Whether you're a B2B brand that only interacts with businesses or one that sells to consumers on some level, consider using LinkedIn.
After all, LinkedIn is the most important professional networking site, with practically every field covered. Not only can you find the following key contact, but it's also a great marketing hub.
LinkedIn polls have successfully driven engagement for many users because they are a popular means for individuals to express their opinions and feel heard.
The sense of validation from knowing that others share similar views adds to their appeal.
What are LinkedIn Polls?
A LinkedIn poll lets you ask questions about your company or industry. Choose a direct question, like "Would you rather A or B?" or something relevant but indirect, like a comment on current trends.
Users can vote on your poll without having to leave your site.
LinkedIn polls, importantly, provide instant results in the form of a bar chart listing percentages.
The graph is then updated by LinkedIn as additional individuals participate in the poll. Everyone in the group or on the page where the poll is posted can see your answers and the poll's creator.
Why LinkedIn Polls?
LinkedIn polls can be used in various marketing and advertising aspects.
They, in particular, aid in identifying information that can be used to pursue possibilities or overcome hurdles.
That is to say, the answers to these surveys help you make necessary inferences that inform your next round of marketing.
Keep track of the most talked-about topics in your niche
People on LinkedIn like to connect with experts in their fields, especially when it comes to B2B brands. By polling, you can start a conversation about something in your industry.
People will see you as a credible player in your field this way.
Engage Your Audience in a New Way
In marketing, it's easy to get into a cycle of simply presenting data. Unfortunately, it is sometimes difficult to determine your audience's thoughts, except for sales professionals and analytics data. Even if your poll's findings are humorous or unexpected, using LinkedIn polls to gather feedback can help solve the issue.
Improve Brand Awareness and Sales
One great thing about social media marketing, in general, is that posts can quickly raise brand awareness. Along with more people knowing about your brand, you will make more sales because people either needed to learn they needed something or were unaware of new options. Even better, this effect only happens to the first people who see your LinkedIn polls. Instead, it grows as other people share the content with their audiences.
Are LinkedIn Polls Effective?
Yes, they are!
Anything that helps you learn more about your audience or gets them more involved can be suitable for your brand.
This benefit can come from learning more about your audience, making more people aware of your brand, or even making a sale. You'll quickly see that these benefits add up, just like everything else in marketing.
How To Create LinkedIn Polls?
With LinkedIn polls, you can get your followers interested by asking them what they think about different topics.
To set up a poll on LinkedIn:
- Click Start a post, then choose to Create a poll:
- Start a poll by typing in a question and the options for answers.
- Next, you'll be prompted to choose the poll's time limit. You can choose a poll duration of 1 day, 3 days, 7 days, or 14 days.
Just like that, it's easy!
What To Know Before Posting LinkedIn Polls?
There are a few things you should know before you start creating LinkedIn polls:
- You can create polls on either your mobile device or a desktop computer.
- Keep them concise - the number of characters allowed for poll questions is restricted to 140, while the number of characters allowed for alternatives is limited to 30. Maintain their condensed length as that is the intention behind them.
- Use hashtags – Hashtags allow LinkedIn to organize your post in the appropriate category, increasing the likelihood that specific individuals will see it and contributing to the overall efficacy of your post.
- You are not allowed to make any changes to polls on LinkedIn once they have been made public. If you realize that you have made an error in your post, you need to delete it and re-publish it.
- You don't want to spam your audience, so limit the number of polls you conduct all at once.
- Be careful not to address any issues that LinkedIn deems offensive in your polls, as these questions will be removed if they are posted.
- The only person who can see how someone votes on your poll post is you, who made it.
- You can also make polls in LinkedIn groups; only the person who made the poll can see the results.
- Your LinkedIn poll can have up to 4 choices.
- You can also make a poll on a company page on LinkedIn.
- You will only be able to scrape LinkedIn polls if you are the person who created them.
Why Are LinkedIn Polls a Powerful Tool for Generating B2B Leads?
LinkedIn polls are an incredible strategy for engaging with audiences and generating leads.
You can get significant insights that can assist you in improving and upgrading your business if you ask questions pertinent to the industry in which you operate.
LinkedIn Polls also allow you to reach out to potential clients and create quality connections.
By interacting with LinkedIn members, you can establish a connection that may lead to future sales.
