Do you want to publish an online form on social media so that you can attract lots of responses? The size of the audience on social media definitely makes that a good option, but to take advantage of it you need to make sure you’re able to attract responses to your form.
That can be tricky, but there are a few ways to go about it that you should try:
1. Incentivize Filling Out The Form
People are going to be far more likely to want to fill out your form if you give them a reason to do so – and that is why incentivizing the form is all about. It is important to provide a solid incentive, and not just a vague promise of ‘benefits’.
While there are lots of types of incentives that you could tie to your form, you should try to base it on the difficulty of the form and how long it takes to fill it out. The goal should be to find an incentive that is able to motivate social media users to take the time to fill out the form.
One example of incentivizing can be seen top right of this page as Social Media Revolver offers a free Social Media Marketing Guide in exchange to filling in a simple newsletter subscription form. Give it a go and see how it works, eh?
2. Make Sure The Post Stands Out
Most social media users skim through their feed, and only pause for a short while to focus on content that draws their attention. That is why the post that you use to link to your online form needs to stand out, otherwise it will be lost among the hundreds of other posts on the average users feed.
In most cases that means that just posting a link accompanied by a few lines of text isn’t going to cut it. Instead, you should try to enhance your post using visuals or a web-link that is optimized to be a rich object using OpenGraph or other similar markup.
3. Ensure The Form Is Mobile Friendly
A significant number of social media users (more than half) will be on mobile devices. As such if you want to stand any chance that they will respond to your form, you need to make sure it is optimized for smaller screens.
At a bare minimum your form should have a responsive design that caters to different screen sizes. On top of that you should also ensure its elements are mobile-friendly, and avoid any that could potentially cause issues – such as drop down lists.
4. Take Advantage Of Advertising
Although the audience on social media is huge, the actual number of people that see your post (and your online form) will depend on the size of your following. If your following isn’t large enough and/or you want to reach more users you should take advantage of advertising to promote your post.
If you do go down this route be sure to identify and target the right group of people whom you want to respond to your form. While it will require a budget of some kind, the results will definitely be impressive.
As you can imagine the structure and design of your form will influence the number of responses you’re able to attract as well. While it can be difficult to create a form that looks good, you could use AidaForm, Wufoo, Google Forms or other good online form builders to make it easier.
Overall the steps described above should help you to acquire a significantly greater number of responses from social media for your online form; regardless of whether it is a survey, poll, feedback form, or anything else for that matter. In fact with a bit of experimentation, you could build on each step and optimize it to reel in even more responses.
This has been yet another Social Media Revolver Sponsored Post. If you would like to get one for your business, please have a look at our Advertising Options.
[Main Photo by Atikh Bana on Unsplash]
Kris Olin, MSc (Econ.) * Editor in Chief at Social Media Revolver * Web Designer * SEO Specialist * Author of the Facebook Advertising Guide. Follow Kris on Twitter and LinkedIn. See his photos at Flickr.