The Proffitt Podcast

How to Survey Your Audience for Feedback & Content Ideas

November 01, 2022 Krystal Proffitt Season 1 Episode 376
The Proffitt Podcast
How to Survey Your Audience for Feedback & Content Ideas
Show Notes Transcript

Are you doing a good job with your content? How do you know? Unless you get feedback from members of your audience, you could be creating content in a void -- never knowing what you could be doing better.

In today's episode, I'm walking you through four simple ways you can survey your audience and get feedback on your content. We're covering how to survey your community through:

  1. Email
  2. Youtube
  3. Social Media
  4. Google Forms

There are simple ways of surveying your audience, which I believe you should do regularly. And then, there are formal surveys you should send to your audience at least 2-3 times per year.

If you're new to asking or receiving feedback on your content, this episode will be the motivation you need to start implementing these simple processes today.

Intro:

One of my favorite things about podcasting is that I can just show up and be a total nerd. Like a total goofball, I could just be myself and really share with you the things that I probably wouldn't share on like, a first time coffee date. Or if we were like, just hanging out, I wouldn't bring up some of the things that I have the ability to bring up after, oh my gosh, I mean, 400 episodes, like if we add in all the bonus episodes, and all the things that have happened, like, I mean, I've just created so much content, and I love that I can keep uncovering these little nerdy pieces. I mean, I share with you all a lot. I share with you so much, but we're gonna get super nerdy today. And the type of nerdiness that I'm sharing is my love of market research. Yes, like a full blown market research nerd. I love a good survey. I love it. I love it. And whenever I was at school, at Texas State, this is where I went to school at Mudcats, Texas State University in San Marcos. I love it so much. It's so beautiful there. But where that's where I went to school. And I vividly remember my market research classes. They were the most fun. I know, you're like why market research like that's Krystal, you know that there's other these were my font. Okay, this was my fun. I loved it. I don't know why, like, I can't really pinpoint exactly how I was feeling in those classes. I just know, it was easy, like, studying for that class was just like, I mean, it was like reading a really good book. I was like, Yes, give me more, tell me more. And today, I can see how it plays a big role in how I create my content, seeing how people get feedback, how analytics are read and measured. And even to this day, y'all I love a good survey. I love a good survey, like Don't tempt me with oh, you know, Krystal will, we'd love five minutes of your time and possibility to win like a $25 amazon gift card or you know, $100 grand prize like I don't care, I will fill it out. I will fill out your survey, if you send me a survey 99.9% of the time, if I have the time, I will fill out the survey, I fill out every single one that you send to me because I know how much that feedback means to the person to the person that is getting it. I've done surveys for book launches, product launches, possible. rebranding of names like I have created this for myself, right testimonials and the community topics for webinars, changes to my brand content topics like the list goes on and on. But I've also done them with other people. And I love to see how other people are doing it too. So the theme of today's episode is a BS or always be serving. I know soup again, again with the dorkiness. But we are covering how to survey your audience for content, ideas and feedback. And I'm going to show you what it looks like. So let's get right to it. Welcome to the profit podcast where we teach you how to start launch and market your content with confidence. I'm your host, Krystal Proffitt, and I'm so excited that you're here. Thanks for hanging out with me today. Because if you've been trying to figure out the world of content creation, this is the show that will help be your time saving shortcut. So let's get right to it, shall we?

Why It's Important to Survey Your Audience:

Okay, so as we look at your content, why, why is it important to survey your audience, if you've never done this, please promise me that you will do this in the next quarter, the next quarter of the year, whenever you're listening to this, just say, Okay, I'm putting this on my calendar and I'm going to make it happen now mean, pushing it to the next quarter, like whatever quarter of the year you're in. Like, if it if the next quarter starts tomorrow, obviously, it's not what I mean. But I'm just saying like, get it done. Give yourself three months, right? That's way too much time. Let's be very honest. You should get two weeks to do this and make it happen. But I do understand that some of you are just starting your content, right? Maybe you're looking at January 2023. And you're like okay, that's when I'm officially going to launch well then that's when I want you to start serving your audience as soon as you have one. Okay, soon as you have an audience, you need a survey. them, if you have an audience right now, you need to survey them in the next three months. And the reason why I say that is because some of you are scared, you're like, I don't know how to do this, I don't Well, I'm giving you three months to figure it out 90 days is way too generous, I should be telling you do this in the next 30 days. But I know like when I'm recording this, it's getting close to the holidays, and we have other agendas and things going on. But you need to survey your audience, you need to figure this out. But I'm gonna give you four specific examples of what it looks like how I've done this in my content, and the results of like, how freaking incredible it is, when you do this. And I can tell you, it works. I'm giving you multiple options to choose from today. And I'm actually going to give you a link to a video that will blow your mind because I'm going to show you step by step how to do this.

