Combining Survey Research and Social Media

Online marketing these days is incomplete without social media. Search engines like Google and Bing actually use social triggers – for example, the number of times a post of yours is shared on Facebook – to rank your site in search engines, and customers expect to be able to engage now with companies when they have a grievance or something to share. While social media isn't for everyone, companies that invest in social media are more likely to improve their long-term success than companies that don't. Like any marketing method, social media requires expertise in order to be successful, but it's something that more and more businesses are starting to use to their marketing advantage.

Therefore, with that in mind, once you've created a social media account and it has a somewhat loyal following, it becomes important to try to use that following to your advantage. Gaining followers is useful, and engagement is important, but your social media account is only as valuable as you make it, and if you're not utilizing it to your full advantage the ROI of your social media account is reduced. That's why once you've developed a large social media following, you may want to consider online survey research as a way of maximizing its value.

Whether you need Facebook surveys , Twitter surveys , or surveys for some other type of social media, all you truly need is: A Link – Of course, you need to be able to give people a link to take your surveys. SurveyMethods’ software can provide you with a static link to use to post on your social media wall. A Reason – You also need to give people a reason to take the survey.

You can reward those that take the survey with some type of coupon or gift, or you can simply come up with an engaging reason they should take the survey (like learning about a new product). An Idea – You also need a good idea. Figure out what your social media followers represent and use it to your advantage.

Like any type of marketing – and any type of research – it's possible to have too much, so of course you do not simply want to throw a useless survey out there. You need to come up with ideas that cater to the social media audience.

Social media audiences differ depending on the industry. A pest control company, for example, is not going to have the same types of followers as a college website, so that will change how you decide what type of survey to run and whether or not it is going to be ideal for your audience. One thing that is known about social media surveys, however, is that: Not all your followers will even see the survey.

You may need to post the survey multiple times or make sure you're running the survey over a long enough period of time to attract more participants. Incentive is VERY important. While people do connect well with social media, they don't simply click surveys without a good reason.

It doesn't have to be a financial incentive, but some type of discount or something that shows it's worth it for them to take the survey. Engagement is also very important. Social media without site engagement (which includes people liking, sharing, and commenting on your posts) isn't valuable.

It implies people aren't reading your posts or caring about your business. You need them to care as much as possible to maximize the number of responses you get. You may also want to consider priming.

Get people excited about taking a survey long in advance so that when the survey finally comes out (and if you decide to post it multiple times) they aren't surprised. If you explain to your followers in advance that they should expect a survey and explain why it will be valuable, when the survey finally comes out you should be able to get more responses. Social media surveys can be very effective, but there are some problems.

First, you have to account for the idea that response rate for these types of surveys is based heavily on how you run your social media account, and second, you need to make sure that you're preparing a survey that people want to take. A basic market research survey may not be as effective on social media.

On the other hand, a survey tailored to your social media followers might be very effective.

Social media surveys are their own complex beast, and someday it will need its own research into how to best match the right surveys to the right social media audience. Social media is simply too new for there to be a science to it yet, but as online relationships grow, surveys will be used to interact with your audience.