Polls

Want to Jumpstart your clients Facebook experience?  Want to land more new fans?

Polls are a powerful way to engage people as you’re asking their opinion…what person doesn’t want to express their likes and opinions.

The key is to ask relevant questions that will help you understand your audience and then aid you in putting together relevant posts as well as new tours or additions to your attraction, hotel or destination.  It’s a bit like dating; the better questions you ask the better you get to know your date!

Facebook has a number of intriguing polling applications to make your queries pop on your page and help you understand the analytics of the answers.

Polling Tools

“Polls” application.

Download the app by searching “Polls” in the Search box or clicking on the above link.  You’ll find a dashboard to fill in the blanks and create your poll. As you continue thru the process you’ll be provided with a Viral Dashboard that gives you a variety of methods to promote and spread your poll to your fans and others in your circle of influence.

This would be a great way for a Travel pro to identify which destinations clients would like to visit.  Hotels and attractions can use polling to figure out which amenities or features are prized by guests, thereby enabling the company to build on its successes.

Advantages and Disadvantages:

1. Easy to use
2. Invite 8 people to participate at a time
3. The feature to publish on Fan pages you ‘like’ is useful if you want to engage a wider audience.  I believe one would want to be an active participant on a Fan page before you put a poll onto another page.
4. The Direct Link is really helpful if you’d like to send an e-mail blast to your clients and invite them to your Facebook page and the poll.

“Poll Daddy” application

Images and photos are a huge part of the draw to this polling application.  Imagine if you were going to poll your clients on their favorite beach and you were to add a photo of each of their choices.  Powerful!  This is a great opportunity to learn what is most attractive to your clients and what you can emphasize in your next newsletter, e-mail blast or conversation.

Advantages and Disadvantages:

1. Add an image when you enter your question.  As we all know photos and any type of graphic will draw attention and encourage people to act. Tour Operators will love this!
2. Customize the answers available in your poll and add an image with each answer.
3. The next cool feature is that you can select who you’d like to see your poll.
4. If you’re interested in expanding your client base (and who isn’t) you can check ‘Friends of Friends’ so that you virally reach a wider audience.
5. In addition, you have a chance to write a comment about this poll thereby bringing some context to your question.
6. Invite as many friends as you’d like!
7. Add and delete polls on a dashboard

These Facebook applications will make your page visually interesting and stand out from other pages your clients may browse.

The key benefit to polls is that once your client answers a poll or interacts in any way with your page, their friends will see their involvement.  This is an easy way for you to attract the attention of friends of your fans.  What a way to leverage your new business leads!

For other tools to leverage your business success on Facebook, check out 3 Tools and 6 Contest Best Practices and 1 BIG way to Gain Attention for your Social Pages.   Land more clients!

What questions have you asked when polling your clients?

Keep in touch as I’m interested in hearing of your successes. Connect with me on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.