There are many things that you need to know as a blogger. The two main things are what you are going to write about and who you are writing it for.  These two pieces go hand in hand because you need to know what your topics will be but they have to align with the audience that you are tying to reach. You may have an audience in mind but may not know what to write about or you may have so many post ideas but not know who you want to write them for.  This is where survey's and quizzes come into play.

Have you ever been browsing online and run across a question like “What is your writing style? Take the quiz to find out!”?  Or maybe you received an email from someone who’s list you have joined and they asked you to take their brief annual survey. Both of these scenarios are things that you should consider including in your blog market research strategy.

(Related: 3 Smart Reasons Why You Should Automate Market Research)

Quizzes and surveys are just another strategy for collecting information from your audience to use with the intent to improve your content and ultimately retain and gain more readers, customers, etc.  Today I will be discussing why quizzes and surveys are important and 7 ways they can be included in your blogging strategy.

Surveys

Survey results can be incredibly helpful if you want to find out about your audience, what they need, what they would like to see more of, what they would like to see less of, etc.  The types of surveys that you can send to your audience vary. If you have customers or work with clients, you can send a survey at the end of their coaching program or after they have received your product.  This can be a satisfaction survey with questions asking about their experience with the coaching, what they loved, what could have been better, etc. You can also ask optional demographics info if you want to know specific info about who you products/services are attracting.

Another kind for survey that you can send is a general one asking about their satisfaction with the content that you post on your blog and send in your email marketing messages.  These questions would ask things such as what blog posts do you tend to read the most, what content do you not care for, how do you learn of new posts that are available, do you follow me on social media, etc. These questions are to help you understand if your content is well received and what you could tweak to make it better.

It’s smart to survey your audience because you are getting insight directly from the people that are already interested in what you have to say (they didn’t sign up for your list just because...there was something that they liked about you enough to give you their email).

I send surveys to my customers and periodically to my email list for the reasons above. Ultimately I want to know if my content is well received and what areas need improvement.  This insight is incredibly helpful for your overall blogging strategy. I use Typeform to create my surveys because they are easy to make and they are visually appealing. I also automate the process of sending the email that the survey is in based on the timeframe that they purchased their product.  Automation is used as much as possible around these parts!

Quizzes

I have recently started using quizzes in my marketing strategy, and I am pleased with the results so far!  The difference with a quiz from a survey is that the reader chooses from a selection of predefined answers to give them a personal result. For example, the quiz that I have on my blog is called “What kind of blogger are you?”.  From this they will be able to determine what drives them to blog and how they would like to help others through their blog. The results may help them be more focused and intentional with the content that they post on their blog.

Quiz results are also beneficial to the person giving the quiz because they can categorize their email list members based on the results.  I use the tool Interact to create my surveys. The platform is super easy to use, integrates seamlessly with my email marketing account and the quizzes are also visually pleasing (you can customize them with your brand colors, logo and add images for each question).  I also use automation by adding a tag to people that take the quiz in my email marketing account based on their quiz results.

Now that you know the reason you should put surveys and quizzes into your blogging life, here are 7 things you can do with the results:

1 / Email funnels

You can create email funnels in your email marketing account with the intent to provide helpful information to the person based on their results or responses.  The email funnel could be purely informative and directly aligned with their results or could pitch a product/service to them that is directly related to their results. The funnel could be set up based on a specific answer given on a survey (automation can do that for you) or the result given from a quiz.

2 / Targeted emails

It’s smart to set up your email marketing contents based on interest rather than just sending specific topics to everyone on your list (there's a good chance everyone won’t be interested in everything you send).  This is a great way to retain your email list members and to just be overall more helpful to them. If I kept getting emails about topics that I don’t care bout, I’d likely unsubscribe. You can tag members based on the survey/quiz results and know who to send what content to.

3 / Tweak your other marketing strategies

If you find that your audience is falling into a different category than you are trying to reach, that could be a problem.  For example, if your target audience is single female beauty bloggers with no kids from 18-25 but your survey results are telling you that your audience is 30-45 married women with kids, you may need to rethink your marketing efforts and determine if what you are blogging about is actually appealing to you ideal target audience.  You can take two approaches with this info - either roll with the audience that you have attracted and keep doing what you’re doing or pivot and start going after your ideal audience by posting appropriate content and engaging with them in areas they hang out online (via Facebook groups, Instagram tags, SEO terms, etc.).

4 / Insight

People tend to be more honest behind a computer rather than  in person, so since your audience may be largely acquired though the internet, they are more likely to be honest with you.  Sometimes brutally honest. This honesty can sometimes sting, but just try to think of it in a positive way in that you will know what you need to fix about your content.  Sometimes you will just get a troll, but if multiple people are saying the same things, you may want to consider making a change. Use the constructive criticism to improve your content and ultimately make your blog a better place to be.

5 / New blog post + email content ideas

Results may give you insight on new blog post ideas.  If you ask for a problem in a survey, their answer just may be your next big blog post. If the solution isn’t enough to create an etire blog post, you can always send it as email content.  It’s a good idea to keep your new blog post ideas organized in the quickest way possible. Here’s a post on how to do that.

6 / New products & services

Quiz and survey results may also give you ideas for new products or services that you can provide.  If you see a void of information for what your audience tends to struggle with, you can create the solution for them and package it as a paid item.  You also will know who to pitch the product to based on the tagging that you used from the results.

7 / Testimonials

The online world is full of awesome, friendly people, but also scammers unfortunately.  Because of this, people are very cautious of who they give their coins to.  People have to know, like and trust you before they decide to give you some money. Testimonials are a great way to start building trust because they can see what people think about your products, services, or just you as a whole.  By asking questions on your survey about the product/service likes and how it helped them, you can then add those quotes to your website as testimonials (aka receipts!). Testimonials are golden. I even use testimonials on my free product landing pages (I mean if the free content is well received, the paid content must be freaking amazing right?).

Now that you know all about quizzes, surveys, how and why they need to be in your life, it’s time to do it!  Sign up for Interact and Typeform and start getting that much needed information from your audience that will be mutually beneficial!

If you already use quizzes and surveys, what has been your experience?  Have they been helpful and what did you do with the results? Leave a comment below.

This post is in partnership with Interact .  All thoughts and opinions are my own, and you know I don’t talk about products that I don’t like...I mean, why would I? That’s not helpful for anyone :)