TL;DR

If you’re not sure what to post or how to connect with your audience, start with a poll. I’ve used simple polls to spark conversations, test ideas, and get clarity on what people want from me.

This article walks through how polls can help you attract more clients by making your content more useful, more personal, and way less stressful to create. I share real examples, easy steps, and a free AI prompt to help you try it out. This is one of the fastest ways I’ve found to build trust and engagement without overthinking it.

If you’re looking for a quick, easy way to engage your audience and learn more about what they want from you, polls are a great option.

Whether on social media or in an email, polls let you tap into what your audience is thinking without asking for a long response.

And because it’s so easy for them to participate, you’re more likely to get some solid feedback you can actually use.

Why Polls Matter for Your Visibility

You might be wondering, why bother with polls? Here’s the thing—building trust with your audience is key to growing your visibility online. Polls give you a simple way to start a conversation and show your followers that you care about what they think.

Polls also serve as a subtle way to remind your online and email audience about what you do and how you can serve them.

A strategic question and the answer choices tell a micro-story about who you are and what you do.

When you know what your audience is into (or what’s keeping them up at night), you can create content that hits home. And when your content resonates, they’re more likely to stick around, engage, and eventually become clients. Plus, when you have that data in hand, you can tweak your messaging to speak directly to their needs. It’s a win-win.

Most email broadcast providers offer a way to embed simple polls in your emails (I use MailerLite and love their easy polling option). You can also send an email with one question and ask for a reply. That’s about as quick and easy as you can get, and it’s a great way to start a conversation with your email subscribers.

Visibility Tip

“Once you send out a poll to your audience and get sufficient responses, you can repurpose that information as different content, such as posts, blogs, email campaigns, testimonials, or stories, which can be shared on various social media platforms.” Source

Try it, and let me know how it works for you!

How to Start Using Polls to Engage Your Audience

Here’s how you can start running polls and making them work for you:

1) Pick a platform. Figure out where your audience hangs out the most (this could be a one-question poll for your email list).

Are they active on Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook? Do you have a strong email list? Choose the platform where you’re already seeing engagement.

You can create a short poll directly on a LinkedIn post, as well as on posts in Facebook groups, and on X/Twitter posts.

Or, as mentioned above, send an email asking one question and requesting a reply. You’ll have to track responses manually, and it’s a natural way to start a conversation with readers who reply so you can start building a one-to-one relationship.

2) Keep it simple. Ask one or two straightforward questions. Don’t overcomplicate it. Something like:

• “What’s your biggest challenge with [your topic]?”
• “What type of content do you enjoy the most?”

3) Add a time limit. Polls on Instagram, for example, work really well with a 24-hour limit. People are more likely to participate when they know it’s a now-or-never situation.

Urgency works!

And promote the poll on any platforms you’re active on (more visibility!).

4) Share the results. Once the poll closes, let your audience know what you learned. You can share the results in a post or follow up with an email and then tell them how you will use their feedback.

5) Tweak your strategy. Use the insights you get to adjust your content, messaging, or even your offers. Your audience just gave you a roadmap—use it to meet them where they are.

Experiment with This AI Prompt to Help You Out

If you want a little help coming up with poll questions, here’s an AI prompt you can play with:

“I want to create a poll for [your specific target audience] to figure out their biggest challenges with [your topic]. Based on common struggles in this area, what are three engaging questions I can ask them in a poll to get helpful feedback?”

If you’re creating a poll with one question and several options to choose from, you can also ask for 3-5 responses that you can use in the poll. Below is the prompt I used on ChatGPT for the Target Audience poll mentioned above:

You can also ask for ideas for analyzing the results or drafting follow-up messages.

A Few Extra Things to Keep in Mind

• Follow through. Don’t just run the poll and then forget about it. Share the results and let your audience know what you’re doing with that info. It shows you’re listening, and it keeps the conversation going.
• Stay consistent. Polls can be a regular part of your content strategy. Running them every few weeks or months will help you keep the pulse on what your audience needs and wants from you.
• Consider incentives. While most people will respond to polls without needing anything in return, sometimes offering a small incentive (like a freebie or discount) can help boost participation. Just keep it relevant to your audience.

Polls are a super simple way to boost engagement, get to know your audience better, and figure out how you can serve them better. The more you know about what they want, the easier it will be to create content (and programs/services) that attract the right clients to your business.

