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- 7 Steps to Creating More Effective Reader Surveys
This guest post is by AJ Kumar of Single Grain.
The benefits of polling your readers and conducting good customer surveys have already been well-established in the blogging world.
Not only does this technique enable you to make better informed marketing decisions, gathering information via reader survey can help you to identify your visitors' pain points and determine what they'll spend their money on—before you invest the time in writing posts or paid products!
However, there's a big difference between the data generated by a thoroughly-planned, well-executed customer survey, and one that's hastily thrown together without clear goals and objectives.
If you haven't been impressed by the results of your past survey efforts, check out the following seven steps to making your next customer survey far more effective.
Step #1. Define a single objective
Your first priority when developing a good reader survey should be to define a single objective. Although you may have several different topics you'd like to poll your readers on, the reality is that most internet users today have extremely short attention spans. Homing in on one major area of interest will help to keep your surveys manageable, increasing the number of responses you receive.
If you're a blogger, a few potential survey objectives to consider include:
- selecting a topic for your next info product
- determining if the balance of post topics on your blog is meeting your readers' needs
- uncovering reader areas of interest you haven't covered yet with your posts
- setting the price and features of your future info products.
Really, any major topic can be addressed with a customer survey—as long as you've carefully chosen a single subject that prevents reader confusion or distraction.
Step #2. Avoid leading questions
Once you've defined the objective of your questionnaire, the next step to building an effective reader survey is to structure your individual questions in a way that doesn't lead respondents into providing specific feedback (a scenario known as "leading questions").
For example, suppose you've decided to put together a survey to determine how much your readers would be willing to pay for your next ebook. Any of the three following question versions could be potential ways to gather this information:
Version #1:
Would you be comfortable paying $47 for the ebook I've described? Select "yes" or "no" below:
Version #2:
What would you be comfortable paying for ebook I've described? Enter your response in the field below:
Version #3:
What would you be comfortable paying for the ebook I've described? Select one option below:
- $1-$7
- $8-$14
- $15-$24
- $25-$34
- $35-$44
- $45-$54
- $55+
- I am only interested in free content.
Although each of the variations listed above gathers the same basic information, the way each version does it—and the different responses each question style could provoke—is very different. Heck, even the specific data ranges you use in questions styled similar to Version #3 listed above could influence the information you receive!
While there's no right or wrong way to structure your survey questions, it is important to think carefully about the type of data your questions will return, and whether or not this information will help you to meet your survey objectives.
Step #3. Avoid "yes or no" questions
Now, to be fair, "yes or no" questions can be useful in some cases. If you're introducing a totally new concept to readers, getting a straight answer on whether the idea is worth pursuing or not may be helpful and can be accomplished with a simple "yes or no" response.
But in most cases, asking "yes or no" questions limits the amount of feedback you're able to generate from your respondents. Take our example above. If you asked a question about product pricing using the "yes or no" style described above, you might find that the majority of your respondents aren't comfortable at the $47 price point you've specified—leading you to scrap the idea altogether.
However, this question style could cause you to miss valuable information. Suppose, instead of using Version #1 of our sample question, you had used Version #3, which indicated that most survey respondents were comfortable in the $35-$44 price point range. Even though these respondents may have been turned off by the idea of a $47 product, you could still have a profitable idea at a slightly lower price—which you wouldn't have known if you hadn't bothered to collect information beyond a basic "yes or no."
Step #4. Cut the total number of questions
As you build your questionnaire, keep a close eye on the total number of questions you ask. Keep in mind that short attention span mentioned earlier, but also limit the length of your survey out of respect for your readers' time. After all, if they're taking a few minutes out of their otherwise busy days, shouldn't you at least do them the courtesy of making your survey as clear and concise as possible?
The magic number for most reader surveys falls between 5-10 questions per survey, depending on how in-depth and involved each of your questions is. If this seems quick, remember that it's better to create multiple surveys to ask further questions than to burn out your readers and cause them to never respond to your questionnaire invitations again!
Step #5. Solicit responses from multiple sources
Just as your readers access your standard blog content in a variety of different ways—from your blog itself to your social networking profiles to your email newsletters—be sure to promote your survey across multiple sources as well.
By making your survey easy to access from a number of different sources, you'll increase your odds of catching a reader at exactly the right moment—when he or she has the extra time to kill in exchange for a small incentive.
Step #6. Offer an incentive for participation
Offering survey participants a small reward for their time and effort isn't a new concept, but it's one that's often applied as a blanket recommendation. For example, you've probably heard before that you need to offer readers a free ebook or a coupon code in order to convince readers to take your surveys.
Not true!
In fact, the specific incentives or types of rewards your audience will respond best to can vary wildly from one blog to another. In some cases, you'll need to offer something tangible—like the ebook or coupon code mentioned earlier—to persuade busy, high-volume internet users with a compelling reason to take your survey.
In other cases, if your readership is loyal enough, you may be able to convince visitors to take your survey simply by telling them you appreciate their feedback!
