Microblogging phenomenon Twitter has quite a few people skipping their search engines these days. Instead, some are opting to simply ask a question on Twitter and hope for responses. Lets call these Twitter polls. Twitter polls are great for numerous reasons (e.g. fun, research, shopping, prolong laziness). However, no matter how many people you’re following, not everyone will answer.
The Question Is The Key
A good way to get responses from your followers is to ask the right questions. To get a higher return rate consider these tips for phrasing your questions to get the best results:
- Don’t ask complicated questions
- If the answer can be longer than 120 characters, think twice about asking it.
- Phrase the question so that’s it’s relevant
Why 120 characters? You need to keep in mind that there’s only 140 characters that can be typed and several of those characters are wasted simply for putting ‘@username’. Phrasing your questions correctly can be a bigger deal breaker than you think. Questions that require the short, sweet, and simple answers will likely have a higher response return.
Relevancy can be a big boost too! If your question relates to something your followers do on a day to day basis, they’d be more likely to respond. If it’s a question relating to something they’re doing at the moment, you should get great and fast responses. For example, I asked my followers how many tabs did they have open and what browser were they using. I received a total of 23 responses, the highest number I’ve ever seen for my personal Twitter polls. Here’s a screenshot of the results.
Other Things To Consider
Allow time for your responses to build up.
An hour should be your minimum, especially if you’re not Robert Scoble or Guy Kawasaki. Contrary to popular belief, everyone isn’t on Twitter 24/7. Everyone’s on twitter 15/7 and less than that on the weekends. I recommend asking when it’s either really boring and everyone’s talking about being bored, or when there are a lot of messages flowing. When everyone’s bored, they’ll answer just to have something to do. When there are a lot of messages flowing, then a lot of people are on, which has the potential to get you more responses.
Keep in mind the time of day you are asking these questions.
Try to avoid asking questions when everyone might be sleeping. This means being aware of where most of your followers are located. It seems most of mine are on the west coast (California), which is about 3 hours behind my east coast time (Atlanta). So, I wouldn’t ask a question past 12-2 a.m. Most of my east coasters will be sleeping and the west coast will be heading to bed around this time too.
Well folks, I hope I’ve helped you accomplish something today. You’re more than welcome to bookmark this page for future references.
What are some tips and tricks you use to get better responses to Twitter polls?
