Instagram launches new Challenge sticker: here is how it works
Challenges have flourished during the Coronavirus quarantine and Instagram aims to leverage on that with a new sticker, currently on test
Instagram challenges are a great way to increase your brand awareness and follower engagement. Here, we explained how you can start using the new Instagram stickers.
The Covid-19 quarantine has caused people to spend much more time and energy on social networks while staying at home. A collateral effect of the eventual Coronavirus boredom was the flourishing of countless types of Challenges: from sharing archive’s photos to supposedly athletic performances, every pitch seemed to be valuable to start a new challenge.
The tech-guys in Menlo Park have always been quite attentive to emerging trends, even more so during a time when obvious opportunities for social and digital platforms emerge every minute. There’s plenty of evidence for that: from Facebook Rooms to 8-users video chats on Whatsapp, up to Instagram Live on Desktop, and the new Food Orders sticker.
In the last few hours, a new sticker made its appearance on the Instagram Stories menu: Challenge. The new function is currently on a test, you therefore might not see it, at least not yet.
How does the Challenge Sticker work?
Instagram’s Challenge Sticker is decently easy in terms of functioning. When adding the sticker on an IG Story, you will need to select the name of the challenge (among Instagram’s suggestions) and nominate up 10 to users, who will receive the invitation to take in the challenge through DM.
If a nominated user eventually accepts, s/he will record a story with the challenge highlighted, and the “nominated by…” indication.
Nevertheless, also non-nominated users will be able to join the challenge: just tapping on the sticker on another user’s story will be enough to make your entry.
Why has Instagram launched Challenge?
This juncture has clearly shown that Challenges are effectively involving users and having them “activate” other idle ones through the nomination process. The reason why Instagram has chosen to create a sticker is probably to make them more homogenous, and therefore gather a bigger number of users: a challenge joined by more people will be an increased motivation for new users to participate, compared to a plethora of low-key initiatives that fail to reach a critical mass.
Instagram will likely update the list of suggested challenges over time, to suit the emerging trends and try to establish Instagram as the best channel for this kind of initiative – particularly compared to main rival TikTok, that proved very popular for challenges in recent times.