Truly, the only way to determine what types of incentives are most appealing to your unique audience is to test out different offers. As you run customer surveys over time, include different rewards and track your response rates to see if you can detect any measurable differences. Over time, this should enable you to conclusively identify the type of incentive that's most effective for your readers.
Step #7. Expand your response base with paid survey partners
Finally, while generating reader data through the use of effective customer surveys can be an extremely valuable part of growing your business, be aware that this method has a few limitations.
For example, what if your current readership is too small to gather a meaningful amount of information? If you're a top blogger, this shouldn't be an issue—but even smaller, first-time bloggers need customer data!
Or, what if you're planning to expand into a new market and want to survey members of this new target community before making your move? In this case, polling current readers won't give you the information you need to make smart decisions.
The solution to these problems lies in contracting with paid survey partners. If you find you aren't generating enough data through your own customer base, companies like SurveyMonkey or iResearch will distribute your survey to the users in their databases that meet your set criteria. Of course, you'll have to pay to capture these additional responses, but you may ultimately find that the cost of working with paid survey partners provides a positive ROI for your overall marketing efforts.
Have you used customer surveys before? If so, share any additional tips you have on how to make them as effective as possible in the comments below. And stick around—later today we’ll profile ten cheap (and free!) tools to help you run a survey that gets a strong response!
AJ Kumar is co-founder of Single Grain, a digital marketing agency< based in San Francisco. Single Grain specializes in helping startups and larger companies with search engine optimization, pay-per-click, social media, and various other marketing strategies.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
7 Steps to Creating More Effective Reader Surveys
Переслать - What's the "Right" Kind of Blog Traffic?
As I was reviewing my analytics this week, it struck me that the universal desire for basically all of us is to grow traffic.
We’d all like more traffic, all of the time.
Having that goal in mind drives more than a few bloggers to try black-hat techniques, or to bend the rules here and there.
Those with a longer term focus are usually more interested in slower, more lasting traffic-building techniques. They’re also aware that traffic isn’t just traffic—the traffic you want to come to your blog has certain characteristics.
The visitors you’re after are part of a certain group or audience united by interests, location, opinions, desires, and/or some other characteristics.
But sometimes really honing in on those qualities can be difficult—even if you have a clear idea of your ideal reader, and you’ve created a persona to reflect that.
So let’s look at what makes “good” traffic—the “right” kind of traffic for your blog.
It’s qualified
The right traffic meets certain criteria that your blog or content requires of it.
Those criteria might be personal (e.g. you’re targeting women, so you buy advertising space on a popular women’s interest site) or behavioural (e.g. you’re targeting golfers who want to improve their game, so you begin to participate in a pro golf tips forum).
By qualifying your traffic, you’re making sure that these new readers have a need that is met obviously and completely by your blog.
In basic traffic terms, this is why, for example, you target niche-related keywords with quality content rather than buying a typo domain and just sticking ads on it. Both options attract traffic, but only one of them actually meets the needs of the people who visit.
It’s invested
The right traffic has already shown a strong tendency to do what you want.
These people are invested in your niche—and their own needs within that space. You might target traffic that has already bought, signed up, commented, or pursued knowledge elsewhere in your market.
This is why you prefer to guest post or advertise on well-known blogs with loyal followings, rather than new blogs without a proven audience track record.
While there’s nothing wrong with guest posting on the newer blog, you’ll have more certainty that any traffic your blog receives from the more established and respected sites—which have large subscriber lists and sell products—is more likely to be willing to complete similar behaviours on your blog.
It’s like-minded
The right traffic has key values that are closely aligned with those of your brand.
If your blog is to hit a deep chord with readers, it needs to project the values they hold dear. The more readers see themselves in your blog’s brand, the more loyal they’re likely to become, and the more sharing and word-of-mouth promotion they’ll do.
If your content resonates with the wrong kinds of people, they’ll be promoting your site to their peers—who are likely to be more of the wrong kinds of people. Over time this can really take your blog in the wrong direction.
This is why you’re selective about the social media contacts you respond to, the off-blog discussions you engage in, the comments you delete from your blog, the outlets you allow to join your affiliate programs, the keywords you target, and so on.
It’s connected
The right traffic exhibits strong sharing activity, either online or off.
Not all blogs target readers who use social media. But the right kind of traffic is made up of users who are proactive about recommending your blog when the need arises.
They may not be what we like to think of as top-level “influencers” on Facebook, but they value the opportunity to share good things with the people they know and care about.
This is why you encourage readers to share your content with peers—via share buttons, an email-this-article button, or offline promotions that encourage word of mouth—and why you proactively and generously share your expertise yourself.
Is this traffic right for you?
When I’m looking at promoting my blog, these are the kinds of things I consider. Those assessments aren’t always conscious—often they’re subconscious—but they do motivate me to make certain decisions about traffic-generation opportunities.
What other factors do you consider when you’re targeting traffic sources? I’d love to hear your thoughts on what makes the “right” kind of traffic in the comments.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
What’s the “Right” Kind of Blog Traffic?
