February 4, 2025 • 14 mins
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
CONNECT WITH MICHELLE J RAYMOND
- Michelle J Raymond on LinkedIn
- Book a free intro call
- https://socialmediaforb2bgrowthpodcast.com/
- B2B Growth Co newsletter
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
- 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]
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
AuthoredUp reports that only 1.2%of all LinkedIn posts are polls.
(00:06):
And I think that this is a crazymissed opportunity for B2B businesses.
And if you stick around, I'mgoing to show exactly how you can
use them to grow your business.
(00:32):
G'day everyone.
It is Coach Michelle J Raymond,and welcome back to another
episode of the podcast.
And in this week, we're going totalk about a feature, an underrated
feature that I think is hiding inplain sight and we're going to be
talking about LinkedIn polls and youmight be sitting there going, really,
Michelle, how can we dedicate awhole episode to just LinkedIn polls?
(00:56):
Well, listeners, this is exactlyhow much of an opportunity
that I think that they are.
And I've been using them strategicallywith my clients for a little while
now, always testing things, seeingwhat's working, what's not, and
especially for Company Pages I thinkthese are an amazing opportunity.
(01:16):
When I was reading the report thatIvana and the team at AuthoredUp did.
So shout out to them.
If you're not following, I'm going toput the details into the show notes,
but ultimately they did a research ofall of the posts and found that only 1.
2 percent of all posts onLinkedIn are LinkedIn polls.
And that's across CompanyPages and personal profiles.
(01:38):
And that's really surprising becauseat the same time, their research
found, and I'm going to quote this.
That the top performing posts onLinkedIn regarding reach are LinkedIn
polls, and they come in at 1.
46 times increase over the median reach.
(01:59):
So what does that mean in simple terms?
Practically a poll can get you seenby one and a half times more people.
And that's a great opportunity for anyone.
In my personal experience when I'vebeen working with clients, I actually
think that that number is sittingcloser to three to five times.
And that's the experience that I'vehad with the clients, whether it's
(02:22):
Company Pages or personal, whenyou use these polls strategically.
But before we go into that, I'vegot a quick announcement from our
podcast sponsors, Metricool, whohave just released an amazing report,
investigating social media platforms,and you don't want to miss it.
(03:29):
Let's start by having a lookinto the power of LinkedIn
polls for market intelligence.
Seriously, listeners, there is no otherformat of content on LinkedIn that can get
you so much market intelligence so easy.
When it comes to using LinkedIn pollsstrategically, the top B2B brands
(03:49):
use them to find out things likecustomer pain points, price points,
product demand, industry trends.
It is such a cool way to getthat immediate response from your
community that you've been building.
This is exactly why we spend so much timestrategically, building our . , Because
(04:12):
when you use these polls, you can reallyget that direct feedback really quickly.
And most people are veryhappy to engage with polls.
So those hidden users on LinkedIn whoare very unlikely to like or comment
on your posts, surprisingly, becausepolls feel anonymous, you'll find
(04:34):
that they're more likely to engage.
And certainly the numbersare reflecting that.
Listeners, you know, that everything Ido on LinkedIn is tied back to how do you
leverage LinkedIn for business growth.
And when it comes to LinkedInpolls, it's no different.
So after this short break, we're goingto come back and I'm going to tell you
exactly how to structure a LinkedInpoll to discover sales opportunities
(04:58):
that will help you grow your business.
If we want to use LinkedInpolls strategically to uncover
sales opportunities, there'ssomething you need to do first.
And that is stop and think, what isthe goal that we have for our business?
What is it that you're trying to uncover?
(05:21):
Is it a new product that you'relooking at option A or option B?
What is the goal that you have?
And then we use the poll to discover thepeople that are interested in this product
or helping us choose between option Aor . But without the moment where you stop
and figure out what the goal is first.
It makes it very hard, and maybethis is obvious, but it makes
(05:43):
it super hard for you to thendesign a poll that's effective.
I mean, it's easy to do a poll,but not all of them are effective.
