surveys

Bloggers: Participate in Harvard’s blog research & surveys

2/9/2011 By Joan Leave a Comment

If you’re interested in how other bloggers manage their blogs, or issues related to blogging, offer to participate in the surveys conducted by Blogging Common, part of the Berkman Center at Harvard University.

The center sent me a link to a short survey that took less than 10 minutes to complete, and I’m looking forward to seeing the results. Most of the questions dealt with content at my blog.

I’m not sharing the link here because it might have information within it that identifies me or my blog. If you’d like to participate, see all the ways you can do that here.

Some interesting facts I found at their website:

Blogging Common researchers have created a large sample of blogs using a tool called Spinn3r, a web service that indexes RSS feeds around the Web. They assess the sample to identify blogs that meet the criteria for their study. The owners of these sites are then sent an invitation to participate in the survey.
58 percent of the 2,000 bloggers they’re surveying use Blogger to host their blogs. I’m surprised. WordPress, which I use, is so much more valuable because of its apps and widgets. It’s so stable and flexible that it can function as your website. In fact, I’m in the process of moving my entire site to this blog.
17 percent of Blogging Common staff members have posted photos of their pets online. I thought that was high, until I realized that even though I blog almost exclusively for business, I’ve posted my dog Bogie’s photo at this blog here, in a post about branding your business and here, when I lost her and decided to tie it into a publicity tip.

Are there any topics you’d like to see Blogging Common iscuss in its surveys? Or any you’d to see me discuss here?

(Photo courtesy of Shutterstock)

Filed Under: Blogs, Photos & Graphics Tagged With: berkman center, Blogging, blogging common, harvard university, surveys

7 ways to use surveys for publicity, PR, business-building

8/13/2010 By Joan 7 Comments

If you aren’t using surveys in your business, you’re missing a chance to read your customers’ minds.

Surveys will let you outsmart your competitors, generate publicity that pulls traffic to your website and blog, and know immediately which products and services your market wants, how people want them delivered, and how much they’re willing to pay.

Yesterday’s webinar hosted by survey expert Jeanne Hurlbert was filled with valuable take-aways that can help any business or nonprofit do more with less, despite the crummy economy.

You can sign up to listen to the free replay of “Your Cash-Generating Crystal Ball: How to Use Simple Surveys to Read Your Prospects’ and Customers’ Minds, Build Lists, Create Products, and Make Money.” Keep a pen and paper close by, because you’ll be taking lots of notes.

I watched the webinar and listed these seven ways Publicity Hounds can use surveys for publicity and to build their businesses:

Speakers and trainers, deliver a mobile survey to your audience while you’re on stage, at the start of your presentation. Ask them what they want to learn, and weave the answers to their questions into your program. You’ll look like a hero on the stage!
Use a customer profile survey to find out what business problems keep your customers up at 3 a.m. Then create products and services that help them solve the problems.
To find joint-venture partners. Once you create that new product or service, a simple survey of no more than five questions can results in hundreds of leads that include names and contact information for people who’d like to help you promote it for a commission.
Conduct an annual survey relating to an interesting, hot or controversial topic in your industry. Brian Kluth, a former church pastor, takes an annual “State of the Plate” survey to see if church giving is up or down. More than 150 media outlets have covered his survey results. You can see his press release, read the survey results and see the array of dozens of media logos at his website.
Conduct a survey that relates to your product or service, ties into an upcoming holiday, and reports on how people behave. One of my favorites is the survey taken several years ago by Iams, the pet food company, on the relationship between people and their pets. It found that more than 90 percent of respondents surveyed admitted saying “I love you” to their pets. The survey results were released several weeks before Valentine’s Day, and the story was covered by top-tier media outlets and picked up by the Associated Press.
To gather dozens of instant testimonials. In a customer profile survey, you can ask respondents about specific products and services, or general comments about things like your customer service. You can use those responses as testimonials on sales pages, at your website, and in marketing materials. That’s what I did when Jeanne created my customer profile survey for me 18 months ago.

