LinkedIn Polls - The Secret Sales Tool Hiding in Plain Sight

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AuthoredUp reports that only 1.2% of all LinkedIn posts are polls.

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And I think that this is a crazy missed opportunity for B2B businesses.

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And if you stick around, I'm going to show exactly how you can

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use them to grow your business.

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G'day everyone.

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It is Coach Michelle J Raymond, and welcome back to another

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episode of the podcast.

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And in this week, we're going to talk about a feature, an underrated

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feature that I think is hiding in plain sight and we're going to be

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talking about LinkedIn polls and you might be sitting there going, really,

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Michelle, how can we dedicate a whole episode to just LinkedIn polls?

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Well, listeners, this is exactly how much of an opportunity

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that I think that they are.

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And I've been using them strategically with my clients for a little while

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now, always testing things, seeing what's working, what's not, and

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especially for Company Pages I think these are an amazing opportunity.

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When I was reading the report that Ivana and the team at AuthoredUp did.

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So shout out to them.

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If you're not following, I'm going to put the details into the show notes,

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but ultimately they did a research of all of the posts and found that only 1.

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2 percent of all posts on LinkedIn are LinkedIn polls.

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And that's across Company Pages and personal profiles.

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And that's really surprising because at the same time, their research

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found, and I'm going to quote this.

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That the top performing posts on LinkedIn regarding reach are LinkedIn

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polls, and they come in at 1.

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46 times increase over the median reach.

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So what does that mean in simple terms?

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Practically a poll can get you seen by one and a half times more people.

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And that's a great opportunity for anyone.

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In my personal experience when I've been working with clients, I actually

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think that that number is sitting closer to three to five times.

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And that's the experience that I've had with the clients, whether it's

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Company Pages or personal, when you use these polls strategically.

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But before we go into that, I've got a quick announcement from our

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podcast sponsors, Metricool, who have just released an amazing report,

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investigating social media platforms, and you don't want to miss it.

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Let's start by having a look into the power of LinkedIn

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polls for market intelligence.

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Seriously, listeners, there is no other format of content on LinkedIn that can get

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you so much market intelligence so easy.

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When it comes to using LinkedIn polls strategically, the top B2B brands

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use them to find out things like customer pain points, price points,

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product demand, industry trends.

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It is such a cool way to get that immediate response from your

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community that you've been building.

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This is exactly why we spend so much time strategically, building our . , Because

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when you use these polls, you can really get that direct feedback really quickly.

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And most people are very happy to engage with polls.

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So those hidden users on LinkedIn who are very unlikely to like or comment

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on your posts, surprisingly, because polls feel anonymous, you'll find

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that they're more likely to engage.

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And certainly the numbers are reflecting that.

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Listeners, you know, that everything I do on LinkedIn is tied back to how do you

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leverage LinkedIn for business growth.

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And when it comes to LinkedIn polls, it's no different.

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So after this short break, we're going to come back and I'm going to tell you

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exactly how to structure a LinkedIn poll to discover sales opportunities

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that will help you grow your business.

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If we want to use LinkedIn polls strategically to uncover

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sales opportunities, there's something you need to do first.

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And that is stop and think, what is the goal that we have for our business?

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What is it that you're trying to uncover?

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Is it a new product that you're looking at option A or option B?

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What is the goal that you have?

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And then we use the poll to discover the people that are interested in this product

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or helping us choose between option A or . But without the moment where you stop

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and figure out what the goal is first.

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It makes it very hard, and maybe this is obvious, but it makes

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it super hard for you to then design a poll that's effective.

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I mean, it's easy to do a poll, but not all of them are effective.

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Now, one of the things that I would say to you is, firstly, when you're creating

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a poll, do not give your audience four different answers to choose from.

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I find that the more answers that you give them, the more that you

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attract a little bit of everything.

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I want people when I'm doing polls to choose a side and quite often

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the questions that I ask lead them down into picking A or B. And of

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course, there are always those people out there who say it depends.

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And so I give them option C, let me know more in the comments.

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So option one is choice A, option two is choice B and option

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three is refer to comments.

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And so that pretty much covers the whole spectrum.

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Now I make it easy for people to answer.

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We don't want these questions to be complicated.

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And we don't want the choices to be hard.

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It almost needs to be a no brainer, A or B.

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Now, the limitation that we have here with LinkedIn polls is that you only have

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roughly 30 characters for the answers that your audience needs to pick from.

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I think they're doing us a favour by making sure that we keep things succinct.

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The more work that you do in the planning phase, the more that you

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can make these things obvious.

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I'll give you an example of a poll that I could use to discover more

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about my potential clients and that could be related to wanting to discover

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what's the biggest issue that company page admins are having right now.

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My question could be, Hey, page admins, which part of your company

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page do you find most difficult?

