Episode 376

How to Survey Your Audience for Feedback & Content Ideas

ABS: “Always Be Surveying”

Call me a market research nerd, but I love a good survey. My market research classes were the MOST fun at Texas State University, where I went to school! Seeing how people get feedback, how the analytics are read and measured, and even today, I love a good survey.

Don’t tempt me with a 5-min feedback survey and the possibility of winning a prize. I’ll fill out every survey you send me because I know how much that feedback means to the people receiving input.

I’ve done surveys for product launches, book launches, & rebranding names. I’ve created surveys for testimonials in this community, topics for webinars, changes to my brand, content topics, and the list goes on and on.

So today, we’re covering how to survey your audience for content ideas and feedback and what that looks like.

1. Email

Keep it simple. Send an email to your list with one question or a list of questions (keep it under 5) that you want feedback on. There aren’t any guarantees that people will respond to you, but start asking people to “Hit Reply” in your emails, and you’ll be surprised when the replies start rolling in.

This also increases with the number of people on your email list and in your network.

Another fun thing I did recently — and this is a little more technical — but I put button options inside an email I sent through my ESP ConvertKit. In the email, I asked people to “Vote” by clicking one of the buttons.

When someone clicked one of the options, two things happened:

1. They were sent to a page that said, “Thank you for your feedback.”

2. They were given a “tag” inside ConvertKit that let me know how many people voted for each option.

And if you remember this email, you’ll note that the two winning topics were used in my recent launch: one was the quiz topic for how to make money with content, and the other was the free training for saving time, or you know it as “Easy Peasy Content.”

2. Get in the comments on YouTube.

YouTube is great because you can interact and engage with your audience through your content. I’ve created many subsequent or sequel pieces of content from the feedback on a YouTube video or even during a live stream when I was doing them every Tuesday.

This is possible for podcasts on apps like GoodPods, but people often leave a star rating and not a ton of text.

When recording your videos, make sure you add a CTA for people to get in the comments to engage with your video and leave feedback.

This also helps feed the YouTube algorithm because people engage with your content.

Speaking of getting in the comments… 

3. Social Media

Social polls are fantastic for a quick survey and getting audience feedback. Instagram and Facebook Polls are just a few examples of different ways you can do polls on social media.

Instagram and Facebook stories has a “poll” feature that let’s you have have a “pick this or that” option you want to use to survey your audience. You can also do quizzes on your accounts to see if people can guess the correct answer to something related to your content.

Don’t underestimate the power of a simple poll!

Try doing a poll within a FB group. I don’t love this feature because you don’t get notified when someone answers the poll, and you have to check it regularly while it’s “live,” but it’s an excellent place to start if you have a sizeable audience inside a FB group.

LinkedIn polls are super fun and easy too! You can see how long they are live and then close after a specific timeframe.

You can also ask people to DM you to respond, like someone hitting “Reply” to an email. Again, this will depend on how much you’ve primed your audience to give you feedback in the past.

4. Google Forms

When you need an “official survey,” you need a Google Form. I love a Google Form!

I recently sent a survey to those community members who participated in the Radical Repurposing launch — meaning they attended the webinar, opened emails, and engaged with me during the promotional period. The survey was for anyone that didn’t buy the program, and I wanted to send it for two reasons:

1. I’m genuinely curious why the program wasn’t a good fit for them so I can learn and improve with each launch. (By the way, thank those who filled out the survey because that feedback is priceless!)
2. I wanted to give people an opportunity to share their opinions anonymously.

This doesn’t just apply to my recent launch survey, but I think it’s essential that you give your people an opportunity not only to check boxes and select “yes,” “no,” or “other” to your survey questions. It’s nice to have a “Is there anything else you want to share?” box so people can give you their input.

And this takes some tough skin and vulnerability to read people’s true feelings. Sometimes comments are mean and hateful, while others are the motivation I need to keep pushing forward.

But at the end of the day…

What matters most is that you’re not creating your content in a vacuum, never getting feedback from your audience.

Watch this video (linked below) to see exactly how I use surveys to get audience feedback. I share with you action steps you can take to get feedback on your content, and there’s a tutorial at the end that showcases a live training where I walked through exactly how I create a Google Form survey.

This is an excellent time of year to survey your audience and get a pulse on what they want from you. Then if you decide to pivot in the new year — which is a great time to make any changes to the direction of your content — you’ll feel more confident knowing that you’re creating content that your audience is excited about!

Video Recap of Today’s Episode: