As a blogger, you likely spend a lot of time and effort creating content you hope resonates with your target audience. But how can you be sure you really understand your readers and are giving them what they want? The answer is simple: Ask them!
Audience surveys are one of the most powerful tools in a blogger‘s arsenal for gaining valuable insights into your readers, subscribers, and customers. When done right, surveys allow you to collect actionable data that can transform your blogging strategy, supercharge your content, and grow your business faster.
In this comprehensive guide, we‘ll walk you through everything you need to know to create engaging surveys that your audience will actually want to take. You‘ll learn the different types of surveys, key elements of survey design, promotion strategies, top tools, and more.
Let‘s dive in!
Why Audience Surveys Are a Blogger‘s Best Friend
Before we get into the nitty gritty of creating surveys, let‘s talk about why they are so crucial for bloggers. By surveying your audience, you can:
- Identify your readers‘ biggest pain points, challenges, and goals
- Understand what type of content they find most valuable
- Get feedback on your current offerings (blog posts, freebies, products, etc.)
- Uncover new content ideas and opportunities
- Segment your audience for more targeted marketing
- Learn your audience‘s preferences (format, frequency, length, etc.)
Having this information is like getting access to your audience‘s brains. Rather than guessing what they want, you can just ask them directly and then deliver it. When you use surveys to inform your strategy, you almost can‘t help but create a blog that your audience loves.
The Top 4 Types of Surveys For Audience Research
Now that you‘re bought in on the power of surveys, let‘s look at the main types of surveys you can use to pick your audience‘s collective brain:
1. Quick Polls
If you want to get a quick pulse on your audience‘s opinion on a specific topic, a one-question poll is the way to go. These are most effective when you limit the responses to 2-4 options.
For example: "What‘s your biggest struggle with [your niche topic]? A) Time B) Budget C) Knowledge"
Quick polls are great for social media posts, welcome mats, and article embeds.
2. Open-Ended Surveys
To dive deeper into your readers‘ minds, open-ended surveys with paragraph-style responses allow them to share their thoughts in their own words.
Limit these to just a few key questions:
- What‘s your biggest challenge with [topic]?
- If you could wave a magic wand and solve any problem related to [topic], what would it be?
- What would make [your product/site] more valuable to you?
These can be sent via email or hosted on your site.
3. Multiple Choice Questionnaires
A classic survey style, multiple choice questionnaires are best for collecting quantitative data on a range of topics. These are good for audience demographic info, interest ranking, and feature preferences.
Keep them focused and aim for 10 questions max. Any longer and completion rates will plummet.
4. Quizzes & Assessments
To really engage your audience, quizzes and assessments are great interactive formats. These allow you to both collect data while providing something of value to the user.
For instance, a personality quiz can segment your audience and recommend specific content or products. An assessment can help benchmark skills or knowledge on a topic.
5 Tips for Crafting Questions That Get Responses
Knowing the types of surveys is a start, but how you write your survey questions has a huge impact on the quality and quantity of responses. Here are some tips:
1. Keep it short and simple.
Get right to the point with clear, concise questions.
2. Avoid leading and loaded questions.
Phrase questions neutrally to get honest opinions.
3. Ask one thing at a time.
Avoid double-barreled questions on multiple topics.
4. Provide a range of specific answers.
"Other" or open-ended options help get accurate data.
5. Make rating scales consistent.
Use the same scale direction and values throughout.
Bonus Tip: Inject your brand voice into the questions! Dry, generic questions will get glossed over. Speak to your audience in a relatable, human way.
Survey Design Best Practices for Higher Completions
While the questions are the heart of your survey, the packaging matters too. People are bombarded with boring, cluttered surveys all the time. Yours needs to be visually attractive and frictionless to stand out.
When designing your survey, keep these best practices in mind:
- Aim for 10 questions or less
- Put the most important questions first
- Use images, emojis, and formatting to add interest
- Make it mobile-friendly
- Include a progress bar for longer surveys
- Allow people to skip questions
- Give a survey completion time estimate upfront
- Offer an incentive (discount code, freebie, etc.)
- Say thank you!
The Best Survey Tools for Bloggers
You‘ve got your questions and design, now you need to build your survey. While you could create one from scratch, it‘s much easier to use a dedicated survey tool. Look for tools that:
- Provide customizable templates
- Offer a range of question types (multiple choice, ranking, open-ended, etc.)
- Allow you to embed images and video
- Include logic branching to show specific questions based on responses
- Integrate with your email marketing service
- Provide reporting and analysis on results
Here are some of the top survey tools we recommend:
- Google Forms (free)
- SurveyMonkey
- Typeform
- SurveyNuts
- Fieldboom
- Qualtrics
Many email marketing platforms like ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign also have built-in survey features you can use.
How to Get More People to Take Your Survey
Creating an engaging survey is only half the battle. You also need to get it in front of your audience and convince them to take it. The more responses, the better your data.
Try these tactics to increase response rates:
- Mention the survey in a dedicated email and social media post
- Prominently feature it on your site (popups, sticky bars, in-post CTAs)
- Add a link to your email signature
- Create a contest with a prize drawing for participants
- Personally invite your most engaged subscribers
- Partner with influencers in your niche to promote to their audience
- Run Facebook/Instagram ads to your survey
- Offer a instant discount code/freebie upon completion
The key is making your survey impossible to miss and giving people a compelling reason to take a few minutes to complete it.
Putting Your Survey Data Into Action
Collecting data is just the first step. The magic happens when you dig into your survey responses and extract actionable insights.
To get the most out of your survey data:
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Tag and categorize open-ended responses to identify common themes.
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Look at the most common responses to multiple choice questions.
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Segment your results by key demographic info.
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Compare your results to data from past surveys to spot trends.
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Identify gaps between your offerings and what your audience wants.
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Brainstorm content/product ideas to address their pain points.
Most importantly, don‘t let your data just sit in a spreadsheet! Use it to make actual changes to your strategy, content, products, and marketing.
For example, you could:
- Create a lead magnet on your audience‘s #1 pain point
- Write a blog series on a highly requested topic
- Develop a product that solves their top challenge
- Change your email opt-in copy to match their goals
- Update old content to better align with their needs
Examples of Awesome Audience Surveys
Want to see surveys done right? Check out these examples from top bloggers:
- Backlinko‘s blogging skills assessment
- Henneke Duistermaat‘s snackable "Question of the Week" emails
- Marie Forleo‘s 2-question new subscriber poll
- Ramit Sethi‘s "I‘m curious" one-liner email polls
- Smart Blogger‘s "What Do You Need Help With Right Now?" welcome mat
Start Picking Your Audience‘s Brain
Whew, that was a lot! If you‘re feeling overwhelmed, just remember that surveying your audience doesn‘t have to be complicated to be effective. Start small by adding a one-question poll to your next email or social media post.
The key is to start gathering data now, so you can create content and products with confidence knowing it‘s exactly what your audience wants and needs. So what are you waiting for? Go ask your readers what‘s on their mind!
What type of survey are you going to try first? Let me know in the comments!
