For many of us, social media is our platform for sharing. With our families, with our friends, with our clients. For many, it’s also the soap box upon which your opinion can be foisted upon – sorry, shared with – others. And sharing is caring, especially for brands: gathering opinions from their clients, especially in the form of polls, is an excellent way to both drive engagement and gather insight.
Whilst the majority of the social media platforms have had an option to conduct polls for a while, the eagle eyed among you may have spotted that LinkedIn has officially launched its own native polls. And as the platform is dedicated to business networking, this is great news for boosting engagement for your company.
How do the LinkedIn polls work?
Essentially, the new LinkedIn polls function in the same way as polls do on the other social media platforms. You select the ‘Create a Poll’ option, choose your question and up to four answers, and Bob’s your uncle. Just as with many of the other platforms, you can also set the poll’s duration to between 24 hours and up to two weeks, giving you plenty of time to gather answers from your followers.
The great thing is that you can share LinkedIn polls with your connections (although this is dependent on LinkedIn’s algorithm), specific groups or specific people that you’re connected to. This will give you a real opportunity to gather insight from your business network.
How can the LinkedIn polls drive engagement?
The great aspect of polls – across all platforms, not just LinkedIn – is that it’s a quick fire way of asking a question and encouraging engagement: it doesn’t require a lot of thinking about, nor does it require any lengthy response to be written, yet it gives your connections a voice. And crucially, it gives you an insight into your connections’ opinions on various subjects.
Of course, you can use polls to ask questions of your connections, or of your company page’s followers, but LinkedIn polls could be particularly useful in groups. For example, if you have a group specifically for marketing professionals, you can use polls to ask targeted questions around which tools they prefer for certain types of campaign, or what their favourite social media platform is (oh wait, that’s just us at 24fingers HQ that want to know that info, isn’t it?).
But seriously, it could be a really great tool to gather industry specific insights, or to gain the opinion of something which is out of your usual industry comfort zone.
How can LinkedIn polls help your brand?
Interestingly, LinkedIn polls actually used to be available in groups back in the day, but the platform removed them in 2014. And their comeback is great timing as more and more of us move our business and our networking online.
What sets LinkedIn polls apart is that it is the network for professional networking; rather than polling Joe Bloggs, Aunt Franny and that person you met at a friend’s 30th birthday party that one time who just happens to follow your company Facebook page, you’re actually targeting people from within your professional circle. This will give you a much more targeted insight into any questions you ask of them.
Want to poll the experts on LinkedIn Polls?
Questions, questions: we all have them. And whether you’ve got questions on how to get started with LinkedIn polls or need ideas for other ways to drive engagement, get in touch. Our 24fingers can get to work with boosting your brand’s engagement, gaining comments, likes and, of course, poll answers from all of your followers. We’re ready to be put to the poll.