Now, one of the things that I would sayto you is, firstly, when you're creating
a poll, do not give your audiencefour different answers to choose from.
I find that the more answers thatyou give them, the more that you
(06:06):
attract a little bit of everything.
I want people when I'm doing pollsto choose a side and quite often
the questions that I ask lead themdown into picking A or B. And of
course, there are always thosepeople out there who say it depends.
And so I give them option C, letme know more in the comments.
(06:27):
So option one is choice A,option two is choice B and option
three is refer to comments.
And so that pretty muchcovers the whole spectrum.
Now I make it easy for people to answer.
We don't want thesequestions to be complicated.
And we don't want the choices to be hard.
It almost needs to bea no brainer, A or B.
(06:51):
Now, the limitation that we have herewith LinkedIn polls is that you only have
roughly 30 characters for the answersthat your audience needs to pick from.
I think they're doing us a favour bymaking sure that we keep things succinct.
The more work that you do in theplanning phase, the more that you
can make these things obvious.
I'll give you an example of a pollthat I could use to discover more
(07:13):
about my potential clients and thatcould be related to wanting to discover
what's the biggest issue that companypage admins are having right now.
My question could be, Hey, pageadmins, which part of your company
page do you find most difficult?
Growing your page followers asoption A or B, growing your reach
(07:34):
and engagement, or that could bejust growing your impressions.
And so from that perspective, we'vegiven them two easy options to pick.
And we know, as I said, thatthere's always going to be
the people that want to say.
Both or neither.
And so we'll tell them option C is allabout, let us know in the comments.
So that's as simple as it needs to be.
(07:55):
I like to run mine for one week.
That gives it enough time forenough people to get answers.
And on average, I think you can get oneto 200 responses, which if you think about
that with that number of people sittingin a room, it's actually quite a lot.
And if you have to pay for an agency torun that kind of market testing for you,
(08:15):
I'm very confident that this LinkedIn pollis going to deliver a much higher ROI.
So there you have it.
A well structured poll gives you twooptions to get that market intelligence,
which allows you to then transformoptions on your side, whether it's
products or services or what's featuredwithin them, and then change those up
(08:36):
so that you will grow your business.
Now from this, there's alsosome common mistakes that I see
when people are doing polls.
So after this break, I'm going toshare with you the most common mistakes
and the number one mistake that costspeople more business than any other.
So stick around.
(09:18):
Let's talk about the most commonmistakes that I see with LinkedIn polls.
And number one would have to be whenpeople do absolutely pointless polls.
You know, the fun ones that peopleused to do in like, I think it was
2020 or 2021, cast your mind back.
There was a time when you could doa poll on LinkedIn and literally
(09:40):
the engagement and the reach thatyou would get was off the charts.
We're talking a hundred thousandimpressions to find out what flavour
potato crisps or chips if you're herein Australia, do you like the best?
And everybody was engaging.
It was like just craziness.
And so what happened was when peoplerealise that more people would see that
(10:02):
kind of content, the polls became sillier.
They became more pointless.
But there was a huge amount of reach.
Now I'm all for sometimes mixing thingsup so that you can get discovered by
new people, but really what's a longterm impact on your brand, be it your
personal brand or your company brand.
I don't think that it's worth itunless you're having some fun and it's
(10:25):
obvious that that's what you're doing.
So number one, no pointless polls.
Nobody's got time for that.
The other thing that I would say isa common mistake that I see is not
letting the polls run for long enough.
So one or three days is acouple of your other options.
Let the poll have sometime to do its work.
Keeping in mind that people might not beon LinkedIn 24/7 they might only check
(10:46):
it once every few days, and so you wantto make sure that you give them time
to see those posts and notificationsand get involved and get active.
And if the poll is going really well,and you've got a lot of engagement,
the last thing that you want todo is cut it off because you told
LinkedIn just run it for one day.
So go for the one week option.
That's the winner.
(11:12):
The very last mistake and possiblythe biggest mistake that is
causing people so many issues.