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Growing your page followers as option A or B, growing your reach

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and engagement, or that could be just growing your impressions.

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And so from that perspective, we've given them two easy options to pick.

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And we know, as I said, that there's always going to be

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the people that want to say.

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Both or neither.

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And so we'll tell them option C is all about, let us know in the comments.

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So that's as simple as it needs to be.

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I like to run mine for one week.

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That gives it enough time for enough people to get answers.

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And on average, I think you can get one to 200 responses, which if you think about

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that with that number of people sitting in a room, it's actually quite a lot.

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And if you have to pay for an agency to run that kind of market testing for you,

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I'm very confident that this LinkedIn poll is going to deliver a much higher ROI.

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So there you have it.

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A well structured poll gives you two options to get that market intelligence,

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which allows you to then transform options on your side, whether it's

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products or services or what's featured within them, and then change those up

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so that you will grow your business.

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Now from this, there's also some common mistakes that I see

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when people are doing polls.

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So after this break, I'm going to share with you the most common mistakes

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and the number one mistake that costs people more business than any other.

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So stick around.

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Let's talk about the most common mistakes that I see with LinkedIn polls.

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And number one would have to be when people do absolutely pointless polls.

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You know, the fun ones that people used to do in like, I think it was

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2020 or 2021, cast your mind back.

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There was a time when you could do a poll on LinkedIn and literally

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the engagement and the reach that you would get was off the charts.

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We're talking a hundred thousand impressions to find out what flavour

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potato crisps or chips if you're here in Australia, do you like the best?

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And everybody was engaging.

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It was like just craziness.

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And so what happened was when people realise that more people would see that

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kind of content, the polls became sillier.

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They became more pointless.

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But there was a huge amount of reach.

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Now I'm all for sometimes mixing things up so that you can get discovered by

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new people, but really what's a long term impact on your brand, be it your

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personal brand or your company brand.

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I don't think that it's worth it unless you're having some fun and it's

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obvious that that's what you're doing.

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So number one, no pointless polls.

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Nobody's got time for that.

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The other thing that I would say is a common mistake that I see is not

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letting the polls run for long enough.

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So one or three days is a couple of your other options.

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Let the poll have some time to do its work.

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Keeping in mind that people might not be on LinkedIn 24/7 they might only check

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it once every few days, and so you want to make sure that you give them time

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to see those posts and notifications and get involved and get active.

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And if the poll is going really well, and you've got a lot of engagement,

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the last thing that you want to do is cut it off because you told

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LinkedIn just run it for one day.

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So go for the one week option.

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That's the winner.

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The very last mistake and possibly the biggest mistake that is

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causing people so many issues.

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The one thing that I don't think any business I've ever worked with has

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had a good strategy for handling this is, when people engage with your poll,

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when they vote as the person that set up the poll, whether it's on the

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company page for the admin, or whether it's you personally, you can go in

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and see exactly who voted what option.

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Now, if someone was to vote, I'm having problems, you know,

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growing my page followers.

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If that's something that I was looking for.

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The thing you must do if you are going to get maximum value and grow your business

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you have to engage with those people.

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And so what I would do is go in to the results.

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You can click on the person's name and then send them a message and

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say, thanks for voting in my poll.

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I can see that you're having issues most with growing your page followers.

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Here's some content I've created around that, that I think would help you.

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Or did you know, I run a company page admin training session that focuses

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exactly on this and I could help you.

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Have you ever considered getting training?

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And so you start that conversation with someone, you know, is interested.

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So bye bye cold calling.

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Bye bye sending messages to people unsolicited and hoping

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and praying that they work.

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These people have told you exactly their answer.

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So you don't need to guess.

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And then you could also have on the other side for those people in my

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poll who might've voted, how do I grow my page engagement and reach?

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Well, guess what?

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I've got content on that as well.

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And so therefore they would receive a different message from me that

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feels tailored and personalised and not something that just feels spammy.

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So the more that you do this, you've uncovered potential

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problems that they're having.

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Businesses, as I say, exist to solve problems.

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That's why we're here.

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And so it's such an easy way to flush out these warm leads.

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So listeners, there you have it.

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That is exactly how to structure a poll, to uncover opportunities and

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avoid the common mistakes so that you can use this tool to full advantage.

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Like I said, when I use them for myself or my clients.

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They get the reach, they get the engagement more than anything else

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that I'm seeing right now, besides those random videos that are taking

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off over in the short form video feed.

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But again, still not hearing anyone growing their business out

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of that, but polls, absolutely.

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I know that this is a strategy that works.

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As I wrap up the show this week, I've got a challenge for you.

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I want you to go and create a poll with the strategies

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that you've just been given.

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Let it run for one week and then reach out and let me know how it went.

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I'd love to hear the results or tag me in your posts and I'll come

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and support it and have a look.

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Until next week.

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Cheers.