Ultimately, you can quickly build a database of possible customers by asking questions that reveal the prospect's problems or needs.
Polls are a powerful tool that can be used to get people involved, generate leads, and improve your business.
Growth Strategies for Making Most Of LinkedIn Polls
Ask for Feedback
Consumer-focused polls are for people who have bought your products or used similar products before.
They are made so you can find out what other people's experiences were like with a specific solution.
This helps you improve your products or services and give your customers an excellent service experience.
You can only ask them a few questions, so the poll has to ask important, easy-to-answer questions.
These are different from LinkedIn brand surveys, which are accurate surveys you can actually do.
Use LinkedIn Polls for market research or trend analysis
Use LinkedIn polls to study the market and trends.
You can ask your audience how they feel about specific trends you're seeing. This should give you hints about which trends you should be on the lookout for.
LinkedIn polls are helpful when conducting market research since they allow us to quickly collect data from a substantial pool of respondents.
However, the only drawback of using this approach to do market research is that it needs to provide you with precise information regarding your audience's demographics.
Understanding Your Customer
Want to have deeper conversations with your customers?
Ask them questions.
Polls are a fun and casual approach to finding out more about your customers by asking them insightful questions.
You can incentivize them to answer your queries by offering something in return.
This adds a whole new dynamic to your poll!
Make LinkedIn Polls Fun
People enjoy participating in polls because they feel like it's a game.
The company culture you've worked hard to establish may shine through when you ask lighthearted questions like this.
They also help you appear approachable and friendly.
For Lead Nurturing
Any content you publish on LinkedIn serves as passive lead nurturing.
LinkedIn Polls are also meant to do the same thing.
Putting out polls helps with the buyer journey of prospects at the top of your sales funnel right now.
It reminds them of your brand, which is the most apparent benefit. This is a subtle way to ensure they always remember your brand or solution.
Some polls can also be set up to ask questions about a specific problem your solution is meant to solve. This lets you keep talking about their needs, even if it's not in a direct way.
12 Best Practices for LinkedIn Polls to Boost Your Lead Generation
Making a pole randomly and posting it is unlikely to yield the desired effects.
You can also lose the interest of your audience if you use fewer polls, ask questions that are better suited for LinkedIn or don't effectively utilise the data you collect.
Don't pose a question for the sake of raising one
Asking random questions in polls is like making small talk at a party. It's like how there's a suitable time and place to talk to people.
Businesspeople spend only a short amount of time on LinkedIn. They are also working a lot of the time, so they can't do things that take away from their work.
Keeping this in mind, it's crucial only to ask questions that help you reach your business goals.
Yes, it could be a campaign to get people to know the brand.
In that case, your questions could be more specific. They should still be helpful, though. They should also make people want to answer, even if they are busy.
Lastly, you want to ensure you can learn something valuable from the poll results. Sometimes, it's as easy as finding out how many people know about your brand.
But questions about possible product development or similar insights should be carefully targeted to get valuable answers.
Keep your polls short and straightforward
"Less is more," as the saying goes. This is especially true regarding LinkedIn polls and other shorter forms of content marketing.
With LinkedIn polls, it's easy to get too wordy, which makes people less likely to interact with the content.
Another thing to think about with LinkedIn polls is that you can only choose from four answers. This means you'll have to think carefully about what options to give people so they can learn the most.
Adding a funny or tongue-in-cheek answer to the last one is an excellent way to make it stand out.
Make your polling strategy part of a more significant effort to get people involved.
Keep in mind that, even on LinkedIn, interaction rates are essential.
Because LinkedIn's algorithm bases its recommendations on users' interests and engagement, higher rates increase the likelihood that your material will be seen by a wider audience.
However, polls are an excellent tool for increasing participation. It's always interesting to see what people in one's field have to say about it, and if you ask for feedback, you're far more likely to obtain it. It would help if you didn't rely solely on polls to increase participation.
Instead, it would help if you incorporated it into a comprehensive plan to increase traffic to your LinkedIn profiles. The next step is to keep your audience interested, so they continue to network and create new chances.
Answer questions quickly and give context to help people understand
People don't like to talk to a wall. Or, in the case of polls, they hate being unable to figure out how to answer.
