A major task brands try to achieve when it comes to building a strong customer base is garnering engagement. When companies develop their communications strategies, social media is often a big component due to various platforms’ abilities to get consumer bases engaging with content.
Social media is a good plan of attack for most brands since Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok and Instagram offer a multitude of capabilities: livestreaming, group chats, real-time conversation, compelling video and images, and even online polls.
All have their role to play, but let’s focus on social media polls, a tactic that facilitates participation from customers and gets them engaging with the brand and its content. Here’s a fun example of a poll on twitter that allows for easy participation from audience members.
Polls can also be a great tool used to gain customer insight on a particular topic; it’s also free if going the organic route. The results of polls also offer a deeper understanding of audience preferences, opinions, and behaviors, and this information can be used to shape a communication strategy.
The first step in using polls as a marketing strategy is to choose the right social media platform. Depending on content of the poll, each platform differs in offerings.
- LinkedIn offers a choice of two to four answers, setting duration of the poll, and visibly displaying the answers to respondents. LinkedIn also offers you the option of linking recent studies or paragraphs as context for your poll. LinkedIn also offers a great guide on how to create a favorable poll on its platform.
- On Twitter, your poll can also have up to four options, but the maximum duration of a poll is set at seven days.
- Instagram and TikTok are limited in their answer options, allowing only yes or no responses. Instagram only allows polls to be placed on accounts Stories rather than the feed.
- It’s helpful to note that you can create polls on Facebook, but only on a Facebook Groups page that you are a member of.
Whichever platform an organization may choose, polls show it values the opinions and feedback of its customers. This not only fosters a sense of community, but it also encourages a more invested and loyal audience.
Step two is developing a poll that fosters engagements and creates dialogue between audience members. Here’s an example of a poll Coke put out to not only gauge what their consumers wanted, but to also foster a discussion to get people excited about their new product. By posing questions and inviting responses, a lively discussion and debate is sparked that promotes deeper engagement.
Polls are even a great source of fun and entertainment! By posing quirky and lighthearted questions, brands can keep followers intrigued by their content, which in turn, can help increase social media engagement.
Remember, KISS. We all know the acronym and the importance of following it when trying to connect to any audience. When using polls, make sure to keep the question short and scannable and the answer selections to a minimum.