Creating Surveys for Blogs

In a previous article, we talked about the need to understand your readers better through feedback and blog surveys. Here’s where the challenge starts though. A lot of website owners don’t know how to create a survey, or how to encourage their readers to answer the questionnaires. So read on how find some tips to make your efforts count.

First, it is important to ensure that your survey meets the following criteria:

• Easy to understand and quick to answer
• Well-presented and laid-out
• Contains free space to let participants write what they want

These are relatively simple guidelines to follow. The most important thing to remember is that most people don’t want to read through tons of content written in block paragraphs. So laying out the survey properly and making it as short as possible will yield the results you want. There are a number of tools you can use to create the survey. For example, it is possible to use Google Documents to create this; another tool is Survey Monkey. Their basic plan is available for free and it is enough to get you started.

Once you’re creating the survey on the internet, it is important to remember that the online platform offers more features and gives you the capability to offer better interaction. Here are some things to keep in mind:

• Use a mixture of menu questions and drop down menu – these lets participants spend as little or as much time on the survey as they want
• Include the timeframe of the survey – if the survey takes approximately 5 minutes to complete, make sure to mention that at the start. Otherwise, people might get impatient because they think the next question is the last one.
• Give the option to answer anonymously – nowadays, people are getting concerned about their privacy. To get more comprehensive and truthful answers, you should give them to option to remain anonymous.
• Thank people for their feedback – always remember to say “thanks” at the end of the survey. It may just seem like you don’t appreciate the time people took to complete it if you don’t say it. Besides, it also seems impolite.

By following these tips, you can create a highly effective survey that people will respond to. This will let you glean better insights about your target market.