One great way to get people to actively engage with your business is by asking them for their thoughts and opinions. Interacting directly with your brand’s fans, followers, current customers and prospects online via social media is impactful, but communicating with users one-to-one is usually too time-consuming for the average social media manager or marketer.
Thankfully, there are effective ways to engage with consumers on social media through a single touch point that can help them feel not only heard but also as if they’ve formed a real connection with your brand. Here, the members of Forbes Agency Council highlight the benefits of using polls and questions on social media platforms and tips to help brands leverage them.
Forbes Agency Council members share benefits brands can gain by leveraging social media polls and questions.
Photos courtesy of the individual members.1. You Can Get Real-Time Feedback
Polls and questions allow brands to interact with their audience and receive real-time feedback, essentially within a 24-hour period. This social media tactic allows brands to ask questions that could drive a new product or a sale or help them gain insight into who their audience actually is and what they like. This feedback can help a company pivot quickly by understanding its audience. - Marilyn Cowley, PREM - PR & Social
2. You Can Ask Permission To Quote Responses
Always ask for explanations of answers within comments. Not only does this lead to further on-post engagement, but it can form part of a wider content strategy. Our teams use public polls to gather diverse opinions, then reach out to respondents to ask for permission to quote their comments in upcoming marketing materials, and leading to dyadic, community-oriented relationships. - Chris Martin, FlexMR
3. You Can Do Market Research
Social polls can be a subtle way to get a little market research done under the guise of playful engagement. If you have a good social following, consider pitting some of your products or uses of them against each other by asking, “Which of these dishes do you want to cook with our pans?” or, “Which of these shirts are you picking for date night?” You may get a little more insight into your audience’s tastes. - Tellef Lundevall, Accelerated Digital Media
4. You Can Gather Data To Repurpose
Polls and questions on social media help generate more engagement on your accounts while gathering data that can be repurposed for other content. The results can be curated into infographics, blog posts and email campaigns, or they can help build storylines for media outreach opportunities. - Valerie Chan, Plat4orm PR
5. You Can Build Real Human Engagement
Polls and questions should be all about human engagement—the objective is to get more people to engage, which in turn should help brands show up more in feeds. Research is a secondary benefit. Once humans are engaged, your brand will acquire all the first-party data you require. The hardest step is getting brands to be human-centric, and platforms such as TikTok have helped with this. - Neal Patel, Bruce Clay MENA
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6. You Can Conduct Audience Research
Running a social media poll is an easy way to conduct audience research. Your target audience is already following you on social media, but a poll can give you some additional information you may not have known. If done right, polls can also be very engaging for your audience because, unlike regular social media posts, they are interactive. - Marc Hardgrove, The HOTH
7. You Can Connect With Audiences More Naturally
Polls and questions are some of the best ways to interact with your audience because it feels natural and not as if you’re “marketing to them.” It helps create a connection when used right. I often encourage our clients to find relevant topics and create polls that are not directly about their products or services—that way it feels more like a natural conversation, which is more effective. - Rafael Romis, Weberous Web Design
8. You Can Boost Your Reach
Polls and questions offer an excellent way to increase engagement with social posts. Social media provides the opportunity to get personal, so ask your audience lighthearted questions, such as what their plans are for holidays and seasonal events. With higher engagement, your posts will reach a wider viewership. - Hannah Trivette, NUVEW Web Solutions
9. You Can Follow Up On Insights Gained
Brands do best on social media platforms when the communities they create believe that the brands are listening to feedback. Polls and questions achieve this best, but only if the brand actually follows up on the actions outlined or the insights gained. Don’t ask a question you’re not willing to answer. - Vix Reitano, Agency 6B
10. You Can Identify And Solve Issues
Insights from polls and questions on social media platforms provide constructive feedback that can help brands identify and solve issues. Apart from market research, conducting polls regularly can help strengthen audience engagement. It is a great way to build consumer trust: It shows consumers that brands care about their opinions and are constantly working toward improving service offerings. - Lars Voedisch, PRecious Communications
11. You Can Generate Leads
Polls and questions are great for generating leads. You can ask if your audience would buy what you offer, or you can ask questions about problems you have the solution to and then message all who answer. They are also great ways to drive engagement and get feedback. You can reward your audience with something, such as a discount for answering a certain number of polls that help you gather feedback and leads. - Tony Pec, Y Not You Media
12. You Can Make Social Media A Two-Way Street
Polls and questions are great for generating engagement. They invite your audience to interact and respond in a convenient manner. When used correctly, you can use polls and questions to get feedback, generate interest, show what’s happening behind the scenes or even ask audience members what they want to see from you next. Leveraging polls and questions helps make your social media a two-way street. - Candice Georgiadis, Digital Day
13. You Can Consolidate The Findings Of Micro-Polls
In the B2B marketing space, we find that polls are a great way to find out which content, topics and industry issues resonate the most with our target audience. You can also create a series of micro-polls and then consolidate the findings into a wider research report. They’re a cost-effective and highly scalable way of getting deeper customer insights. - Azadeh Williams, AZK Media
14. You Can Learn About Your Audience’s Experience
Questions are a great way to get people to interact with your content. They help you learn more about your audience and start conversations. Ask strategic questions about your products and services to learn more about your audience’s experience. You can also use a social media platform to ask personal or general questions to engage your audience. - Dmitrii Kustov, Regex SEO
15. You Can Stay Relevant And Get More Views
Polls and questions are great tools for feeding the social machine and staying relevant. As platforms such as Instagram shift their focus in the feed from static posts to engaging stories, brands that use their tools are rewarded with more views. On top of more views, brands get additional ideas, directional research, quotes and relevant content they can reshare in lieu of making more videos. - John Geletka, Geletka+