Give it a try, and then let’s chat about it—I think you’ll be surprised at the insights you’ll gain!

This article was originally published on Your Visibility Ege.

The post How Simple Polls Can Help You Attract More Clients appeared first on Adventures in Visibility.

By now, most people who run a business understand that it’s necessary to have an online presence. But what does that mean and how do you create that presence?

It’s complicated, right? At least that’s what I hear from clients and students. Now, more than ever, you, as solo or small business owner know you have to be online, but getting there isn’t always easy or straight forward.

To understand precisely what you’re going through, I’ve created a five-question survey so I can properly understand the challenges you’re facing right now, and what you want to achieve as the result of having an online presence.

To help me create up-to-date useful content for you, please take a few minutes to complete the survey below. Your responses are anonymous and will guide me in supporting you with solutions that are relevant today, in 2020 and beyond. 🙏 (Also, see my tip below the survey.)

#VisitiblityTip  Seems obvious, doesn’t it… create content that answers the questions your audience is asking.⁠ 👇🏻

𝙔𝙚𝙩, 𝙝𝙤𝙬 𝙙𝙤 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙠𝙣𝙤𝙬 𝙬𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙮’𝙧𝙚 𝙖𝙨𝙠𝙞𝙣𝙜?⁠

• They may be directly asking you questions.⁠
• You may be able to glean their questions from posts in groups and forums.⁠
• You may think you know their questions.⁠
• You may think you know what they should be asking⁠.
• You can ask them in a survey! 😋

But, unless they’re asking or telling you directly then what you think may not be the reality.⁠

In addition to surveys like the one above, my new FAVORITE tool for research is AnswerThePublic.com. This insight tool will help you find the real questions people are asking about your products, programs, and services. ⁠

Enter a keyword or a 2-3 word keyword phrase and you get a beautiful visual with the questions real people are asking that relate to those keywords.⁠

It makes your content marketing so much easier when you know what your prospective client is really asking!⁠

If you’re struggling with the why, how, and what content to create so you get found in search results by your ideal clients, let’s talk. You can book a one-time, affordable Ask Denise Anything consult and we’ll discuss the system you can put into place for creating content your audience wants.

Questions and feedback welcome in the comments, too.

Blog post photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

The post What are Your Challenges with Creating an Online Presence? appeared first on Adventures in Visibility.

As I was contemplating the year to come, I wrote in my notes that I wanted to listen more to the people in my various online communities.

I was thinking about the content I want to create (blog posts, videos, ebooks) as well as programs to offer in the next 6-12 months.

Now, I could just create what I THINK you want to know what I think you SHOULD know. Or I could ask you.

I decided to ask and created a very short survey to find out what YOU want to learn and master around digital and social media marketing in 2017.

So, I’m curious, in the realm of digital and social media marketing, what do you want to learn in 2017? The short survey below will only take you a couple of minutes to complete.

I value your opinion and with your input will be able to address YOUR interests in the coming year.  😀 

With the data that you and others share, I’ll be able to better focus on the content and topics you want to master in 2017 so you can create a useful digital marketing action plan that works for your business.

I’ll be closing the survey on January 13. If you have questions about the survey or wish to elaborate on choices, feel free to post in the comments.

Thank you for your time and contribution.

The post Your Digital Marketing Action Plan in 2017 [Survey] appeared first on Adventures in Visibility.

Consistently delivering the content your audience wants is usually top of mind for most business owners. Yet figuring out exactly what you should be creating isn’t always crystal clear. 

This is an issue that’s been top of my mind as my clients and students are experimenting with tools to find out exactly what and how to deliver their content. There are one question polls, asking “I’m curious…” questions on social media, and surveys, to name a few.

Recently my post on 13 Ways to Reach More People got a lot of traction. Not only was it shared widely, I offered a free checklist which quite a few people downloaded. Those are two key indicators that there is interest in the topic of repurposing content. Now, it’s time to find out exactly what that niche audience, and you, want to know about repurposing content.

So guess what? I’ve created a simple, four-question survey on Google docs. It will take less than two minutes to complete and will help me help you with why, what and how to repurpose your valuable, evergreen content. 

Once you complete the survey, you’ll be able to see most of the responses. They have been enlightening to me and I’ll be developing my editorial calendar to address the frustrations and areas where my audience wants more detailed information. 

