Rationale
LinkedIn in 2020 introduced a new feature for its users, yet only now has become one of the most used features and one of the current 2022 trends. Using the “Polls” feature, members can reach out to their network to collect feedback on different topics, products & services, people’s interests, preferences and gain valuable insights and knowledge both on their company and industry. Polls are questions with up to four answer options that allow you to ask LinkedIn members questions with optional choices to choose from so they can cast their vote quickly and easily. The questions must be easily understandable and straightforward as LinkedIn poses a limit to a maximum of 140 characters for the question, and every option is limited to 30 characters. Furthermore, you always have the opportunity to see who has voted and what they have voted for which makes this feature fun and engaging.
Goal
LinkedIn Polls are clearly useful for gathering information from your audience about a new content, promotional idea or feedback on your products or services. They help you identify your audience’s knowledge gaps about your company and services, and finally research emerging industry trends. Our main goal was to use Mr.Highline’s LinkedIn account as a tester to find the optimal combination of day and hour, along with the LinkedIn Polls content in order to come up with a successful strategy and apply it to our clients.
#1 Uncover your LinkedIn audience’s top goals
If you are trying to come up with new content or promotional ideas for your audience, through LinkedIn polls you can ask your audience what their current goals are. For example, we conducted a poll asking the audience about “ Which social media trends they would like to incorporate into their 2022 strategy”. The information gathered was extremely useful to create content around the most clicked option. With the information gathered, we crafted more engaging content that has a higher likelihood of converting fans into email subscribers, website visitors and increasing your brand awareness and followers.
#2 Gather customer feedback from your products or services
If you recently launched a new product or service, it is useful to ask your LinkedIn audience for some feedback and preference. For example, for one of our clients “Fort Roche” we gathered information on their service by asking the audience “which is the most important security service for your business/industry?”. This helped to increase their services awareness, LinkedIn visualisations on its services and finally website clicks.
#3 Identify Knowledge Gaps
If you want to increase your company’s awareness, LinkedIn polls are perfect for attracting your audience’s attention by offering a question with different options on which industry your company operates in, or what products or services you offer. For example, one of Mr.Highline posts filled the knowledge gap of LinkedIn users by asking them which were the services provided by the company. As a result, we gained more visibility, interest, website clicks and followers.
#4 Researching Emerging Industry Trends
If you have noticed a shift in your industry, LinkedIn polls can be a great way to gather information from your audience. For ILEC we created a LinkedIn Poll around the emerging trend in the events industry. This approach was beneficial for creating engaging content for ILEC that sparked greater engagement, followers and interest.
Strategy
Our strategy behind using LinkedIn polls is to create, gather and personalise questions related to our clients business, industry, products or services and customer preferences. We find it also extremely useful to increase the audience’s knowledge from a wide spectrum. Once we have collected their feedback, the information is used to successfully adjust our clients content, strategy or even products or services to increase their company’s page, products or service awareness.
Our team also uses LinkedIn Polls to stay updated about the latest market trends or conduct market research, this will for sure drive you in the right direction to ensure business growth.
Results
We spent significant time analyzing and gathering data from the produced LinkedIn Polls both for our clients and our company. From the data gathered, we acknowledge that through LinkedIn Polls both our clients’ and Mr.Highline’s page achieved an increase in followers and button clicks by 25%.
Through LinkedIn polls, we also managed to increase the engagement levels as we discovered that once someone has offered their help and opinion, they feel more invested in your company, which resulted in an incremental page views, posts impressions and custom button clicks.
This is just an example of how Mr.Highline constantly researches for trends, tests them and analyses the data gathered to achieve successful results for its clients.
How to create a poll on LinkedIn?
You can create both a poll from your personal profile and your company page. To create a poll from your profile, press “Start a post”. Here a new window opens, where at the bottom of the window, you have the option “Create a poll”. When you press “Create a poll”, a new window will open where you can ask your question, enter your answer options, and select a duration.
To create a poll from your company page, you can find the option of the poll already located on the front of the page, i.e., just below the “Start a post” box. Therefore, press the “Poll” button, and the window shown above will open.