A great blog article will teach you something, entertain you, or open your eyes to issues in the world.
A greater blog article will do what a great blog article does and include you in it.
What am I talking about here? Including your visitor/reader in your blog article doesn’t have to be rocket-science:
- Ask a question at the end of your post.
- Include a link to other people’s blog articles that have the same topic.
- Or, simply add a poll to your post.
First, lets start off finding out what a poll is, and its purpose:
An opinion poll is a survey of public opinion (what the visitors think) from a particular sample (your visitors). Opinion polls are usually designed to represent the opinions of a population by conducting a series of questions (your options on your poll) and then extrapolating generalities in ratio (percentages that are gathered afterwards) or within confidence intervals. (Source)
A Poll’s Use:
- Find out your visitors/audience’s opinion
- Learn something new about your visitor’s demographics (depending on your questions)
- Find out what the majority of your readers would rather have (which can be useful for numerous things, such as deciding what to post about, how to design your blog, etc)
How to get one:
There are thousands of “Free” poll generators that do a pretty good job at what they are supposed to do. However, one in particular stands out from the rest.. Polldaddy was the one that I used to create the poll below, in about 20 seconds. It was as simple as deciding the title, questions and then the design. It was acquired by Automattic (the same people who run WordPress) and is free.
Do you use polls on your blog or website? Have you learned things about your visitors?
20 Comments
I am not big fan of polls. They are easy to manage but I’d prefer more comments and such.
Also when blog with low traffic stuffs itself with polls – number of people voting is low and it makes blog look deserted.
Rarst has cool feed’s last blog post..Ketarin – keeps setup packages updated
I have yet to start one on my blog. I may one day, but only if I am using the polls results for a specific purpose like a follow up post on a previous one. But I now know how simple it is should I want to have one in future. Thanks for sharing.
Peter Lee
Work From Home Business Blog’s last blog post..Discover 10 WordPress Plugins That Make Readers Repeat Visitors
Rarst – You can have both on a post…just ask them to explain their poll choice.
Dennis Edell’s last blog post..2 NEW BLOGS Unveiled! FINALLY!!
@Dennis Edell
The less options people have the bigger is probablity they are going to act on them.
Choosing to comment or not is easy. Choosing whether to comment, vote in poll or press one of dozen social buttons is confusing.
Rarst has cool feed’s last blog post..Different software from same developer – trust or not?
@ PeterLee – Polls are completely optional, but I think they add something a little extra to a post. I’m glad you found Polldaddy so simple as I did.
@ Dennis – I agree, or you could simply make the poll choice “self-explanatory”
@ Rarst – Your right about all of the options at the end of the post, but voting in a poll takes about 5 seconds and you are still commenting on this post aren’t you
@Brad
I am not generic user.
Rarst has cool feed’s last blog post..Different software from same developer – trust or not?
@ Rarst – lol. Point Taken.
I dont like polls , i think they are waste of inventory on your blog
Hell yeah, I love polls!
tek’s last blog post..Nano 4G available, iPod Touch revamped, iTunes 8, Apple fanboys drool everywhere
Haven’t used polls at all on my blog but then I might start using it at some point in the future…
Melvin’s last blog post..Question And Asshole Round 2
Polls work when information on group behaviour is essential to understanding context, meaning that without the poll, the article, post or web page in question could not be fully understood. For example if I run a website about widgets and am looking for information on how many people have found a particular widget function useful, a poll will give this information quickly and simply, and provide real value to the user.
If however I’m reading an article about widgets and there is a generic poll amounting to something like “What do you think?”, this is less effective because the poll is inessential. After all, the main purpose of a poll is not to express what you think – but to see what everyone else thinks about something you have an interest in.
Finally, polls that make you click a link to see the results are a bit irritating, give me a nice graphical representation right there on the same page, and I’ll probably be that much more interested.
Cheers,
- Your local neighborhood SEO
SEOcialize – Search Engine Optimization’s last blog post..Client Education 1 – Guaranteed Rankings
I saw once a good use of polls from bloggernoob. He used them on a domain contest with extreme success.
in the end i guess the use of polls is worth it if you have active readers…
Hugo Santos’s last blog post..Emergency Room Final Considerations
My opinion is that I just think polls are another way to just gain some commotion to a blog post when other posts do not do too well. Nothing against you though, but I just wanted to point that out.
-Mike
I’ve seen this poll plugin in a couple of places but it’ll never be any real use until it’s totally skinnable by the user. However, your advice is generic and sound and whilst a poll doesn’t make a news story in itself, it’s a useful tool in helping the audience get involved, just like comments etc. It all helps!
Lancashire SEO guy’s last blog post..Why older people don’t get Meta tags
Mike – and this is somehow a bad thing?
Dennis Edell’s last blog post..Would You Like To Sponsor My *Best Blog Review* Contest?
Never use it on my posts yet but I think it will only work well if the topic really interest the readers.
Erwin Tan’s last blog post..Unleashing The Niche Genius In You
@ ZK – Cool. Glad somebody has the backbone to disagree with me
– Most people fluff it up and make it nice. Not you. You give cold hard opinions. I like it.
@ Tek – Then you’ll love the one at the end of the post. lol.
@ Melvin – Sounds like a plan, there are many poll providers on the internet. Take your pick!
@ SEOcialize – Wow. You hit the nail square on the head. You are most likely right with asking 2 different questions in two different forms (text & a poll) – made me realize that the question wasn’t needed. Oh well, Live and Learn, right?
@ Hugo Santos – Care to provide a link? I’m curious.
@ Play – Great. Glad you speak your mind.
@ Lancashire – I’m not sure if it was, I think I saw a “naked” version of it that you could modify for your own use.. Then again, I just went with the first design I could find for exemplary purposes.
@ Erwin – Personally, I’ll almost always participate in a poll.. its 2 seconds out of my day, and I can get a feel for what the general audience of a website feels about something.
This is a lovely idea…I am definitely going to incorporate that sooner or later in my blog…I think it make the site more interactive and enjoyable..Thanks for sharing this post…
There is a lot’s of info for bloggers keep it up…!!
thanks
Great info for bloggers. Thanks!