The one thing that I don't think anybusiness I've ever worked with has
had a good strategy for handling thisis, when people engage with your poll,
when they vote as the person thatset up the poll, whether it's on the
(11:34):
company page for the admin, or whetherit's you personally, you can go in
and see exactly who voted what option.
Now, if someone was to vote,I'm having problems, you know,
growing my page followers.
If that's somethingthat I was looking for.
The thing you must do if you are going toget maximum value and grow your business
(11:58):
you have to engage with those people.
And so what I would dois go in to the results.
You can click on the person's nameand then send them a message and
say, thanks for voting in my poll.
I can see that you're having issuesmost with growing your page followers.
Here's some content I've created aroundthat, that I think would help you.
(12:21):
Or did you know, I run a company pageadmin training session that focuses
exactly on this and I could help you.
Have you ever considered getting training?
And so you start that conversationwith someone, you know, is interested.
So bye bye cold calling.
Bye bye sending messages topeople unsolicited and hoping
(12:42):
and praying that they work.
These people have toldyou exactly their answer.
So you don't need to guess.
And then you could also have on theother side for those people in my
poll who might've voted, how do Igrow my page engagement and reach?
Well, guess what?
I've got content on that as well.
And so therefore they would receivea different message from me that
(13:05):
feels tailored and personalised andnot something that just feels spammy.
So the more that you do this,you've uncovered potential
problems that they're having.
Businesses, as I say,exist to solve problems.
That's why we're here.
And so it's such an easy wayto flush out these warm leads.
(13:29):
So listeners, there you have it.
That is exactly how to structure apoll, to uncover opportunities and
avoid the common mistakes so that youcan use this tool to full advantage.
Like I said, when I use themfor myself or my clients.
They get the reach, they get theengagement more than anything else
(13:50):
that I'm seeing right now, besidesthose random videos that are taking
off over in the short form video feed.
But again, still not hearinganyone growing their business out
of that, but polls, absolutely.
I know that this is a strategy that works.
As I wrap up the show this week,I've got a challenge for you.
I want you to go and createa poll with the strategies
(14:14):
that you've just been given.
Let it run for one week and thenreach out and let me know how it went.
I'd love to hear the results ortag me in your posts and I'll come
and support it and have a look.
Until next week.
Cheers.
AuthoredUp reports that only 1.2%of all LinkedIn posts are polls.
(00:06):
And I think that this is a crazymissed opportunity for B2B businesses.
And if you stick around, I'mgoing to show exactly how you can
use them to grow your business.
(00:32):
G'day everyone.
It is Coach Michelle J Raymond,and welcome back to another
episode of the podcast.
And in this week, we're going totalk about a feature, an underrated
feature that I think is hiding inplain sight and we're going to be
talking about LinkedIn polls and youmight be sitting there going, really,
Michelle, how can we dedicate awhole episode to just LinkedIn polls?
(00:56):
Well, listeners, this is exactlyhow much of an opportunity
that I think that they are.
And I've been using them strategicallywith my clients for a little while
now, always testing things, seeingwhat's working, what's not, and
especially for Company Pages I thinkthese are an amazing opportunity.
(01:16):
When I was reading the report thatIvana and the team at AuthoredUp did.
So shout out to them.
If you're not following, I'm going toput the details into the show notes,
but ultimately they did a research ofall of the posts and found that only 1.
2 percent of all posts onLinkedIn are LinkedIn polls.
And that's across CompanyPages and personal profiles.
(01:38):
And that's really surprising becauseat the same time, their research
found, and I'm going to quote this.
That the top performing posts onLinkedIn regarding reach are LinkedIn
polls, and they come in at 1.
46 times increase over the median reach.
(01:59):
So what does that mean in simple terms?
Practically a poll can get you seenby one and a half times more people.
And that's a great opportunity for anyone.
In my personal experience when I'vebeen working with clients, I actually
think that that number is sittingcloser to three to five times.
And that's the experience that I'vehad with the clients, whether it's
(02:22):
Company Pages or personal, whenyou use these polls strategically.
But before we go into that, I'vegot a quick announcement from our
podcast sponsors, Metricool, whohave just released an amazing report,
investigating social media platforms,and you don't want to miss it.
