How to Add Questions to an Instagram Story

Looking to spark real conversations with your audience on Instagram? The Questions sticker is one of the most direct and effective tools you can use in your Stories. This simple feature creates a powerful two-way communication channel, allowing you to go beyond passive content consumption and build a genuine community. This guide will walk you through exactly how to add questions to your Instagram Story, plus share some creative strategies for using them to gather feedback, educate your followers, and grow your brand.

The Nuts and Bolts: A Step-by-Step Guide to Using the Questions Sticker

First things first, let's get the technical part out of the way. Adding a Questions sticker to your Instagram Story is a quick, straightforward process. Follow these steps, and you'll have one live in minutes.

1. Open Instagram Stories: Tap the plus icon (+) at the top of your home screen and select "Story," or simply swipe right from anywhere in your feed.
2. Create a Background: Take a photo, record a video, or choose a piece of content from your phone’s gallery. You can also use Instagram's "Create" mode (tap the Aa icon) for a solid or gradient-colored background if you want the sticker to be the main focus.
3. Find the Sticker Menu: Once your background is ready, tap the square smiley-face icon at the top of the screen. This will open the sticker tray where all of Instagram's interactive elements live.
4. Select the "Questions" Sticker: Look for the sticker labeled "QUESTIONS" and tap on it. It will drop onto your Story canvas with a default prompt like "Ask me a question."
5. Customize Your Prompt: This is where you set the context for your audience. Instead of the generic default, tap on the text to write your own engaging prompt. This could be something like, "What do you want to know about our new launch?" or "Hit me with your best productivity hacks!"
6. Adjust and Place: Use your fingers to resize, rotate, and move the sticker around your screen. Place it in a spot that is easy to see and doesn’t cover any important parts of your main content. You can also tap the color wheel at the top to change the color of the sticker to better match your brand or image.
7. Share Your Story: Once you’re happy with how it looks, tap "Your Story" in the bottom-left corner to publish it. That’s it! Your Questions sticker is now live for your followers to see and interact with.

You've Got Questions! How to View and Share Responses

Posting the sticker is only half the battle. The real magic happens when you start receiving questions and sharing your answers. It's a fundamental part of the conversation loop that makes this feature so effective. Here's how to manage the responses you get.

Viewing Your Incoming Questions

To see who has responded, simply open your Story and swipe up from the bottom of the screen. You'll see the viewership list as usual, but just above it, you’ll find a section showing all the responses submitted through your Questions sticker. You can scroll through the list to read everything people have sent in.

Responding to Your Audience

You have two main ways to respond to a question:

• Reply Privately: If a question is personal or doesn't feel right for a public response, you can tap on the person's message and select "Send Message." This will open a direct message (DM) chat where you can answer them one-on-one. This is great for handling customer service issues or sensitive topics discreetly.
• Share a Public Response: This is the most common and engaging way to answer. When you tap on a question you want to answer, select "Share Response." This action automatically creates a brand-new Story with the original question featured in a sticker. The name and photo of the person who asked it are kept anonymous, so you don't have to worry about putting anyone on the spot. From here, you can design your response by adding text, recording a video of yourself talking, adding a relevant GIF, or using any other creative element to make your answer more engaging.

Beyond 'Ask Me Anything': Creative Ways to Use the Questions Sticker for Your Brand

While a classic "Ask Me Anything" (AMA) is a fantastic starting point, the Questions sticker is far more versatile. With a little creativity, you can transform it into a powerful tool for social media marketing, content creation, and community building.

Host a Themed Q&A or AMA

The AMA format builds a powerful sense of transparency and connection between you and your audience. But you can make it even more effective by adding a theme. This focuses the conversation and often leads to higher-quality questions.

• For Experts and Coaches: Instead of "Ask Me Anything," try "Ask me about building a better morning routine" or "What's holding you back from starting your business? Ask here!"
• For Product Brands: A founder can do an AMA about the brand's origin story. A lead designer could host a Q&A on the inspiration behind the new collection. This gives your audience a behind-the-scenes look that builds brand affinity.

Gather Feedback and Invaluable Business Insights

Your followers are a free, real-time focus group. Use the Questions sticker to tap into their insights and make them feel like a part of your brand's journey. This is an incredibly effective form of lightweight market research.

• Product Development: "What's one feature you wish our app had?" or "What new scent should we release for our candle line?"
• Content Strategy: "What kind of topics do you want us to cover on our blog next month?" or "What's one thing you struggle with that we could make a tutorial about?"

When people see their ideas implemented, it makes them feel valued and transforms them from passive followers into a loyal community.

Crowdsource Ideas and Fuel Your Content Engine

Constantly coming up with new content ideas can be draining. Why not let your audience help? Use the Questions sticker to crowdsource ideas that you can then turn into feed posts, Reels, or blog articles.

• Fun &, Engaging: "We're naming our new office plant! Share your best ideas," or "Describe our brand in three words."
• Problem-Solving Content: "What's the hardest part about planning weekly meals?" A food blogger can use the responses to create highly relevant and useful content.

Test Audience Knowledge and Educate

Flip the script and use the sticker to ask your audience questions. This functions as an informal quiz and a way to share educational content in a bite-sized, interactive format.

• Debunk Myths: "What's a common myth you've heard about skincare?" You can then answer each response in subsequent Stories, correcting misinformation and establishing your expertise.
• Quick Trivia: "Guess the year we launched our first-ever product!" or "How many espressos go into a flat white?" This is fun, lighthearted, and reinforces brand or product knowledge.

Tips for Getting More (and Better) Responses

Just because you post a question doesn't guarantee a flood of responses. To maximize your engagement, try incorporating these best practices into your strategy.

• Give a Heads-Up: Prime your audience ahead of time. Post a Story a few hours or a day beforehand saying something like, "I'm hosting a Q&A session about [topic] tomorrow morning. Get your questions ready!" This builds anticipation and gives people time to think.
• Craft Specific Prompts: General prompts like "Ask away!" can sometimes cause people to draw a blank. A more focused prompt like "Ask me about my experience moving to Bali" or "Questions about our sustainable sourcing? Ask us anything," typically gets much better and more relevant responses.
• Set the Stage: Don't just slap a sticker on a blank screen. Use a selfie video of you explaining what you're doing or an interesting photo as the backdrop. Context makes the interaction feel more personal and inviting.
• Seed the Conversation: If responses are slow to start, don't be afraid to discreetly ask yourself a question from a friend’s account or an anonymous account. Pick an interesting question that you know will have a valuable answer. Once people see interesting responses being shared, they're often more motivated to join in.
• Be Consistent: The more you use interaction-focused features like the Questions sticker, the more your audience will get used to participating. Make it a regular weekly or monthly feature, and it will become a natural part of their experience with your brand.
• Create a Highlight: Save your best Q&A sessions to an Instagram Story Highlight. This creates a valuable, evergreen resource for new followers who want to get to know you or your brand better.

Final Thoughts

The Instagram Questions sticker is so much more than a simple novelty feature. It is a direct line to your community - a tool for starting conversations, generating powerful customer insights, and building the type of brand loyalty that can't be bought. By pairing the simple 'how-to' with some of these creative strategies, you can turn your Stories from a broadcast channel into a lively and engaging conversation.

As you start planning more interactive Story content like Q&A sessions, keeping everything organized and consistent can become a headache. We built Postbase because we were all too familiar with complicated social media tools that struggle with today’s content formats, especially video-first features like Stories and Reels. Our visual calendar lets you plan your entire content schedule at a glance, so you can easily see where to slot in engaging moments like a Questions sticker session ahead of time and never miss a brilliant opportunity to connect with your audience.