For the final in our series on how to get insight from online communities, we are looking at using what is very much an insight tool but that can be included in any online community: quick polls. Easy to respond to and simple on the community, getting online polls right is actually more difficult than you might think. If you want to get real insight from them, you need to know what questions to ask, and what answers to offer.
Quick polls offer a way to get high-level feedback from your community members on simple quantitative questions. You can understand what people think and can often get feedback very quickly.
There are four steps to make quick polls successful and a useful source of insight:
- Define what you want to find out - you have only a quick poll and a limited number of words to explain what you are asking. Define a question that is actually useful to you and that is specific enough so that people understand what they are being asked.
- Choose your words carefully - how you ask the question is very important. You need to be clear, specific and direct. Make sure you are asking only one question otherwise it will be difficult to analyse the results.
- Offer specific answers - in a quick poll you probably list a set of answers from which people will choose. Make sure the answers you offer are discrete and different from each other and that you offer all the combinations people will want to choose from.
- Use the poll to spark a forum discussion - the poll itself can only tell you what people think. To find out why they think this, you should start a related forum discussion where people can discuss the poll, their answer and the issues it raises.
Quick polls can be a great opportunity to get relatively quick feedback from the community members and real insight into a question that is important to you. It's important to make sure you make the most of this opportunity and produce data that gives you real insight.
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Some more reading
- Want to improve your community in 2009? Ask your members. (freshnetworks.com)
- A Presentation About Community, By The Community (neilperkin.typepad.com)
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