(03:29):
Let's start by having a lookinto the power of LinkedIn
polls for market intelligence.
Seriously, listeners, there is no otherformat of content on LinkedIn that can get
you so much market intelligence so easy.
When it comes to using LinkedIn pollsstrategically, the top B2B brands
(03:49):
use them to find out things likecustomer pain points, price points,
product demand, industry trends.
It is such a cool way to getthat immediate response from your
community that you've been building.
This is exactly why we spend so much timestrategically, building our . , Because
(04:12):
when you use these polls, you can reallyget that direct feedback really quickly.
And most people are veryhappy to engage with polls.
So those hidden users on LinkedIn whoare very unlikely to like or comment
on your posts, surprisingly, becausepolls feel anonymous, you'll find
(04:34):
that they're more likely to engage.
And certainly the numbersare reflecting that.
Listeners, you know, that everything Ido on LinkedIn is tied back to how do you
leverage LinkedIn for business growth.
And when it comes to LinkedInpolls, it's no different.
So after this short break, we're goingto come back and I'm going to tell you
exactly how to structure a LinkedInpoll to discover sales opportunities
(04:58):
that will help you grow your business.
If we want to use LinkedInpolls strategically to uncover
sales opportunities, there'ssomething you need to do first.
And that is stop and think, what isthe goal that we have for our business?
What is it that you're trying to uncover?
(05:21):
Is it a new product that you'relooking at option A or option B?
What is the goal that you have?
And then we use the poll to discover thepeople that are interested in this product
or helping us choose between option Aor . But without the moment where you stop
and figure out what the goal is first.
It makes it very hard, and maybethis is obvious, but it makes
(05:43):
it super hard for you to thendesign a poll that's effective.
I mean, it's easy to do a poll,but not all of them are effective.
Now, one of the things that I would sayto you is, firstly, when you're creating
a poll, do not give your audiencefour different answers to choose from.
I find that the more answers thatyou give them, the more that you
(06:06):
attract a little bit of everything.
I want people when I'm doing pollsto choose a side and quite often
the questions that I ask lead themdown into picking A or B. And of
course, there are always thosepeople out there who say it depends.
And so I give them option C, letme know more in the comments.
(06:27):
So option one is choice A,option two is choice B and option
three is refer to comments.
And so that pretty muchcovers the whole spectrum.
Now I make it easy for people to answer.
We don't want thesequestions to be complicated.
And we don't want the choices to be hard.
It almost needs to bea no brainer, A or B.
(06:51):
Now, the limitation that we have herewith LinkedIn polls is that you only have
roughly 30 characters for the answersthat your audience needs to pick from.
I think they're doing us a favour bymaking sure that we keep things succinct.
The more work that you do in theplanning phase, the more that you
can make these things obvious.
I'll give you an example of a pollthat I could use to discover more
(07:13):
about my potential clients and thatcould be related to wanting to discover
what's the biggest issue that companypage admins are having right now.
My question could be, Hey, pageadmins, which part of your company
page do you find most difficult?
Growing your page followers asoption A or B, growing your reach
(07:34):
and engagement, or that could bejust growing your impressions.
And so from that perspective, we'vegiven them two easy options to pick.
And we know, as I said, thatthere's always going to be
the people that want to say.
Both or neither.
And so we'll tell them option C is allabout, let us know in the comments.
So that's as simple as it needs to be.
(07:55):
I like to run mine for one week.
That gives it enough time forenough people to get answers.
And on average, I think you can get oneto 200 responses, which if you think about
that with that number of people sittingin a room, it's actually quite a lot.
And if you have to pay for an agency torun that kind of market testing for you,
(08:15):
I'm very confident that this LinkedIn pollis going to deliver a much higher ROI.
So there you have it.
A well structured poll gives you twooptions to get that market intelligence,
which allows you to then transformoptions on your side, whether it's
products or services or what's featuredwithin them, and then change those up
(08:36):
so that you will grow your business.
Now from this, there's alsosome common mistakes that I see
when people are doing polls.
