Have you ever wished you had a clearer picture of your audience on social media so you can create better content for them? Or even better, ask them directly what they want to see?
Most people consider social media polls as a way to increase engagement. and they are. But this is only part of the story.
When used correctly, surveys and polls provide you with something far more valuable. Real insight into what your audience really cares about.
In this post, you’ll learn how to use social media polls and surveys to understand your audience and create the content they really want.
Let’s join in.
1. Understand why audience research is important
You might think it’s enough to create any and all content that covers topics even remotely related to your field, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
The audience is more complex than that. There are probably many audiences in your niche. So it is important for you to tailor your content to your target audience.
These may be members of your niche who are at a certain skill level (beginner, intermediate, advanced, or expert) or who are mostly interested in a specific subtopic (“electric guitar” as opposed to the more broad “guitar” field).
If you’re not sure who your target audience is, some surveys or polls can help you identify it.
Audience research allows you to uncover anything you think could help you create better content, including:
- Subtopics your audience is interested in
- what they think about certain topics
- They use social media platforms
- when they browse social media
- Why do they browse social media?
- whether they are satisfied with your content or not
2. Choose a device
You can run polls natively on multiple social media platforms:
- Instagram – Add polls to stories. It’s under the stickers menu.*
- Facebook – Add polls to stories.
- Twitter (X) – Create a poll post.
- youtube – Create poll posts for the Community tab.
- blue sky – This is not a native feature, but you can create polls with third-party apps.
- threads – Add a poll to a post.
- Linkedin – Create a poll post.
*You can add quizzes to Reels only. Although they allow you to ask your audience a question, they ask you to specify an option as the correct answer to that question. Public opinion surveys are opinion based. Therefore, they are not intended to provide correct answers.
If you want to ask your audience more than one question at a time or get feedback from your TikTok audience, you’ll need to use a survey.
Here are some survey tools you can use:
- convertbox – Technically there’s no survey or survey builder, but it does have a survey-based opt-in form that allows your audience to segment themselves when they join your email list. This is a better option because you can easily capture leads whenever it makes sense.
- google form – Free form tools your audience is probably familiar with.
- typeform – A simple survey and survey creator. It allows you to create surveys that ask one question per page as well as surveys where every option is visible. Comes with templates and tons of marketing features.
- surveymonkey – Simple survey and poll creator with templates, marketing features, and insightful analytics.
- surveyplanet – Simple survey tool that’s also great for creating surveys showing one question at a time. Comes with templates.
- Quiz and Survey Master – Survey plugin for WordPress.
If you go the survey creator route, you’ll need to promote your survey link.
Here are the methods you can use to promote links on social media:
- Promote it directly in the post body. This is not an option on TikTok and Instagram.
- Add the link as your bio link. This removes your current bio link.
- add link to your Link-in-Bio PageA simple web page to which you can add multiple links.
Shorby is a suitable tool for the third option. It is very simple to use.
However, it is a paid tool.
Alternatively, you can use rare. It’s primarily a social media scheduler but it does offer a free plan that includes access to their link-in-bio page tool.
Their link-in-bio page tool is also one of the best on the market.
Get started for free with Virali.
3. Create an opinion
Surveys are great if you just need to ask your audience a simple question.
A lot of social media polls only allow you to add four options, but if you use a dedicated survey or poll creator you can add unlimited options.
The most important aspect of a survey is that it allows your audience to choose only one option.
By asking your audience a simple question, giving them up to four options to choose from, and only allowing them to choose one of those options, you can really learn a lot about their preferences.
Polls posted as Instagram and Facebook Stories expire after 24 hours. This is because Instagram and Facebook stories expire after 24 hours.
Twitter (X) allows you to choose a period of up to one week. This means your audience has up to a week for the poll to appear in their feed so they can respond to it.
Try using surveys on social media for the following purposes:
- Opinion – Ask your audience’s opinion on a topic.
- Example: What is the highest rated electric guitar brand?
- insight – Learn more about your audience in general.
- Example: What is your favorite electric guitar brand?
- analytical – Learn more about your audience’s habits.
- Example: how often do you practice?
4. Create a multiple choice poll
If you think your audience may have more than one preference, create a multiple-choice poll instead.
When you use a basic social media poll your audience can only select one option, so you have to use a survey tool and add only one question to it.
It’s best to use plural language in your question so your audience knows they can choose more than one option. You can also put a short notice in parentheses, such as “(select all that apply).”
In your survey tool, make sure you select the checkbox option, and mark the question as “required.”
Here’s an example in Google Forms:
Use multiple-choice surveys for the same purpose as you would a regular survey, but use them only if you want your audience to be able to choose more than one option.
If you want to force your audience to be more decisive, stick to single-choice surveys. This will give you more accurate data because your audience is likely to be more selective with their answers if they are only able to choose one.
Once your poll is complete, add it to your link-in-bio page on Instagram and TikTok or as your bio link on these platforms before promoting it.
5. Create a multiple choice survey
Surveys are great tools for audience research. They allow you to find out more about your audience by asking them a series of questions.
Social media content is fleeting, so it’s best if your survey is too. Try to ask no more than five questions to increase your chances of getting a more complete survey.
The most important thing is to ensure that each question relates to the same subject matter. If I ask my audience what their favorite guitar brand is, I shouldn’t also be asking which guitarist they consider overrated.
The best part about using surveys is how many types of questions you can add to your survey. Specifically, text-based question types where your listeners can enter a short or long answer.
This is a great option to include if you’re worried that you’ve forgotten to include something as an option.
Another useful aspect about surveys are the conditional logic features they unlock depending on the survey tool you use.
Conditional logic is a feature that allows you to set triggers and actions for your survey, or “if this, then that” rules.
For example, if your primary question asks your audience, “What is your favorite guitar brand,” and one of your options is Ibanez, you can ask a follow-up question that will only appear if your audience selects the Ibanez option, such as “What guitar models do you own from Ibanez?”
Some survey creators like Typeform have ranking question types that allow your audience to rearrange the options based on their rank.
Overall, surveys are an effective way to expand on a question with additional questions, which ultimately provides more data for you.
6. Use the data you receive to optimize your social media marketing strategy
You can learn a lot by asking your audience simple questions on social media.
If you’re in the guitar space, knowing what brands your audience prefers gives you an idea of which brands to focus on for reviews, unboxing content, product demonstrations, and tutorials.
If you ask your audience about other social media platforms they use, you’ll know which other platforms you should create content for.
Polls and surveys help you align your social media content and overall marketing strategy with what your audience wants to see.
There are analytics on a lot of platforms that you can check out. are also dedicated social media analytics tools out there. Also, you can get a good idea of your audience’s preferences by doing keyword research and product research.
But it’s one thing to guess what your audience likes or wants to see. It’s another matter if they tell you clearly.
Make a list of every piece of data that you think will help you understand your audience a little better. Then, come up with questions and answers that will help you uncover that information.
final thoughts
When you’re starting out as a blogger or content creator, there’s a lot of guesswork involved.
But once you have an audience, no matter the size, you can start collecting qualitative data.
It’s the data that matters most.
This will help you take a strategy based on guesswork and turn it into a solid strategy based only on facts and hard data.
Disclosure: Our content is reader-supported. If you click on certain links we may make a commission.