How to use survey results

If you do survey your audience, then always take the next step and study the results. By offering a couple of open-ended questions, you’ll discover the language your audience uses to talk about the topic. Those become your keywords when blogging, posting on social media and in any copy you create for products and services.

On the question: In what areas could you use more guidance or support around repurposing your content? …

The top response is “creating a strategy.” I can respond with a blog post, a video, a series of tips on ways to create a strategy for repurposing content.

The open-ended question about what frustrates you most about repurposing content is a wealth of info. Content on that topic can include:

• How to schedule your time
• How to figure out the best platforms for your content
• How to tweak your content for various platforms
• Why you don’t need to fear duplicate content

Get the idea? 

Finally, when you create a simple survey, use a free tool like Google forms, Polldaddy, TypeForm or SurveyMonkey. When you ask 4-5 questions, you don’t need to shell out your hard earned money for a fancy survey tool. 

Now, before you take off to create your own survey, will you please take my survey about repurposing your content? I’ll be so grateful and I will then be able to deliver the content you want in order to grow your business. Thank you!

The post Are You Delivering the Best Content Your Audience Wants? appeared first on Adventures in Visibility.

I know it’s a big challenge for my Online Visibility Challenge participants as well as many, many others doing business on the Web. When I started my web-based business in 1996 (yes, that’s 20 years ago!), the challenge wasn’t attracting people to visit your website or sign up for your email newsletter. The challenge was that hardly anyone was using the web for business. Most people didn’t have an email address!

That means those who were publishing an email newsletter a.k.a. ezine didn’t have any trouble building their email lists. Remember, there were no social media networks competing for attention so our primary goal was to attract subscribers to our email newsletter. And, all you had to do was put a form on your website and say something like Subscribe to my Free Newsletter. And, people would because it was a novelty. 

The novelty wore off pretty rapidly. Now, twenty years later, figuring out what your audience wants from you so they will opt-in to your list, takes more thought, relationship-building and research.

If you’re wondering why no one is opting in to get your blog updates or subscribe to your e-newsletter or get your free e-course, then it’s time to do some research.

You’ve got to know what your audience wants from you. It’s not about what you want to give them. Important distinction there.

When is the last time you asked your audience what they want? Click to Tweet

Create a poll

It’s simple. There are so many ways you can gather intel from your subscribers and social media followers. But, you need to ask.

One of the easiest ways is to create a series of one-question polls. 

Both Twitter and Google+ (classic) allow you to create and post polls. You can also use a tool like PollDaddy. All three can be embedded on your blogsite so you can get a range of responses.

Twitter polls are live for 23 hours. 
See: Motivational Quotes – Love Them or Hate Them? [Poll]

Google+ polls are open indefinitely. Go ahead and vote on the poll below. You don’t have to leave the blog!

Only by asking and listening to the responses you get, will you know want kind of content to create for your free gifts to build your audience, blog posts to attract visitors, and status updates to get more engagement.

Ask one question

One question polls require you to ask a clear question and provide a choice of responses. While you’ll get deeper and more concrete info from a multi-question survey, you can still learn a lot from polls.  By asking just one question, you reduce most of the barriers people have about taking the time to respond. By offering choices, you reduce the barriers even more.

You can also simply ask one open-ended question, like Chris Ducker in the tweet below.

If there was ONE blog post that I could write for you, what would it be and why?! https://t.co/Hahy5jdI2i pic.twitter.com/tnWBww7zkN

— Chris Ducker (@ChrisDucker) January 7, 2016

What kind of questions should you ask?

It depends.  😉 

It depends on the nature of your business and what you want to know. Sometimes you may hear crickets when you ask. If that happens, try again. It’s all about experimentation to find what hits for your peeps.

Some examples for poll questions are:

• How often do you use [tool, service, social network]?
• What’s your favorite [tool, service, social platform]?
• Do you use [social network, service, tool]?
• How many blog posts do you write per week?
• Do you like X?
• How much time do you spend on X?
• What type of business are you in?

The key thing is to ask questions that give you information you can use to hone in on how you can connect better with your audience and give them more of what they want.

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it…

1. Create a poll about something you want to know from your audience.
2. Share the poll on your blog and social networks
3. Post it on my Facebook page so I can take the poll and share it.
4. Use the hashtag #PollChallenge so I can easily find your poll.

Got questions about attracting your audience? Ask me in the comments. 

The post Powerful Polls – How to Learn More About Your Audience appeared first on Adventures in Visibility.