How to Avoid Survey Suicide

Jeanne also shared tips on how to avoid what she calls “survey suicide.”

The first questions on your survey should never ask respondents for information about demographics. Do that, and they’re likely to abandon the survey.

You must get them engaged immediately, and Jeanne showed exactly how to do that.

If you think have a good idea for a survey you want to conduct, or even if you have no idea about what you can ask your target market, sign up to watch the 77-minute replay. By the time you’re halfway done, you’ll have all kinds of ideas of how to use surveys to build your business.

Important: At the end, Jeanne made a special offer that expires at 5 p.m. Eastern Time tomorrow, Aug. 14.

UPDATE on Aug. 16 at 9:38 p.m. Central:

I just learned that Jeanne is extending her offer again because so many people who wanted to listen to the webinar were on vacation. Listen by clicking the link above but do it before 5 p.m. Central Time on Wednesday, Aug. 18. If you snooze, you lose!

Filed Under: Business Promotion, Newspaper Publicity, Nonprofits, Publicity for Niche Markets Tagged With: Brian Kuth, customer service, Iams, state or the plate, surveys

9 of 10 pet owners say ‘I love you’ to their dogs & cats

5/1/2010 By Joan Leave a Comment

If you have a dog or cat, I’m betting that, at least once, you’ve looked it in the eyes and said “I love you.”

That’s because a clever survey by Iams, the pet food company, showed that 91 percent of customers it contacted several years ago admitted whispering those three little words to their furry friends.

The company wisely publicized the survey results to coincide with Valentine’s Day. Hundreds of newspapers, magazines and TV and radio stations picked up the story.

Surveys on topics that are fun, edgy, heart-warming, controversial, timely or compelling can generate mountains of publicity. They can also do something else.

They can tell you EXACTLY what products and services your customers want and EXACTLY how much they’d be willing to pay for them.

Surveys have been the best-kept secret among Publicity Hounds and successful entrepreneurs–the cute little trick that has boosted PR campaigns and let top marketers create products to order, get proof to convert prospects and keep customers buying, and find the ticking time bombs in our businesses before they explode.

Let the Survey Expert Help You

My business partner, Jeanne Hurlbert, PhD, is one of the world’s foremost survey experts. She’s so good at surveys that she’s helped people like The Tony Robbins Companies, Ali Brown, and Joe Polish. She also created my own customer profile survey last spring, and I’m using the results as a roadmap to guide my business.

She and Mike Koenigs are hosting a webinar called “Your Cash-Generating Crystal Ball: How to Use Simple Surveys to Read Your Prospects’ and Customers’ Minds, Build Lists, Create Products, and Make Money.” It will be at 2 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday, May 4.

They’ll show you how to jumpstart your business by putting your publicity, and your profits, on steroids.

And if you don’t HAVE a business yet, the news is just as good: They’ll help you start one, create products that generate revenue, and build your email list, in as little as 2 weeks.

You will learn:

How you can use your own surveys and other people’s surveys to generate buzz in traditional media and social media.
How you can create and use good data that will capture the media’s attention and tie into your expertise.
The 3 key questions that can build a bond and trust with your customers, and spell the difference between falling victim to this economy or making a fortune from it.
How the first question can increase your click-through and conversion rates by as much as 45%–and how the next big wave in social media can let you increase those conversions even more.
How the second question will let you create products to order and how you can make your customers feel so invested in those products they’ll beg to buy them.
How the third question can generate 3 forms of “social proof” that convert prospects and keep customers buying, over and over.
Why thousands of online marketers are leaving money on the table and risking trouble with the FTC by relying on testimonials for social proof.
How you can use 3 simple skills to ramp up your profits through social networking, social media, and surveys.

And then, she and Mike will explain the secret weapon that lets you know who your prospects are, what they want and how they think.

P. S. When you sign up, you get 2 special reports—and one is about how a survey transformed my business. On the call, Jeanne and Mike are giving away two things to five lucky winners: a cool new product that will be sold for at least $97 and another helpful special report.

(Shutterstock photo)