Why Should Bloggers Survey Their Readers?
If you want to be an established blogger, you need to have a good idea of who your audience is or what they want. If you have an idea of who your audience is, you can give them what they want, and, hopefully, as a result, get more subscribers.
If you’re considering selling a product to your readers, knowing what they’re interested in can give you some idea of what they would be interested in purchasing. You might have a lot of viewers, so it’s not like you can ask them all to send you an email. It could take a long time to read through them all. The best way to learn about your audience as a blogger is by issuing surveys to your readers.
You can conduct surveys to figure out:
- Your Demographics: This will help you figure out how many female/male readers you have on your website, their income, age, interests, professions, etc.
- Your Future Products: What kind of products would your readers be interested in? What frustrates them the most? Survey them, and then use the data to figure out what your next product should be.
- Your Content: What content do your readers like? Don’t know? Well, simply ask them. Do they like short and sweet articles, or long and well researched articles? How many articles do they have time for on a daily or weekly schedule? Questions like these will allow you to figure out what type of content your should focus on.
- Your Problems: Ask your readers what kind of mistakes you’re making. What can you do better? What should you change? Get creative with these type of question. Sometimes, your readers know you better than you do.
Surveys are easy, fast, and leave you with interesting statistics. These statistics can give you a good sense of direction for your blog. There are many frugal or free survey tools. How do you know which one to use? To answer this question for myself, I decided to explore some of the best tools available today. After my research, I ended up with 6 great survey tools. Read below to find which one is best for you!
The 6 Best Survey Tools for Bloggers
1. Google Forms
Through Google Drive, you can create a Form, and then select a survey template. Google Forms is best for conducting small-scale surveys. Google doesn’t put a limit on the number of surveys you can issue per month or on the amount of space you have to store the results, like some other sites do. You have a lot of control over the forms themselves, even over the design of the page. Furthermore, once you are done collecting results and are ready to analyze your results, you can view your results in charts or graphs. Google Forms are easy to share. You can link your readers to a survey you created or even embed it in your blog.
2. WP-Polls
If you have a WordPress based website, you should consider using a WordPress plugin to issue your polls. WP-Poll surveys are easy to embed, and allow you to choose from a bunch of templates to create your survey. You can also edit the CSS to get your survey looking exactly how you want it. A recent change to WP-Polls allows survey questions to allow multiple answers. I would highly recommend this tool for beginners.
3. SurveyMonkey
SurveyMonkey is a well-known tool for conducting surveys but puts limits on their free surveys. If you want to issue a free survey using SurveyMonkey, you can’t ask more than 10 questions or collect more than 100 responses. If you want more functionality than that, you’ll have sign up to one of their plans. SurveyMonkey is a good option, it’s easy and intuitive to use. Similar to Google Forms, you can view results on charts for simple analysis.
4. SodaHead Polls
SodaHead is a WordPress plugin, just like WP-Polls. It has some nice features that other survey tools don’t have. For instance, you can ask questions with more than ten answer choices. You can also add videos or photos to your surveys. Furthermore, it has enhanced security to prevent voting fraud. Given that SodaHead Polls is a WordPress plugin, if you blog via WordPress, any survey you create using this plugin will be easy to embed into your blog.
5. Flisti
Flisti is incredibly easy to use. You don’t even have to register to create a survey. You just visit the site, type in a question along with some answer choices, and click ‘Create new poll.’ You can embed your poll into your blog. This isn’t the place to go if you want to customize your survey heavily or if you want to create a survey that is longer than one question.
6. PollSnack
PollSnack is another uncomplicated solution, like Flisti, but with more functionality. PollSnack has a lot of interesting, helpful features. Results are displayed in real-time. Survey data is stored securely, indefinitely. You can easily export survey data to a CSV file. Surveys are simple to customize. PollSnack is the perfect solution for a blogger who wishes to customize a survey but does not wish to learn how to use a complicated polling service. It is easy to embed surveys and the service is entirely free.
Which Tool Is Right for You?
Surveying your readers is essential if you’re looking to attract more readers or push a product as a blogger. You need to know who your readers are. Which tool is right for you depends on the survey that you want to create and how many responses you expect.
All survey tools are different. Some survey tools allow you to heavily customize the design of your survey. Some survey tools only allow you to ask ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions. With many survey tools available, and as a blogger, it’s important to know which survey tool will work best for you.
People love to share their opinions. They want to be heard. To get a higher response, I would also advocate providing some kind of incentive for them to take the survey. As an example, people who respond to your survey will be entered into a drawing for a $50 Amazon, iTunes, Best Buy, or any other type of gift card. By doing this you will maximize the number of answers you receive.
