How a B2B Can Make the Most of Social Surveys and Polls

A few months ago, Twitter announced it was partnering with Nielsen to develop Twitter Surveys.  Currently, this feature is in beta testing, with the plan being to release it to the general public early next year. This news marks a concrete commitment from Twitter towards further establishing the site as a useful resource for businesses looking to collect feedback and attract new customers.  The surveys will be distributed in a manner similar to the site’s “Promoted Tweets.”  Twitter’s Chief Revenue Officer, Adam Bain, was quoted in AdWeek saying, “There’s been [an issue] in the industry for brand research when it comes to low response rates.  This solves a big problem.”

This development also reminded me of an oft-ignored LinkedIn feature, group polling.  While I feel that Twitter surveys will be a valuable marketing tool in the future, I also believe that they will only be a piece of the puzzle when it comes to gauging online feedback.  LinkedIn polls give marketers the opportunity to present questions to, essentially, as specific of an industry sector as possible.  If your company has a niche specialty, or you are looking for sentiment regarding an issue that required a high degree of knowledge, LinkedIn group polls would be preferable over a Twitter survey.  As this great HubSpot blog suggests, marketers will not only receive useful feedback from these polls, but also increased group exposure and information that can be quickly repurposed as a blog post.

Despite LinkedIn polling’s advantages, Twitter surveys will still be worth exploring, even for B2B marketers.  If your goal is to get quick feedback from a large number of people, then it may be worth exploring in lieu of LinkedIn.  One of the best facets of this new feature is that, rather than taking you to an external site, the surveys will actually be conducted within the tweet itself.  If there’s one thing most marketers can agree on, it is that the typical individual’s short attention span presents a significant challenge in terms of response and engagement.  By limiting the number of steps that are necessary to complete a survey or poll, this problem will hopefully be at least somewhat alleviated.

Do you have any experiences with LinkedIn polling? Do you think your company will take advantage of Twitter Surveys? Have you come across any of these beta surveys?