I was talking the other day with a business owner who was just entering the world of content marketing with his new company website. He has been a reader of the Internet Squeeze since the first week of publication, and he has embraced the need to move his brick and mortar business to the internet. Like so many other people in this position, he is worried about “what to write.”
Content marketing is about creating information that your current and future customers will find pertinent and interesting, so the best way to start assembling ideas about “what to write” is to ask your current customers what they think. While you could get on the phone or jump into your email program, another way is to embed a poll right into your content marketing system.
Loading ...Polling your internet customers is a great way to get immediate feedback about some very important information. You can find out the level of engagement that you are establishing by comparing the number of poll entries with the number of visitors to the page where you host any given poll. For example, as a site that is only two months old, I suspect the engagement level will be rather low, even for a poll as simple as the one above (but you can prove me wrong by simply taking the poll! :)).
When polling your customers for information, do not forget that you are truly trying to gain insight about their needs and interests. You might be tempted to use the poll as a creative selling gimmick, but you would lose faith from the majority of visitors that are not ready to buy your products or services. Don’t waste this valuable resource of customer engagement by trying to solicit a quick sale, the long-term benefits of understanding buyer needs, wants, and trends is at stake.
So, if you’ve made it this far without taking the poll, please scroll back up and give me a simple “click” to let me know what you think about the current visitors to your company website. Will they (will you) answer 1 quick question?
