Some of you may have noticed a new feature being displayed on your LinkedIn Feed as of late. These LinkedIn Polls are designed for business owners to help engage their connections and learn some valuable information from their target audience. But, instead of asking everyone what their favourite breakfast is, we should make the most of this tool to solve some gaps in knowledge we may be facing.
How Do I Create a Poll?
LinkedIn Polls feature is currently being rolled out to a select few members with the option becoming more wildly available at a later date. If you have the option available to you, creating a poll can be found on your LinkedIn homepage. If you’re an admin of a LinkedIn Page, or a LinkedIn Group you can also create a poll directly from the page or group’s homepage.
Here are 8 Steps to creating your first poll
- Go to Start a post.
- Click Create a poll.
- Type your question and fill out the options. Click +Add option if you would like to add another option.
- Select the Poll duration to determine how long you would like your poll to run for.
- Click Next.
- Click the Edit icon to edit the post and Select who you want to share the poll with.
- You can add more to the post in the What do you want to talk about? section
- Click Post.
Things to consider:
- There is a minimum of two options and a maximum of four options on a poll
- Poll Questions have a maximum character limit of 140, with the answers limited to 30 characters
- A poll can’t be edited once it’s created, only deleted.
- You are not allowed to ask for sensitive data, as guided in LinkedIn’s standard terms and conditions
What Should I Poll about?
First you need to decide what you’d like to learn from your poll. You can poll about just about anything and answers with a list of diverse options would be a great way to create engagement. You have four options to choose from when creating your poll so use each one wisely. In order to make the most out of LinkedIn Polls you’re going to need to use the data you create. Polling about new services you may be looking into, or when people are most likely to use your product would give you some solid information to base a decision on. However, be wary where you post your poll as it could be the defining factor of your results. If you post to a LinkedIn Group dedicated to despising cold-callers a poll about the best time for a caller to reach you would go down like a lead balloon.
How to make the most of your Poll
There are many different ways to capitalise on LinkedIn’s new feature. You could use the options available to you to create an engagement post on something we all have an opinion about in order to warm up your connections to a message. Each poll response has the potential to become a conversation starter. As we all know a simple conversation has the potential to make or break businesses depending on the outcome.
Alternatively you could use your poll to gauge whether or not your idea is worth pursuing or if there is an audience for a new service you’d like to offer. Better than running into the dark you can see who would like to pursue your business idea, but be aware you don’t give your competitors any new ideas in the meantime. Instead of outlying your idea with a Yes or No, you could instead ask how people currently solve the issue you’re looking to fix and move forwards from there.
However you use the new LinkedIn Polls feature, remember that with each new addition to the platform you have a new opportunity to reach new connections and build your business. Invest in LinkedIn training to ensure no-one in your team is left behind. If you need guidance on any new LinkedIn tool, get in contact.
