Tipster Thursdays: Taking Straw Polls On The Fly

Tipster Thursdays is a monthly feature covering technology and how you can incorporate it as part of your marketing plan. We’re going to look at different pieces of technology like Twitter, Pingie, Prologue, SmugMug, Qik and delicious and show you 5 different uses for the technology. This weeks column is going to look at straw polling through Twittpoll, Facebook Polls and StrawPoll.

A straw poll or straw vote is a vote with nonbinding results. Straw polls provide important interactive dialogue among movements within large groups, reflecting trends like organization and motivation. [Via Wikipedia]

You should note that you can’t actually create your own polls through Twittpoll and StrawPoll. They are there to show what you can do with a few days and the right idea. In this transparent and honest world… taking a poll of your community is not only smart but encourage.

Jeremiah Owyang decided to poll people about the ads during Superbowl a few weeks ago. You can read the premise of the Twitterbowl experiment or view results and learn more about what people really thought of your brand. 2500 responses isn’t bad when all is said and done. Envision taking a poll of your community about the new box art for your game. I feel sometimes that box art is one of the most over looked pieces of marketing within some company’s plans. It’s one of the first point of contacts that people have with a game.

The key to executing a poll is finding a common place your community hangs out that isn’t necessary on your website. Then you need to ask your community something you want to know, which could be the following:

1. What would they want in a limited edition game package?
2. What do they think of the two different box art pieces?
3. What should the name of your game be?
4. Do they prefer Kotaku or Joystiq?
5. What should you main character be called?

Polling is a great tool and one I use on a regular bases at work. Getting the most out of social media.. is more about giving your community what they want.

Update: Sine creating this post more then a few months ago things have changed. You can now create your own poll at  StrawPoll.

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