How to Use Twitter Polls for Your Direct Sales Business

Polls have been used as a marketing tool to help businesses engage with their audience for decades. Not only can they provide insights into our clients' behaviors and interests, but thanks to social media channels like Twitter, they now provide near-instant results and draw out great engagement. Here is a simple overview of how to use Twitter Polls to market your business and engage your audience.

How to Create a Twitter Poll

Creating a Twitter poll is easy.

First, Hit the Plus Button to start a Tweet. Type in your question then hit the graph bar button.

Next, type in your options:

To add in more options, click on the “+Add a choice” button:

Once all of your options have been added, click on the option to set how long you would like the poll to last, and then click “Tweet” and you will see your poll go live right away:

Twitter will show then track how much longer the poll will stay active for as well as show real-time results for you and your followers.

Creative Ways to Use Twitter Polls

Here are some creative ways you can use Twitter polls in your business.

1. Curating content for your blog or Facebook Page: Create a Twitter poll asking your audience a general question about their life or work, then write up a blog post, article, or Facebook Note on your Business Page that addresses that topic. For example, if you polled “what feature would make your life easier?” and the winning feature was “a more organized closet” you could write up blog posts relating to cleaning out a closet, organizing, clothes, and how to keep them organized.
2.  Discover your audience's shopping habits: Are your customers primarily last-minute shoppers? Or do they start their shopping in July? Do you know?
3. Showcase your personality: Polls like “which movie is better” or which is your favorite song?” might seem pointless, but in reality, they are giving your audience something to relate to. People will be glad for the extra insight into your personality and your brand will stick better in their minds as they are able to relate to you.
4. Posting a subtle lead-in to something bigger: You can use polls to help prime your customers for upcoming promotions by getting them ready to think about that time. For example, a poll in November about favorite Holiday decorations could be positioned as a jab for your holiday specials later on.
5. Take advantage of timely or trending topics: Being able to tie a trending topic to your brand is an essential skill for most marketers. By creating a poll, you also build up your engagement and brand awareness.
6. Let your audience make predictions about your industry: Or anything related to your brand, really. Football fan? Let your audience make predictions about who will win the Superbowl. Fashion fanatic? Let them make predictions about upcoming trends. People love to give their opinions, and they will appreciate learning a bit more about your industry and follow the reports and news.
7. Establish thought leadership: Speaking of trends within your industry, polls about industry trends are a great way to help establish your brand as a leader within that industry.
8. Get people thinking about your products: Red lipstick or mauve? Capris pants or long? Hoodies or knit sweaters? Pinterest or Instagram? Whatever you sell, you can use Twitter polls to help get people thinking about them, asking questions about them, and ultimately engaging with you about your products.
9. Build content awareness: If you have longform content, such as a blog post or article, you can break it down into Twitter polls to continually refresh that content and bring it back up into view. Using a Twitter poll to pull up evergreen content is a lot more effective than merely sharing the blog post back onto Twitter for the twentieth time.
10. Settle an argument: For once and for all (or just for fun). Which is the best color, pink or purple? We already know the answer to this (it's pink!!) but allowing your audience to weigh in on a fun debate can really draw out a lot of engagement.

What are some other ways you can think of to use Twitter polls for your business?

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