- Wondering how to use Instagram
stories countdown feature for your business?
In this video we'll not only show you
quickly how to use the Instagram
countdown sticker in your Instagram stories,
but also some great ways to use them
to engage your followers and grow your brand.
All right, let's get into it.
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My name is Jerry Potter and man,
Instagram has been releasing features,
new stickers for Instagram stories so fast,
including the Instagram countdown sticker.
By the end of this video you'll know how
to use the Instagram countdown sticker,
and probably more helpfully,
some great ideas that you can use
to use it in your business.
Including one way to use the countdown
sticker as a contest that I haven't seen anybody use yet.
All right?
So we'll get to that here in just a second.
And by the way, spoiler alert,
one of the things people can do
when seeing a countdown in your sticker
is choose to be notified when the countdown ends,
which leads to all kinds of possibilities.
I'm assuming you already know the basics
of Instagram stories as you're watching this.
If not, I've got a full tutorial
on how to use Instagram stories
and you can get that link in the description of this video.
But first thing you wanna do is either
take your picture or video in Instagram,
or load it from your camera roll.
So this is a graphic I created and loaded in here.
And then I'm going to grab the countdown sticker.
So the stickers are all in this little icon
on the upper right that looks
like a smiley face on a Post-it note.
I don't know if that's what it's supposed to be or not,
that's what I always describe it as.
Click on that, these are all my different possible stickers.
Over here on the right it says countdown,
that's the one I want.
And it loads a countdown.
The countdown name can be what you're counting down to,
a question, whatever you want.
So I'm going to just say this
is gonna be a live lesson for Instagram.
So let's just say lesson begins in.
Then at the bottom of that countdown
I'm gonna click set end date and time.
So I tap on that.
Go ahead and choose today's date when I'm recording this.
And then underneath it says all day.
If you choose all day,
then you're just counting down
to a specific day like your birthday or a holiday
or the day you leave for vacation, whatever it might be.
The timer will end at midnight local time on that day.
If that's not what you want, turn that switch off
and now you can actually choose a specific time.
So I'm gonna go ahead and just set this for 6:00 p.m.
And as you can see in the middle there,
the numbers have started moving
because it's go time, people.
So this live lesson on Instagram
is gonna be starting in an hour and 22 minutes.
Now once you've got your time set,
you can resize it, rotate it, move it,
whatever you wanna do just like
any other sticker on Instagram.
I'm gonna go ahead and put it right down there.
And then when you're tapped into it at the top,
you'll see this color spectrum circle.
I can tap on that.
You cannot choose the exact colors that you want it to be,
but there are actually quite a few options as you can see.
So I'm gonna go back to the red one
just 'cause I like that as a nice bright call to action.
And then I'm gonna add one more thing underneath
and that is going to be an additional call to action.
I'm going to say click here to be reminded.
And I'm gonna try and draw an arrow,
I am terrible at drawing freehand.
That's good enough, I guess.
Hit done.
Now I've got everything looking exactly the way I want it.
I'm gonna go ahead and post it.
Now I'm gonna switch over to a different
Instagram account I have just so we
can see it from an outside perspective.
Here it is.
I'm gonna hold the screen so it will not advance,
but as you can see, the countdown timer continues to move.
And you'll also notice there's nothing on there
that tells the viewer that they can click to be reminded.
So especially right now in the early
days of the countdown sticker,
that call to action where I said click here to be reminded
is pretty important to get people to engage.
So now I'm gonna tap that arrow
and you'll see this pops up at the bottom.
I can share the countdown to my story if I want,
or I can click remind me.
Reminder is one.
And then when this countdown ends, I will,
or whoever's viewing your story
and asks to be notified, will get a notification.
So that's how you can set up the countdown story.
I wanna actually delete this
since I'm not actually teaching this mini course.
(laughs) Before, oh, two people have seen it,
but before anybody else sees it.
So what are some ways you could use Instagram's
countdown sticker in your stories for your business?
Well, for one you can countdown until you do a live video.
If you do live trainings either on Instagram, or Facebook,
or YouTube, or anywhere else,
you can actually have a countdown to it.
Now I will suggest unless the training is on Instagram,
you might want to have the countdown end
a couple minutes or five minutes before you actually start
so they have time when their notification
goes off that the countdown ended,
they have time to jump over to whatever platform
you have suggest that they go see your live training.
Another thing you can count down to in your business
is count down until your special starts or your sale.
It's our anniversary sale, starts in three days,
two hours, and 27 minutes.
Maybe they wanna be notified the second the sale starts
so they can get in and get great deals.
Now the opposite of that would be
a countdown until a special expires.
Although again, this might be one
where you wanna actually have the countdown end
a little before the special expires
so they still have time once their
notification goes off to go and get it.
At the same time, counting down until
the special actually expires, if it's that day,
somebody sees it in a story
and they feel like they see that ticking clock,
it's like oh, I gotta go on there right now.
It just kinda creates that sense of urgency.
If you release products of any sort,
you can count down until the release of that product,
until it becomes available so that people
are getting excited for it
and that they sign up to be notified.
When the notification goes off, they go oh cool,
now I can go buy those shoes or that jewelry or that course.
And the last idea I wanna share
is actually a contest idea with a countdown.
I've seen nobody use this,
but I adapted it from my days working in radio.
And that is to basically count down until a contest starts.
And you can say at the end of this countdown,
remember how radio stations,
I guess they still do, but caller 10 wins?
The 10th DM I get wins this prize.
Or if you have a huge following,
maybe it's the hundredth DM.
Don't do the first DM,
because no one will assume they'll be the first,
you probably wanna go with at least 10.
But imagine all the DMs that you'll get
if you run a contest like that.
People will sign up to be notified,
notification will go off, they'll dm you,
and then you can go in and actually
have a conversation with them.
Oh, sorry, you didn't win this time.
By the way, is there anything
I can help you with in my industry?
Or whatever it might be.
Or hey, I checked out your profile
and I love that you also love ramen noodles.
You get to build relationships that way
by getting them into your DMs.
If you wanna learn more about
all the features in Instagram Stories,
I've got a full tutorial linked up on the screen right here.
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