Have you tried using the LinkedIn Polls feature as part of your marketing strategy? Creating a poll can be a great way to stimulate conversations, gather insights into your audience, and expand your network.

How to Create a LinkedIn Poll

It doesn’t take a lot of time to create a poll and get valuable insight in return.

Start a post at the top of your LinkedIn personal or business homepage and click the poll graph icon. You will be prompted to ask a question (up to 140 characters), insert up to four answer options (up to 30 characters each), and choose how long you’d like the poll to run (up to two weeks).

Additional Tips:

• Include “Other (please comment)” as a poll option to receive more engagement in the comment section.
• Encourage your audience to expand on their answer in the comments.
• Add a real estate-related hashtag to attract interested people outside of your connections.
• Pin the poll to the top of your page so it doesn’t get lost on your feed.
• After a few days or a week, repost the poll to remind your audience to respond—this also helps increase the post’s reach.

Note that some mobile browsers do not show the poll portion, only the caption above the survey. Always include a caption of the poll question and encouragement to respond in the comment section.

Suggestions for Poll Questions

Base them on your goals

Do you want to improve your email open rates? Do a poll asking your connections to choose their favorite real estate topic or something they want to learn more about. Or ask how they like to receive content: through emails, blogs, videos, or social media? The responses may surprise you. You may learn you have been trying to reach your contacts the wrong way.

Learn more about your audience

You can build better relationships by understanding what your connections are interested in. Do they think a specific home-design trend is hot or not? Are they thinking about selling or buying in the near future. What has been the most challenging part of finding or selling a home?

The poll feature lets you see how each person responded, allowing you to reach out to offer more information or ask additional questions.

Share your knowledge

Build trust and establish your expertise by asking a question that starts with Did you know, followed by a statistic or interesting fact. Also, try the question starter Have you tried, to inspire people to consider downsizing or a staging technique they wouldn’t have thought to do. If you receive a lot of “no” responses on a subject, you can create a blog or video to offer more information.

Break up the monotony

Not every question has to be strictly business-related. Sometimes, people are more apt to respond if the question is creative. Try asking an icebreaker-type question or about something currently trending.

By boosting your engagement and gaining valuable insights, you’ll strengthen your client relationships—helping you grow your real estate business.