So after this break, I'm going toshare with you the most common mistakes
and the number one mistake that costspeople more business than any other.
So stick around.
(09:18):
Let's talk about the most commonmistakes that I see with LinkedIn polls.
And number one would have to be whenpeople do absolutely pointless polls.
You know, the fun ones that peopleused to do in like, I think it was
2020 or 2021, cast your mind back.
There was a time when you could doa poll on LinkedIn and literally
(09:40):
the engagement and the reach thatyou would get was off the charts.
We're talking a hundred thousandimpressions to find out what flavour
potato crisps or chips if you're herein Australia, do you like the best?
And everybody was engaging.
It was like just craziness.
And so what happened was when peoplerealise that more people would see that
(10:02):
kind of content, the polls became sillier.
They became more pointless.
But there was a huge amount of reach.
Now I'm all for sometimes mixing thingsup so that you can get discovered by
new people, but really what's a longterm impact on your brand, be it your
personal brand or your company brand.
I don't think that it's worth itunless you're having some fun and it's
(10:25):
obvious that that's what you're doing.
So number one, no pointless polls.
Nobody's got time for that.
The other thing that I would say isa common mistake that I see is not
letting the polls run for long enough.
So one or three days is acouple of your other options.
Let the poll have sometime to do its work.
Keeping in mind that people might not beon LinkedIn 24/7 they might only check
(10:46):
it once every few days, and so you wantto make sure that you give them time
to see those posts and notificationsand get involved and get active.
And if the poll is going really well,and you've got a lot of engagement,
the last thing that you want todo is cut it off because you told
LinkedIn just run it for one day.
So go for the one week option.
That's the winner.
(11:12):
The very last mistake and possiblythe biggest mistake that is
causing people so many issues.
The one thing that I don't think anybusiness I've ever worked with has
had a good strategy for handling thisis, when people engage with your poll,
when they vote as the person thatset up the poll, whether it's on the
(11:34):
company page for the admin, or whetherit's you personally, you can go in
and see exactly who voted what option.
Now, if someone was to vote,I'm having problems, you know,
growing my page followers.
If that's somethingthat I was looking for.
The thing you must do if you are going toget maximum value and grow your business
(11:58):
you have to engage with those people.
And so what I would dois go in to the results.
You can click on the person's nameand then send them a message and
say, thanks for voting in my poll.
I can see that you're having issuesmost with growing your page followers.
Here's some content I've created aroundthat, that I think would help you.
(12:21):
Or did you know, I run a company pageadmin training session that focuses
exactly on this and I could help you.
Have you ever considered getting training?
And so you start that conversationwith someone, you know, is interested.
So bye bye cold calling.
Bye bye sending messages topeople unsolicited and hoping
(12:42):
and praying that they work.
These people have toldyou exactly their answer.
So you don't need to guess.
And then you could also have on theother side for those people in my
poll who might've voted, how do Igrow my page engagement and reach?
Well, guess what?
I've got content on that as well.
And so therefore they would receivea different message from me that
(13:05):
feels tailored and personalised andnot something that just feels spammy.
So the more that you do this,you've uncovered potential
problems that they're having.
Businesses, as I say,exist to solve problems.
That's why we're here.
And so it's such an easy wayto flush out these warm leads.
(13:29):
So listeners, there you have it.
That is exactly how to structure apoll, to uncover opportunities and
avoid the common mistakes so that youcan use this tool to full advantage.
Like I said, when I use themfor myself or my clients.
They get the reach, they get theengagement more than anything else
(13:50):
that I'm seeing right now, besidesthose random videos that are taking
off over in the short form video feed.
But again, still not hearinganyone growing their business out
of that, but polls, absolutely.
I know that this is a strategy that works.
As I wrap up the show this week,I've got a challenge for you.
I want you to go and createa poll with the strategies
(14:14):
that you've just been given.
Let it run for one week and thenreach out and let me know how it went.
I'd love to hear the results ortag me in your posts and I'll come
and support it and have a look.
Until next week.
Cheers.
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