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Posts Tagged ‘Poll’

Glad to see you again! Be sure and check out the Blog page. Feel free to send me an email if you have any questions. Have a great day! Lina

Note that I want actual poll to appear in my blog, rather than providing a link to the poll which forwards it to some polling website.

A couple years ago, I remember when a blogger took Scoble on. The blogger invited Scoble to his event and then balked when Scoble requested travel and expenses be paid. Scoble responded online as well, and did a great job of it.

This week has been a tough (but very fun) week. I have Chapters due for my book, I’m completing 2 projects, and I’m still working with prospective customers. I touch a lot of people each week by phone, email, Twitter, Facebook, Plaxo… etc., etc. I’ve been scolded twice this week by readers who I haven’t responded to and one prospect that I underestimated the urgency on.

The prospect was my fault – I should have been tracking the company tightly. The readers are another story, though. I received a call where the lady said,

What is it with you Internet people – you don’t answer the phone, don’t answer email… don’t respond!

I didn’t apologize. Instead, I told her the truth. I have at least 20,000 new visitors per month to my blog, perhaps 250 comments (most are SPAM), and well over 100 requests. The requests are not requests for services, though. They’re simply readers looking for additional advice or information. I try to handle these via blog posts. I don’t always respond. In fact, I don’t typically respond.

Here’s an email that I just received today on the topic after I wrote my network and asked for their support in the Top 50 Indiana Blogs poll:

I’ve written multiple messages within your blog and sent you a number of different DM’s on Twitter asking for your opinions, ideas and suggestions on different digital marketing strategies and never once have I gotten a response from you. Being understanding, I know that you are a very busy man, with starting your new company and everything, which is why I never took your lack of responses personally (despite the fact that Chris Brogan, Beth Harte, Erik Deckers etc. have always answered questions for me).

That’s awesome that Chris, Beth and Erik have been able to keep up like this! I was up until 3AM and only completed reviewing and responding to email. I look forward to Chris, Beth and Erik’s advice on how I could possibly keep up with the number of requests that I get.

Yesterday, I was at the Masters of Business Online (fantastic event) and was flanked by 3 people… one was an associate, one was my Sales coach, and one was a customer. The associate and sales coach joked about me never answering the phone or emails they sent me. I looked at my customer and said, “Do I answer your phone calls and emails?”. “Yes,” he said, “… always… sometimes in the middle of the night! I think you work 24 hours a day.”

At times I believe the web and folks like Chris Anderson have done me and my business a great disservice. My landlord, my creditors, my utility companies, and vendors aren’t free. As a result, I can’t work for free. I must concentrate on:

1. Customers – these are people who pay for my products and services.
2. Prospects – these are companies with budget who are ready to become customers.
3. Word of Mouth Prospects – these are companies who have been referred to me by my network and my customers who know that a company has budget and are ready to become customers.
4. Other Requests – these are everything else… emails, form requests, phone calls, etc. These typically fall off my list because I’m working on 1, 2 and 3.

Am I missing opportunities because of this approach? Perhaps – that’s why I’m getting sales coaching here in Indianapolis. I have no idea. All I know is that “other requests” could take me months to review and respond… and I can’t afford to spend months doing that.

Readers are not customers. Subscribers are not even customers. That may sound harsh, but readers and subscribers are not paying for their subscription nor the information from this blog. I don’t have any service level agreement with readers or subscribers.

This blog is not a profitable enterprise and I’m not an Internet millionaire… far from it. I am working hard, though, to get it profitable. As soon as the blog pays all my bills, I’ll be glad to sit around all week answering my readers’ and subscribers’ requests. Until then… I need to go service my customers.

If you’d like to become a customer, reword your request. I joked with someone last night that I need to change my work voicemail to state, “Press 1 if you have budget!”. So… if you’re a reader or subscriber and looking for some free advice, please don’t get upset when I don’t respond. I truly am busy trying to pay the bills!

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It seems that every single social media platform now includes a survey or polling feature with it. Twitter has twtpoll, PollDaddy has launched a Twitter-specific tool, SocialToo has polling apps for Twitter and Facebook, Zoomerang has a Facebook integrated survey tool, and LinkedIn has their own popular polling application.

More and more companies are deploying surveys and polls to identify issues on how their customers view their products and services. As these survey and polling tools become more prevalent and easier to use, we’re seeing more and more… but the overall quality of the questions and the subsequent results are shrinking. These surveys may actually be doing the companies more harm than good. Writing a bad survey or poll and making decisions on the results can hurt your company.

Here’s an example of a survey I received yesterday:

The problem with this survey question is that it’s vague and requires me to select an option even though I might disagree that any of the responses are true. Since I’ve successfully utilized all but Customer Service, I may be more apt to select Customer Service for my answer. As a result, the company may believe it needs to improve its Customer Service. This is hardly the case… it’s simply the one result that I’m not familiar with.

I’ve also seen polls and surveys abused with companies with high customer turnover. Rather than fix the issues that have been reported over and over with clients who have left, the company hand-selects its own survey questions and responses to concentrate on areas they are comfortable taking action on. So a company with a problem they know is key to their turnover simply avoids asking a question that would spotlight it. Mah.

Obtaining the advice of a customer survey company can help you construct a survey that utilizes best practices and gets higher response rates. Be sure to follow the Walker Information blog – they’ve got a ton of experience and guidance on analyzing customer feedback effectively.

Before you decide to send your next Twitter poll, you may want to get the advice of a professional survey company. They can help you craft your messages, maximize response rates, avoid ambiguous or misleading questions, and understand the error margin on responses.

You may also want to utilize a more robust survey engine. I’m a huge fan of Formspring (not just because they’re friends), but because I can actually develop a dynamic survey. Based on a question’s response, I can lead the survey taker to a new question that digs deeper into their response.

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You might also find these posts interesting:

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• FormSpring is in for the $1,000 Giveaway!