How to use Surveys to Generate some buzz on Social Media

Have you ever used a survey to create some buzz on social media? We've done this with some of our brands and have not only been able to generate heaps of great content that people want to read but have also been able to collect data from potential customers with permission to use for further marketing. 

Social Media Ideas

This year I published the 'Little Book of Social Media Ideas and Inspiration' in this book there are over 130 ideas for content. The idea is that you open the little book on any page and it gives you an idea so you can get creative with your social media posts. Because the information is short and snappy in this book and it's mainly for sparking ideas, I am going to go into more detail about those ideas here on this blog to help you get stuck in further. 

An idea from the little Book of Social Media Ideas and Inspiration 

What's the best way to create and host a survey?

First it's best to think about what you want to ask your audience and why. Perhaps you are in finance and you want to understand your audiences spending habits. Or maybe you work in social media and you'd like to know how much time your audience spend using certain social networks.

What survey tool can I use?

You can use many different ways to collect information, you can use websites forms or Mailchimp. I personally like to use Survey Monkey or Typeform because the answers are collated in a really easy to read format. This will save you a lot of time when you are compiling your answers later. 

Once you've worked out what you want to ask your audience you can start putting the questions together that will eventually lead to a great report, some content or an infographic when you have collected enough data. 

How to I get survey responses?

The next step is to start marketing your survey to your existing community and beyond. To do this, it's worth offering an incentive. If you are collecting data from your audience that your audience will also be interested in knowing about or sharing, then offer to send them a free report or infograpic if they complete the survey (when it's ready) all they need to do is to provide and email and you'll send the report out when it's ready. This is a great incentive. You could also offer an instant download of an earlier survey if you've conducted one before.

Use Social Media and blog posts to encourage people to take part. Share the link and some info about the survey you are conducting and ask people to complete it. Also if you have an existing email list, you can send the survey there too.

Most forms are completely customisable for collecting data and you can make them the colours and style that fits with your brand but if you want to host it on a page that's branded around the survey with much more information you can use tools such as Leadpages. Or SumoMe/..SumoMe is also a great plugin that is available for Wordpress which creates a pop up box each time someone lands on your website (there is a free version) Squarespace also has a pop up box integration as well as a non intrusive marketing banner at the top of the menu. 

How can you use the survey data to generate some buzz?

When you have your answers you can work out what the gaps in knowledge are, industry concerns or most interesting points from your survey. Use these to create graphics for social media, blog posts, videos and more. Creating this content that people in your community really want to see will help you generate a bit of buzz. You can also create some buzz around the launch of the results. Set up a hashtag around the report and encourage users to share facts from the findings. 

You can also create a video about the results and then encourage people to download the report (that haven't taken the survey) and in exchange for some data such as an email address you can use for future marketing. 

What will you create a survey about and how will you use the data to generate some buzz around your social media accounts?