Don’t confuse a poll with a questionnaire or an extensive audience survey. An audience survey allows multiple questions whereas a poll allows only one question with 2-4 multiple choice options on social media platforms.
We recently conducted a poll and wanted to share our learnings with you all.
Case study:
The first step is to frame the poll question right and short because in social media mediums it gives limited space to ask a question.
We recently conducted a poll for our own study to understand if people are listening to podcasts like before. Initially, we posted it organically across different social media platforms and engaging the reach we thought of promoting it.
Below is the poll question posted organically on Twitter.
Below is the table summarizing of poll availability on different channels:
As organic mediums are the most cost-friendly mediums, we posted poll questions on Facebook groups, Facebook stories, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram stories. Even though the poll was created on multiple platforms, the responses were limited.
One of the best ways to promote a survey is through WhatsApp, where you can make a google form survey and spread it to your network in the WhatsApp groups.
You can also put up poll questions in your YouTube videos and get responses organically across the platform. This option is not widely used but it exists.
As these methods are organic, one can only hope for people to respond and share it with friends and family members to spread it.
If you wish to promote the poll and get a larger reach, only Twitter allows you to promote a poll question.
Facebook and Instagram:
We decided to go around it, created a post on Facebook and Instagram, and promoted it. We asked people to comment on it since the platform didn’t allow us to promote the poll.
However, since you know that comments and shares are a highly active form of engagement, it is not easily achievable. We promoted this post for an amount of Rs 200 each platform for two days. Unfortunately, we didn’t get any comments although we got a good reach and likes.
Both platforms have good targeting options and it is cost-effective compared to other platforms.
Below are the screenshots of the target audience set of Facebook and Instagram we used:
Twitter: To promote polls on twitter, the targeting options were limited and the cost has to be set in US dollars which is expensive. So, we didn’t choose this platform.
Below is the screenshot of the target audience set and cost settings on twitter:
LinkedIn: Here the targeting options were limited and not cost effective. However, LinkedIn doesn’t allow us to promote poll questions.
There are no good or bad practices unless you try out the options in hand and learn from them. Not all of your learnings would be successful. Failures if studied well, leads to great learning.