New Feature Alert: Should You Add Polls to Instagram Captions?

Polls are attention magnets. This we know. 

And now, Instagram users can include interactive polls in their IG Reel captions. 

Obviously, the better you know your audience, the easier it is to craft a poll they can’t help taking the time to answer. But adding polls to your IG captions can also help you understand your audience better—so you can then create more of the content they enjoy. 

That said, agents have tried this relatively new feature—with mixed results. And by mixed, we mean a general range from “Meh” to “Well, that was embarrassing.” 

The Broke Agent recently asked BAMx members whether they’ve used it, and what they’ve noticed so far. We even tried a poll on our BAM account, and the number of votes was in the single digits. (See? Embarrassing.)

Even so, this is definitely a feature you should play around with. After all, Instagram usually pushes posts that use it’s newest features. 

This means we could see Instagram change this feature to allow users to position the poll exactly where they want it in the caption, and results could move north of “Meh” into “Wow, this actually works” territory. 

Polls are most magnetic when they’re few and far between. If your IG audience has already responded to several polls that day, they might just skip yours unless it stands out in some way. 

With that in mind, here are a few things you can try to make your IG caption polls more compelling:

• Try a variety of different kinds of polls: yes/no, this or that, “would you rather,” etc.
• Incentivize engagement with a downloadable reward for those who answer the poll
• Share the results of your poll in another post & thank your participants with a gift

With that last one, those who didn’t see the original post with the survey get another chance to see how you reward engagement with something of value, whether that’s a downloadable asset, a coupon code for your online course, or a link to a gift card you’ve loaded for a coffee/tea shop. 

If you’re a BAMx member, and you’re thinking about adding a poll to an IG caption this week, let us know how it went. And if you’re not in BAMx yet, sign up now to take advantage of our growing library of online courses, monthly webinars, and bi-monthly Q&A sessions, plus the most supportive and engaged Facebook group for real estate agents. 

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