Переслать - This Post Will Change the Way You Read Blogs. Guaranteed.
This guest post is by Timo Kiander of Productivesuperdad.com.
Let me ask you this: how many RSS subscriptions do you have?
20? 50? 100? 250?
I figured that the number you follow would be quite high. I used to follow almost 90 blogs through RSS.
However, there is one big pain that I experienced: although these blogs were very interesting and I read the blog posts, I was pretty much wasting my time.
Ultimately, I couldn't find any justification for reading these particular blog posts, because the activity took away from my already limited time for building my blog (I have a day job, a family, and I'm an athlete). Because of this realization, I had to start really making the most of a blog post if I decided to read it.
You see, just reading a blog post is very inefficient. When you read a post, you are pretty much taking that time away from something else of value—like writing a guest post or engaging with your email subscribers.
What also tends to happen is that you keep doing this inefficient activity day in, day out: you spot an interesting blog post title through RSS, you read it, you leave a comment or share it, you pick another post on your RSS feed, and you follow the same pattern again.
Wouldn't you be better off if those posts actually did something good for you, like improve your business or yourself, on a very concrete level?
Admit it: you are sleeping!
Now, I don't know you personally, but if you follow the pattern I just described, then you are not awake—at least when it comes to reading blog posts. This happened to me too, before I decided to change my habits.
You see, you have become addicted to interesting content—and there’s nothing wrong with that when you first start.
However, this "sleeping" leads to bigger problems, like wasting time, overwhelming yourself unnecessarily, or procrastinating on important tasks.
When you subscribe to dozens or even hundreds or RSS feeds and start numbly consuming the content, you soon start to wonder where your time went, why you didn't manage to work on that important project, or why the blog post you are reading seems to be more interesting than actually writing that killer blog post of your own.
Yet another bad habit to break
Most of us are doing the blog post reading ritual on auto-pilot; we just keep reading and consuming information out of habit. But do you see the piece that’s missing from this picture?
Action!
How many times did you just read something, think to yourself: "That was nice" and then move on to the next post? I don't know about you, but this happened to me countless times. Eventually I became aware that this way of consuming information was just plain silly.
Now, not all blog posts request you to take action, nor do they inspire you to act. However, there are lots of posts which demand your execution.
The question is: are you willing to take action?
Move from passive observer to action-taker
Before putting you on the information diet, let's clean your RSS reader first.
Unsubscribe from RSS feeds ruthlessly. You don't read that many blogs after all, so don't clutter your RSS reader with subscriptions that do not add any value to you.
Also, the next time you read a post, start taking notes; jot down some interesting ideas that the post sparked in you. In addition, take a note of all the action points that a post includes (or the additional ones you came up with as you were reading).
From now on, take action on posts; don't just read them! You can also take action by creating a case study out of what the post is teaching you.
Passive reading is still okay, but only if you do it less than active reading.
Stop just reading those posts!
- Take a very critical look at your subscribed RSS feeds: Do you honestly think that you need to follow hundreds of blogs? Apply the80/20 rule: Out of those 100 subscriptions, leave only 20 that you currently check on a regular basis. If you have more than 100 blogs in your RSS reader, increase the ratio even more—to 75/15, 90/10, or to 95/5 if needed.
- Read the post and take some notes: Jot down interesting ideas that you get from the post (for example, topics for your own blog posts).
- Implement what has been taught: Now, there is one thing to be aware of: if you are reading a list post which says "101 ways to raise a chicken", don't be overwhelmed—there is no need to take action on those 101 items at once. You can try one or two methods at first and then decide if the rest of the tips are worth following. The most important thing is that you take action and implement the lessons—no matter if it is only on one or two items on that 101 item list.
- To get even more value from a post, create a case study out of it: This is actually part of the previous step (#3), but I wanted to list it separately. This is something that I originally learned from internet marketer Terry Dean. For instance, if a blogger is saying that using a particular method you can achieve certain results, actually prove it by creating a case study. Create a report on how that method actually helped you to achieve something. Even better, you can offer this case study as a guest post for the blogger on his or her blog.
- Change your passive/active ratio: Create a habit of taking action on most posts you read and spend less time on reading passively. For example, you could decide that for 70% of the posts you read on a weekly basis, you will take action on what's being taught. The idea is to keep the amount of active days higher than the passive days. This ensures that you truly develop your skills and gain more experiences on the topic you have chosen.
Change the way you read
So there you have it—an actionable way to consume blog posts. It is very easy to fall into the passive mode and just consume posts without taking any action on them. Once you actually start to implement what has been taught, you will learn new ways of getting things done, and sometimes your business—or your life—could improve dramatically!
Over to you: do you take action on the posts you read? What type of action do you take? Please share your ideas and experiences on the comments.
Timo Kiander, a.k.a. Productive Superdad, teaches WAHD superdad productivity for work at home dads. If you want to get more productive in your own life, grab 222 of his best Tips for Becoming a Productivity Superstar.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
This Post Will Change the Way You Read Blogs. Guaranteed.
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