Let's explore the underutilised potential of LinkedIn Polls for B2B businesses to gain market intelligence, increase engagement and drive business growth.
Key moments in this episode -
00:00 Why LinkedIn Polls
03:29 The Power of LinkedIn Polls
05:06 Structuring Winning LinkedIn Polls
09:18 Common Mistakes with LinkedIn Polls
11:12 Using LinkedIn Polls to Grow Your B2B
13:29 Listener LinkedIn Poll Challenge
Today's episode is sponsored by Metricool. Make sure to register for a FREE Metricool account today. Use Code MICHELLE30 to try any Premium Plan FREE for 30 days. https://i.mtr.cool/NEDXVZ
ABOUT MICHELLE J RAYMOND
Michelle J Raymond is an international LinkedIn™️ B2B Growth Coach. To continue the conversation, connect with Michelle on LinkedIn™️ and let her know you are part of the community of podcast listeners.
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- 2025 Social Media Study - Metricool - Metricool analyzed data from over 1 million accounts and over 21 million posts from 8 social networks to measure the evolution of the different platforms, forecast 2025 trends, and compare the results with our 2024 study.
- How the LinkedIn Algorithm Works in 2024 [Data-Backed Facts]
AuthoredUp reports that only 1.2% of all LinkedIn posts are polls.
Speaker:And I think that this is a crazy missed opportunity for B2B businesses.
Speaker:And if you stick around, I'm going to show exactly how you can
Speaker:use them to grow your business.
Speaker:G'day everyone.
Speaker:It is Coach Michelle J Raymond, and welcome back to another
Speaker:episode of the podcast.
Speaker:And in this week, we're going to talk about a feature, an underrated
Speaker:feature that I think is hiding in plain sight and we're going to be
Speaker:talking about LinkedIn polls and you might be sitting there going, really,
Speaker:Michelle, how can we dedicate a whole episode to just LinkedIn polls?
Speaker:Well, listeners, this is exactly how much of an opportunity
Speaker:that I think that they are.
Speaker:And I've been using them strategically with my clients for a little while
Speaker:now, always testing things, seeing what's working, what's not, and
Speaker:especially for Company Pages I think these are an amazing opportunity.
Speaker:When I was reading the report that Ivana and the team at AuthoredUp did.
Speaker:So shout out to them.
Speaker:If you're not following, I'm going to put the details into the show notes,
Speaker:but ultimately they did a research of all of the posts and found that only 1.
Speaker:2 percent of all posts on LinkedIn are LinkedIn polls.
Speaker:And that's across Company Pages and personal profiles.
Speaker:And that's really surprising because at the same time, their research
Speaker:found, and I'm going to quote this.
Speaker:That the top performing posts on LinkedIn regarding reach are LinkedIn
Speaker:polls, and they come in at 1.
Speaker:46 times increase over the median reach.
Speaker:So what does that mean in simple terms?
Speaker:Practically a poll can get you seen by one and a half times more people.
Speaker:And that's a great opportunity for anyone.
Speaker:In my personal experience when I've been working with clients, I actually
Speaker:think that that number is sitting closer to three to five times.
Speaker:And that's the experience that I've had with the clients, whether it's
Speaker:Company Pages or personal, when you use these polls strategically.
Speaker:But before we go into that, I've got a quick announcement from our
Speaker:podcast sponsors, Metricool, who have just released an amazing report,
Speaker:investigating social media platforms, and you don't want to miss it.
Speaker:Let's start by having a look into the power of LinkedIn
Speaker:polls for market intelligence.
Speaker:Seriously, listeners, there is no other format of content on LinkedIn that can get
Speaker:you so much market intelligence so easy.
Speaker:When it comes to using LinkedIn polls strategically, the top B2B brands
Speaker:use them to find out things like customer pain points, price points,
Speaker:product demand, industry trends.
Speaker:It is such a cool way to get that immediate response from your
Speaker:community that you've been building.
Speaker:This is exactly why we spend so much time strategically, building our . , Because
Speaker:when you use these polls, you can really get that direct feedback really quickly.
Speaker:And most people are very happy to engage with polls.
Speaker:So those hidden users on LinkedIn who are very unlikely to like or comment
Speaker:on your posts, surprisingly, because polls feel anonymous, you'll find
Speaker:that they're more likely to engage.