As a social media manager, you should answer and do so as soon as possible. But you need to be even more prompt if you're asking them to do you a favor, like answer a poll.
Also, many poll questions need background information before people can answer them correctly.
For example, you might have two answer choices that look identical but aren't. Or, the choices can change depending on the situation.
Political events, natural disasters, and changes in an industry can make choices that used to make sense no longer make sense. By explaining the situation, you can ensure that the poll results are as helpful as they can be.
Don't ask a lot of questions
Polls on LinkedIn should only ask one question. Sometimes it's okay to ask people to explain their answers in the comments, but you should be careful when doing this.
The worst thing that could happen is for a question to start a fight.
It's easier to do this now than in the past when politics were less important.
You can definitely ask too many questions.
For example, if you ask a three-part question in your pool, it's too complicated for that medium. You can divide the questions into multiple LinkedIn polls if you want to know all the answers.
However, it would help if you did not run all the polls at once or close together. If you don't, it'll look like you're always asking questions, and people will get tired of them.
If you receive a negative response, respond as soon as possible
There are two distinct kinds of criticisms raised here. One of these is if there is no option for a negative response on the survey other than "no."
Specifically, you should evaluate why respondents are picking the worst possible responses from your survey.
It's possible that they're not interested in this case.
Contrarily, you may also be confronting hostile attitudes or inaccurate assumptions.
You've reached the pool post, where some people may leave rude comments. Let their frustrations with the company be known.
Although your impeccable LinkedIn profile should shield you from the worst of it, you should nonetheless address the concerns raised.
Adding a remark explaining your reasoning for creating the pool would help immensely with this.
Host only a few polls at a time
Only sometimes bother people with questions. LinkedIn polls are a great way to get people interested and do the necessary research.
But if you use this method too much, the law of diminishing returns will start to take effect. People will stop paying attention to your polls if you always ask them something.
Add an option for "Other"
This will make people more likely to take part in your poll. Saying something like "Tell us why in the comments" is one of the easiest ways to use this option. In this case, the respondent would choose "why" from the pool of options and then add a comment.
You can learn a lot from the answers you get, especially if you want to find ways to improve your products and services.
People love to talk about their thoughts, especially if they have something new and exciting. You can give people this chance with LinkedIn polls.
At the same time, you can get to know your customers or potential customers better. You never know when a good brand community could come in handy.
Use hashtags to reach more people
With hashtags, you can group similar posts. Most people know how to use hashtags on other social media sites, but this is rare on LinkedIn. Putting things into groups makes them much easier to find.
You can even shape the conversation by using these hashtags.
You can reach more people if you use the right hashtags.
On other platforms, brands have hashtags that help them reach more people. This method works just as well on LinkedIn. In some ways, it's better because fewer people are using the network.
Add a Caption
If you have a good caption, it will help people believe you. One reason for this is that you don't have to just put a question on your profile and hope someone answers it.
Even though it might seem easy to drop a poll, many people would consider it spammy. Remember that you're asking people what they think, and it may take them a minute to answer.
Time is money, especially for B2B brands. And, for that matter, so is the reputation of your brand.
Keep your captions brief and to the point. People need to understand what you want and why you want it immediately.
Even though you don't want to give away strategic secrets, people will be more likely to give you their thoughts if they know you value them.
You'll also get better answers if they know how vital the poll is, especially if you're trying to improve your products or services.
Post at the Right Time
Posting at the incorrect time will reduce your likelihood of reaching your intended audience. Indeed, fresh LinkedIn posts from individuals' other contacts will dilute the visibility of your LinkedIn polls.
The majority of individuals need more time for constant scrolling, and this is especially true on LinkedIn.
Therefore, you must determine when people will check their LinkedIn accounts. Typically, this occurs during the workday.
The only exception is jobseekers, especially since they may be looking after class or after work if they want to change jobs.
Before you post, figure out when your target audience is most active on LinkedIn.
Then, organise your polls around the time zone in which your audience will most likely be active.
It’s Time For You To Start Creating LinkedIn Polls
LinkedIn polls are a fantastic sales and marketing tool.
A well-designed poll provides insights into potential new goods, an examination of industry trends, or an opportunity to create rapport and brand recognition.
Fortunately, practically anyone can achieve success by following these best practices. The most challenging component of this strategy is deciding on the question and response alternatives.
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