How to effectively use social media polls to increase engagement, traffic & feedback

Hello and welcome to yet another highly insightful article that we bring to you every week on digital marketing how you can do it better. Let's jump into it!

Getting your audience to engage with your social content can be tricky, with even well-written content and eye-catching videos sometimes falling flat. But words and images aren’t the only tools at your disposal - social media polls are one of the most overlooked options for boosting interaction, and increasing brand awareness through participation and shares. If you wanna get up and close to your audience this is your tool.

What are social media polls

Social media polling is a form of open access polling, which combines social media and opinion polling. In contrast to traditional polling or voting the polls are formulated by the respondents themselves. Social polling is an example of non-probability sampling that uses self-selection rather than a statistical testing scheme.

Social Media Polls are a great way to gain market insights and feedback at no cost and with a quick turnaround, Yes I just said it and it's true at no cost at all. I mean zero dollars involved in running it.

Social media polls my friend has a vast number of unique advantages when it comes to learning or analyzing about your audience. If they aren’t already a part of digital strategy, they definitely should be - here are a few reasons why social media polls can be a great component within your specific approach. Bear in mind that this content is for you to be better at digital marketing.

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• People Love Participating
• Audiences love answering questions, and polls provide the perfect avenue for this.

Everyone has an opinion, and most people aren’t afraid to voice it on social media (it is called 'social' media after all so who cares). Polls also have an advantage over trivia questions - your audience doesn’t need to worry about providing the wrong answer, which can make some people shy away from participating. No body goes after them and say you're wrong. The responses will be hidden and only you the person running the polls will be able to see that information. This is one of the places you can be at peace with your right or wrong answers and nobody cares.

When posts have a high engagement rate, they also reach even more people organically, with which most of the algorithms favors because of the interactions.

This poll from my own social media, for example, boosts engagement via an inconsequential question on which social media platform business people think is the best for them - and you can bet that the people who do not do any business using social media also have their favorite and will also have their say about which social media platform they prefer in the comments.

They’re Simple and Quick

Polls are most simple and fast way for your audience to participate. Unlike surveys, these do not requests people get in their inbox which take a few minutes to complete - with social polls, all users have to do is pause to read the question, then click on their answer. And once they’ve selected their response, they also often feel compelled to elaborate on this in the comments.

As from my example on the picture above or below on my poll asking people which social media platform is best for their business provided a quick way for people to participate. By simply clicking on their answer and it doesn't take time to vote.

Find Out How Your Audience Feels

Many times, you’re forced to make assumptions about what your audience wants, or how they feel about certain things. But with polls, you can eliminate a lot of that guesswork

By reading their responses, you can learn from them directly, and better understand their needs. You can then make adjustments to your strategy and create content which is more in line with their stated desires. You can then create stronger content which you know your audience will want to see, meaning there’s a better chance they’ll engage with it.

Tips for Making the Most of Your Polls

But knowing why polls are beneficial is only a part of the puzzle - you also need to understand how to execute them, too.

Here are a few tips to help boost the performance of your social polls:

1. Keep Polls Interesting and Relevant - Ensure that the topic of your poll is relevant to your target audience. Whether it’s about your brand and services or a real estate service, you need to make sure that your audience will care enough about it to actually answer, and avoid asking the same kinds of questions over and over again it's annoying and we all agree with that right ?.
2. Post During Peak Traffic Times - As with your other content, you’ll see the highest engagement if you publish the polls at peak social media traffic times.
3. Don’t Overdo It - Don’t bog down your followers with too many polls - it'll become too repetitive and eventually, ineffective. Posting once or twice a week should be enough to boost engagement without overwhelming your audience.
4. Respond - Use your polls as a chance to interact with your followers. Take the time to respond to the comments they leave, and tell your audience what you’re going to use that information for. They’ll feel like their opinion matters, and be more likely to interact again in future.

How to run your own polls

Creating polls is as simple as this, go to your social media platform. I will use reference to Linkedin & Twitter on this one. Select on create a post, then look for an icon that looks like a graph or written polls. Then write your question and put the possible answers that the audience can pick from. After that add a few hashtags # to it so that it helps increase the reach. Take not the hashtag should be relevant to what you do or asking. Then click publish or send. It's that simple after sometime you'll see people casting their votes and interact with your polls.

Utilizing polls as part of your social media content strategy is a great technique to boost engagement. You’ll be able to find out what your audience thinks, and how they feel, while also getting your brand in front of more eyes.

It has been a wonderful time sharing with you this insight, I appreciate and enjoy your likes and comments on this newsletter. If you know someone whom you think they should read this tag them or share the article with them. An audio form of these article will be coming to your inboxes soon.

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Leon Mandigara is the CEO & Founder at Digital Mate Inc, & marketing consultant. You can schedule a meeting or call him by simply click here.

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