Speaker:And certainly the numbers are reflecting that.
Speaker:Listeners, you know, that everything I do on LinkedIn is tied back to how do you
Speaker:leverage LinkedIn for business growth.
Speaker:And when it comes to LinkedIn polls, it's no different.
Speaker:So after this short break, we're going to come back and I'm going to tell you
Speaker:exactly how to structure a LinkedIn poll to discover sales opportunities
Speaker:that will help you grow your business.
Speaker:If we want to use LinkedIn polls strategically to uncover
Speaker:sales opportunities, there's something you need to do first.
Speaker:And that is stop and think, what is the goal that we have for our business?
Speaker:What is it that you're trying to uncover?
Speaker:Is it a new product that you're looking at option A or option B?
Speaker:What is the goal that you have?
Speaker:And then we use the poll to discover the people that are interested in this product
Speaker:or helping us choose between option A or . But without the moment where you stop
Speaker:and figure out what the goal is first.
Speaker:It makes it very hard, and maybe this is obvious, but it makes
Speaker:it super hard for you to then design a poll that's effective.
Speaker:I mean, it's easy to do a poll, but not all of them are effective.
Speaker:Now, one of the things that I would say to you is, firstly, when you're creating
Speaker:a poll, do not give your audience four different answers to choose from.
Speaker:I find that the more answers that you give them, the more that you
Speaker:attract a little bit of everything.
Speaker:I want people when I'm doing polls to choose a side and quite often
Speaker:the questions that I ask lead them down into picking A or B. And of
Speaker:course, there are always those people out there who say it depends.
Speaker:And so I give them option C, let me know more in the comments.
Speaker:So option one is choice A, option two is choice B and option
Speaker:three is refer to comments.
Speaker:And so that pretty much covers the whole spectrum.
Speaker:Now I make it easy for people to answer.
Speaker:We don't want these questions to be complicated.
Speaker:And we don't want the choices to be hard.
Speaker:It almost needs to be a no brainer, A or B.
Speaker:Now, the limitation that we have here with LinkedIn polls is that you only have
Speaker:roughly 30 characters for the answers that your audience needs to pick from.
Speaker:I think they're doing us a favour by making sure that we keep things succinct.
Speaker:The more work that you do in the planning phase, the more that you
Speaker:can make these things obvious.
Speaker:I'll give you an example of a poll that I could use to discover more
Speaker:about my potential clients and that could be related to wanting to discover
Speaker:what's the biggest issue that company page admins are having right now.
Speaker:My question could be, Hey, page admins, which part of your company
Speaker:page do you find most difficult?
Speaker:Growing your page followers as option A or B, growing your reach
Speaker:and engagement, or that could be just growing your impressions.
Speaker:And so from that perspective, we've given them two easy options to pick.
Speaker:And we know, as I said, that there's always going to be
Speaker:the people that want to say.
Speaker:Both or neither.
Speaker:And so we'll tell them option C is all about, let us know in the comments.
Speaker:So that's as simple as it needs to be.
Speaker:I like to run mine for one week.
Speaker:That gives it enough time for enough people to get answers.
Speaker:And on average, I think you can get one to 200 responses, which if you think about
Speaker:that with that number of people sitting in a room, it's actually quite a lot.
Speaker:And if you have to pay for an agency to run that kind of market testing for you,
Speaker:I'm very confident that this LinkedIn poll is going to deliver a much higher ROI.
Speaker:So there you have it.
Speaker:A well structured poll gives you two options to get that market intelligence,
Speaker:which allows you to then transform options on your side, whether it's
Speaker:products or services or what's featured within them, and then change those up
Speaker:so that you will grow your business.
Speaker:Now from this, there's also some common mistakes that I see
Speaker:when people are doing polls.
Speaker:So after this break, I'm going to share with you the most common mistakes
Speaker:and the number one mistake that costs people more business than any other.
Speaker:So stick around.
Speaker:Let's talk about the most common mistakes that I see with LinkedIn polls.
Speaker:And number one would have to be when people do absolutely pointless polls.
Speaker:You know, the fun ones that people used to do in like, I think it was
Speaker:2020 or 2021, cast your mind back.
Speaker:There was a time when you could do a poll on LinkedIn and literally
Speaker:the engagement and the reach that you would get was off the charts.
