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What Is Twitter’s New Polls Feature and How Can You Use It in Your Marketing?


On October 21st, Twitter announced that it will be rolling out a new feature, Twitter Polls, to all users.

The feature is a simple two-choice poll that you can embed directly into a tweet.

Todd Sherman, a Twitter Project Manager, explained, “For poll creators, it’s a new way to engage with Twitter’s massive audience and understand exactly what people think.

For those participating, it’s a very easy way to make your voice heard.” Polls will be available in the coming days on Twitter’s website and its iOS and Android apps.

It looks like creating Twitter polls will be very easy. You can create a poll from within the compose window, where there’s a new “Poll” button. Each poll has two options.

Once you create the poll, it will be open for 24 hours. Twitter users can vote by clicking on the option of their choice. While the poll is open, the tweet will display how long is left to vote and how many people have voted so far.

Once the 24 hours is up, the tweet will display the poll’s results as a percentage. Individual votes are kept private.

The new polls feature will be a handy new tool for social media marketing. The key limitations are the privacy settings and the number of answer choices. The limitation of two answer choices narrows down the kinds of questions you can ask. And because votes are kept private, you won’t be able to target followers based on their answer. The privacy setting, however, may encourage more Twitter users to participate.

These limitations are fairly minor; there’s still a lot you can do with Twitter polls. They’re a great way to boost user engagement.

Users like to interact with the brands they follow, and polls are a simple way to invite participation. You may want to use polls to ask fun questions or let your followers chime in with their opinions on current events. Or you may ask for their feedback on your products or content. Can’t decide what to write a blog post on? You could let your Twitter followers decide between two options. Or let your followers decide what color to manufacture a new product in. It’s an easy way to make your followers feel involved in what you do.

Polls may also be a great way to gather information. Buffer, for example, asked their followers how often they tweet. You can use simple questions to get a quick snapshot of market data. Of course, two-choice Twitter polls aren’t going to provide you with thorough analytics. But if you need a quick answer on a simple question, it may be a good option.

Twitter polls are still brand new, and we’re excited to see how different brands use them.

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Written by content manager Meghan Woolley

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