. Sticker for sure. It'd be perfect for throwbacks. Because, Polaroid pictures are usually like an older photo, etc. So throwbacks, or even highlighting a particular element of your story. Or a particular element of the story. So if you have something that you're working on, go and highlight it because that frame if you're not familiar with the Polaroid and no offense to anybody, this really shows your age. If you're not familiar with the Polaroid picture, it's a white frame. So you're, you visually are ending up zeroing in on what's within the frame. So you can really like actually zoom into. something in particular you want people to pay attention to. So yeah, I think it's a great little sticker. I don't know if it's going to be the one that's most used out of the four. Honestly, I don't think, I honestly think it's going to be the reveal one. That's going to be the one that's going to win. It's the same concept. It's a little, less commitment in terms of the reveal. So the reveal you need to DM in order to see what it is, whereas this one you just need to shake your phone. So perhaps it will appeal more to the people that want to slide under the radar a little bit more and not know that they don't want you to know that they're looking at your content. I don't know, are they going to now measure phone shakes as a Shaking. of engagement. I'm not quite sure about that. But yeah, it's pretty cool, pretty fun. What is your favorite one of these features? Will you try these? I think we've mentioned this before, Whenever social media platforms release a new feature, it's always a good idea to use them because these platforms want people trying them out and using them. So chances are you will be rewarded, perhaps with more reach Certainly with more engagement if people actually do engage with these new features., I saw a thread over on Threads where our friend Carly from Techno Bird said, I am not shaking my phone. Or d you mean to reveal anything? This could be a really love it or hate it. Style of content. What do you think? Slide into our dms at Mag Mad Ma . What do you think? Slide into our DMs at madmarketingmums let us know which feature you like, if you'll be using those, or if you're thinking, nah, this is not for me. And as always, we'll see you in the next episode and stay mad.