LinkedIn (LI) polls are an undervalued feature of the platform. This
post highlights their power to reach and engage people, as well as some of the
benefits they can generate. The heart of the post is a checklist of 21 tips for
creating and promoting LI polls, as well as sharing the results. Related LI
resources (addressing individual profiles, groups, and company pages) are also
provided.
Why I Heart LinkedIn Polls
Whenever I speak to groups about leveraging LinkedIn, I
highlight LinkedIn (LI) polls as an undervalued feature of the platform. As someone
who has participated in many and created several, I can attest to their power
and benefits. To illustrate their power to reach and engage people, I’ve
summarized basic stats for – and provided links to – some of the most
successful polls I’ve participated in (if the hyperlinks don't work, please send a message to polls@sminorgs.net):
Click here to download the LI poll summary
As for benefits, LI polls…
- Are an effective way to test an assumption, take
people’s pulse on an issue, and/or get an answer to a simple question.
- Allow you to reach a potentially larger and more
diverse group of respondents than other polling techniques.
- Enable you to create and share content that is
valuable to others.
- Help promote your individual/organizational
brand (true for both poll creators and respondents).
- Create opportunities to connect with new people.
21 Quick Tips
Making effective use of LinkedIn polls is hard work and
requires a great deal of persistence. But the results can make the effort
worthwhile. Based on my experiences, I offer the following tips for creating
and promoting them, as well as sharing the results.
Creating
Creating a good poll question is harder than it seems. Some
suggestions…
1. Have a specific objective in mind that goes
beyond the poll itself. That objective can be tied to a project you’re working
on or a specific strategic or tactical question or challenge you’re grappling
with.
2. Check to see if someone else has recently
created a similar poll (by conducting searches) to make sure you’re not
unnecessarily recreating the wheel.
3. Pick a question that other people will find
interesting and/or will be passionate about, as well as one whose results can
benefit others.
4. Create the poll in the LI platform as a whole
rather than in a LI group.
5. Design the question in a way that encourages
comments, not just votes.
6. Word the question and the responses as carefully
as possible, within the constraints defined by LI. If you’re not an experienced
poll creator, you may want to run the draft question/responses by a few folks
to make sure they’re clear. Bad poll questions will not only produce unreliable
results, they can also generate nasty comments.
7. Set a good time limit: a month is probably
sufficient.
8. Depending on your question and your target
audience, you may also want to create a corresponding poll for folks who aren’t
on LI (e.g., via Constant Contact or Survey Monkey).
Promoting
I can’t emphasize the importance of this enough. Simply
creating a poll won’t guarantee you’ll get a decent response rate. You have to
encourage and nurture responses without spamming people – a delicate balance!
Some ideas…
9. Create a corresponding blog post with the poll
embedded in it (here’s
an example).
10. Share the blog post and/or the poll as a LI
status update, with all relevant LI groups, and in all relevant social networks
(i.e., Twitter, Facebook, G+, digital communities). Note: sometimes the poll
itself doesn’t post properly, even when you use the shortened url from LI,
which is another reason why creating a corresponding blog post is a good idea.
11. Consider crafting and sending individual
invitations to your LI and other professional connections. Although it’s not
difficult to develop a standard invitation and go through the copy/paste/send
process in batches of 50 for your LI connections, it can be time consuming. But
if you really want to increase your response rate, a direct appeal like this is
generally more effective than a general appeal.
12. Include the blog post/poll in your email blasts.
You can make the poll be the focus of the blast (like this
one), or you can include it as an item along with others (like this
one).
13. Ask people to share the poll in their networks.
14. Recruit a cadre of people to help promote and
share the poll.
15. Space out reminders on all the places you originally
posted the blog/poll. I would recommend no more than once a week during the
month-long period. These reminders can take a variety of forms:
- Sharing the poll’s status (e.g., we’ve gotten
over 100 votes so far)
- Enticing people to view and vote (e.g., the most
popular response might surprise you)
- Sharing results (e.g., 48% of respondents said…)
- Reminding them of deadlines (e.g., only one week
to go!)
- Offering thanks
16. Respond to people’s comments, wherever they may
be. In your response, be sure to invite/remind them to vote/comment on the poll
also if they haven’t already done so.
Reporting and Sharing
I would venture to say that over 90 percent of LI poll
results are never distributed outside the polling feature itself. I have found
that making the effort to write up and share the results (e.g., via a blog
post, white paper, slide show) is a nice way to generate internet traffic and promote
yourself/your organization, especially when you’ve developed a poll that
follows tips 3 and 5 above. Some recommendations…
17. Conduct a quick demographic analysis using the
data provided by LinkedIn to see if there are any differences in the responses
from different groups (see this
post about our Tweets per Day poll for an example).
18. Consolidate comments from non-poll sources
(e.g., LI groups) to combine with the poll results. In so doing, I recommend protecting
people’s identities by not sharing their names. I would also avoid the
temptation to edit their responses (don’t even correct typos) (our Paper or
Digital poll generated lots of off-site comments; this
post includes a downloadable summary of them).
19. Offer high-level analysis and interpretation of
the results, if/when that’s relevant (see this
post about our Tweets per Day poll for an example).
20.Share the results blog post in all the same
places you shared the original poll/post. You can do this both by posting a
separate item and by adding a comment to your original post.
21. When you share the results, be sure to thank
everyone, invite additional feedback, and encourage others to share the results
and continue the dialogue.
Conclusion
If you’ve had success with LinkedIn polls also, please share
your experiences (including links to polls and summaries), as well as any
particular benefits and tips I may have missed. As always, I welcome your
comments and questions.
- Courtney Shelton Hunt, PhD
Related Resources
LinkedIn Profiles
- 7
Simple To Dos for LinkedIn Rookies to Enhance Their Profiles (link)
- Enhancing
Your LinkedIn Profile II: 7 More Tasks and 21 Tips (link)
Improving LinkedIn
Groups
- Part
1: Recommendations for LinkedIn (link)
- Part
2: Recommendations for Group Managers (link)
- Part
3: Recommendations for Group Members (link)
LinkedIn “Company”
Pages: An (Undervalued) Gem for Organizations of All Types (link)
View Courtney Hunt's profile
