Consumers like to have a voice in the brands they support and a poll on social media is the perfect way to make your audience feel like they’re part of your brand.

Polls not only bring your audience into your brand, but they also can provide valuable consumer data and information on how to improve your product or service.

As marketers, we always have to implement a balance of creativity and data. Creating your polls is fun and creative and the data you get from them is super valuable.

In this post, we will explore how social media polls can do so many things for your brand. We will also provide best practices that you can implement polls on social today. 

Polls Are Simple and Quick

Unlike a survey, social media polls have a few short questions so that it doesn’t take up too much of your audience’s time.

They’re easy to create and easy for your audience to fill out. Multiple-choice questions work best.

You may want to offer an incentive for filling out your polls. Something like an entry into a drawing for a gift card can go a long way. 

Real-Time Feedback

Social media polls have a short shelf-life so once posted, your poll will reveal a bunch of data and insights within 24 hours.

Once you get the hang of polling and enjoy the data that you glean, you can make polling part of your ongoing strategy.

Extract Testimonials

Ask a few open-ended questions so that you gain some quotes from your audience about your brand. Consumers love social proof so gaining these testimonials is crucial. You can then put them on your website, email marketing and social media posts.

Gain Business Insights

Asking questions like how your audience utilizes your product or service–both positive and negative will give you insights into how you can improve different aspects of your brand.

You can ask anything from their experience with customer service to their pain points that your brand solves to opinions about your brand and so much more!

You Get a lot of Leverage Out of Polls

Who doesn’t love data? Not only can your social media polls give you audience insights, but you can also publish your data for maximum leverage.

Things like research reports, infographics and blog posts are all great ways to leverage your polls results.

You Can Generate Leads

When someone takes your poll, have them enter their email address so that you can put the participants in a lead nurture program. 

Sometimes it helps to give the data to the audience who participated in the poll a day before you publish your results to the rest of the world. People love exclusivity.

Best Practices When Creating Your Polls

When done right, you can get a lot of respondents to weigh in via your polls on social media.

Some things to keep in mind:

• Keep the questions limited–it should take a maximum of 5 minutes to take your poll
• Offer an incentive for audiences to take your poll
• Promote your poll
• Keep votes anonymous 
• Keep questions adhering to one theme per poll
• Add in some fun questions with your business questions

Next Steps: Create Your Polls

Now that you see the value in social media polls, it’s time to create one! This post explains how to create polls on each social media channel. There are also tools like Google Forms.

Polls engage your audience while gathering insights into your current and target consumers.

They’re easy to do so there is no reason why you can’t start implementing polls in your social media marketing today!

Do you use polls as part of your social media marketing strategy? We’d love to read your tips in the comments below!