Speaker:We're talking a hundred thousand impressions to find out what flavour
Speaker:potato crisps or chips if you're here in Australia, do you like the best?
Speaker:And everybody was engaging.
Speaker:It was like just craziness.
Speaker:And so what happened was when people realise that more people would see that
Speaker:kind of content, the polls became sillier.
Speaker:They became more pointless.
Speaker:But there was a huge amount of reach.
Speaker:Now I'm all for sometimes mixing things up so that you can get discovered by
Speaker:new people, but really what's a long term impact on your brand, be it your
Speaker:personal brand or your company brand.
Speaker:I don't think that it's worth it unless you're having some fun and it's
Speaker:obvious that that's what you're doing.
Speaker:So number one, no pointless polls.
Speaker:Nobody's got time for that.
Speaker:The other thing that I would say is a common mistake that I see is not
Speaker:letting the polls run for long enough.
Speaker:So one or three days is a couple of your other options.
Speaker:Let the poll have some time to do its work.
Speaker:Keeping in mind that people might not be on LinkedIn 24/7 they might only check
Speaker:it once every few days, and so you want to make sure that you give them time
Speaker:to see those posts and notifications and get involved and get active.
Speaker:And if the poll is going really well, and you've got a lot of engagement,
Speaker:the last thing that you want to do is cut it off because you told
Speaker:LinkedIn just run it for one day.
Speaker:So go for the one week option.
Speaker:That's the winner.
Speaker:The very last mistake and possibly the biggest mistake that is
Speaker:causing people so many issues.
Speaker:The one thing that I don't think any business I've ever worked with has
Speaker:had a good strategy for handling this is, when people engage with your poll,
Speaker:when they vote as the person that set up the poll, whether it's on the
Speaker:company page for the admin, or whether it's you personally, you can go in
Speaker:and see exactly who voted what option.
Speaker:Now, if someone was to vote, I'm having problems, you know,
Speaker:growing my page followers.
Speaker:If that's something that I was looking for.
Speaker:The thing you must do if you are going to get maximum value and grow your business
Speaker:you have to engage with those people.
Speaker:And so what I would do is go in to the results.
Speaker:You can click on the person's name and then send them a message and
Speaker:say, thanks for voting in my poll.
Speaker:I can see that you're having issues most with growing your page followers.
Speaker:Here's some content I've created around that, that I think would help you.
Speaker:Or did you know, I run a company page admin training session that focuses
Speaker:exactly on this and I could help you.
Speaker:Have you ever considered getting training?
Speaker:And so you start that conversation with someone, you know, is interested.
Speaker:So bye bye cold calling.
Speaker:Bye bye sending messages to people unsolicited and hoping
Speaker:and praying that they work.
Speaker:These people have told you exactly their answer.
Speaker:So you don't need to guess.
Speaker:And then you could also have on the other side for those people in my
Speaker:poll who might've voted, how do I grow my page engagement and reach?
Speaker:Well, guess what?
Speaker:I've got content on that as well.
Speaker:And so therefore they would receive a different message from me that
Speaker:feels tailored and personalised and not something that just feels spammy.
Speaker:So the more that you do this, you've uncovered potential
Speaker:problems that they're having.
Speaker:Businesses, as I say, exist to solve problems.
Speaker:That's why we're here.
Speaker:And so it's such an easy way to flush out these warm leads.
Speaker:So listeners, there you have it.
Speaker:That is exactly how to structure a poll, to uncover opportunities and
Speaker:avoid the common mistakes so that you can use this tool to full advantage.
Speaker:Like I said, when I use them for myself or my clients.
Speaker:They get the reach, they get the engagement more than anything else
Speaker:that I'm seeing right now, besides those random videos that are taking
Speaker:off over in the short form video feed.
Speaker:But again, still not hearing anyone growing their business out
Speaker:of that, but polls, absolutely.
Speaker:I know that this is a strategy that works.
Speaker:As I wrap up the show this week, I've got a challenge for you.
Speaker:I want you to go and create a poll with the strategies
Speaker:that you've just been given.
Speaker:Let it run for one week and then reach out and let me know how it went.
Speaker:I'd love to hear the results or tag me in your posts and I'll come
Speaker:and support it and have a look.
Speaker:Until next week.
Speaker:Cheers.