On October 2nd, Instagram unveiled new features for its story platform.

What does that mean for the user experience, and why does that matter for brands?

What are the updates?

Instagram unveiled polling within stories, a whole bunch of new stickers, and grid management for aligning stickers.

How does this affect the user?

From this Instagram update, we can expect stories to become more and more interactive. This update tells us that Instagram is continually working on improving their story platform over the current experience of Snapchat. The user involvement aspect means stories will be designed to become more engaging, and therefore, have you spend more time on the Instagram app. This is an improvement over the previous engagement style of “tap to see next” posts. It also suggests that users will probably use both the “tap to see next” posts and polls in conjunction to increase engagement.

How does this affect brands?

Like Twitter polls, polls on stories allows brands to gather feedback from users in a timely manner. This can be an asset to better understand your users, or, just to have fun. Take for example these two screenshotted posts: one is a joke, the other is gauging user interest in an external event. Both engage the user, and help the brand overall.

What we love most about this Instagram update is that it showing marketers continual development and growth as a platform. We have discussed previously what it takes to make a good Instagram story, but this is a constantly changing platform.

How have you used Instagram’s new updates? Let us know in the comments section on our Facebook page or respond to us on Twitter by tagging @parachutedotco.