1. Email:

But today, let's get started with the first one. Okay, first one email. simplest one there is very, very simplest. And the reason why is because you can literally send an email to your list and ask them a single question and say, hit reply. That's it. That is it. You don't have to get so fancy. And I think that this is why you're really excited about this topic. Because I can see I see you, I see you making this so much scarier than it is like I don't know, if you're afraid that people like if you open up the floodgates to say, give me your feedback that all the trolls are going to come out and say, You're terrible. Your content sucks. What are you even doing like this is awful. I don't know if that's what you're afraid of. But I can tell you, I've been afraid of that in the past. When you open up this, I guess like your vulnerability shield is down. And you're like, Oh, I feel very exposed when I ask people to give me feedback. And then all the questions pop up. Like, what if it's bad feedback? What if I don't want to hear it? Or what if no one responds to anything, right. And there aren't any guarantees, I guess, I'm glad we're starting with this one. Because I think it's important that there aren't any guarantees that people will respond to you and tell you all of their thoughts and feelings and everything they've ever wanted to say about your content. But if you don't ask, it's never gonna happen. It's never gonna happen, I think calls to action. Like we're gonna get into that in a second. But I think that that is where all of this starts. And I've talked about calls to action before I'll link to some resources in the show notes for today's episode. But you have to start asking, you have to start asking for it to even happen. But email just sending something. You could even send like a series of questions and say, Hey, I'm looking for your feedback. I have three questions like no more than five. Don't ask more than five questions. I honestly think it should just be one, one question like, even if it's a yes or no response, even better, but ask something that would be helpful to you. Not? Do you plan to buy a product from me in the future? Check yes or no hit? No, that's not helpful. That's not helpful to anybody. Because it's, it's not specific enough, it's not something that is going to give you anything of real value, because people are going to tell you that if they're on your email list, or they're not, they're going to unsubscribe, if they don't want to hear from you, they're going to unsubscribe, they're not going to hang around, they don't have any reason to they're not gonna buy from you. They're just going to be like, boom, gone. But I think it's really important that you start sending these emails and say, you know, let me know if this resonates with you, or hit reply and tell me like, get very specific on what you want them to do. And you'll be so surprised. You'll be shocked when the responses start rolling in. It's so fun. I love it. If you have emailed me if you've hit reply to an email that I've sent, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. I love reading them. They make me smile. And it just, it keeps me going right I get an email, after I send an email on Friday, and I get a response. And it just it lights up my day. But especially whenever I send out those like, Call to Action, hit reply, do this. Like it's just it's phenomenal. But I also want to encourage you because I know some of you are listening, you're like, well, Krystal, I have like four people on my email list. I'm related to all of them. I don't really care what they have to say, because they may live in my house or they're like, they live 20 feet away from me. So I don't really want their feedback. I get it. I know, I know. But we all have to start somewhere, right? That's the motto around here. So it does increase the chances that you're going to have more people respond to you, as your email list grows as your network grows. So don't get discouraged if you're working with a small email list right now, but just know Although it does get better, it does get better the more people that you have. But another fun thing, this is a little bit more advanced, right? So we talked about a really simple strategy with email, write something, ask a question, ask them, you know, hit reply, tell me your thoughts. Something fun I did in my recent launch, this is more technical, this is not as simple. But I wanted to try it. And it worked. And it was really cool. And I'm gonna do it again. But in my email service provider, so I use ConvertKit. Inside an email, I added buttons. And I asked people vote for which topic that you wanted by clicking one of the buttons and like two things happened. And this is where the technical piece comes in. Whenever they clicked one of the buttons, I had them routed to a page that said, thank you for your feedback. So super simple. It was very, you know, it was on my Krystal Proffitt website and looked nice. And it just said, Thanks for your feedback. That's all that happened. Like go listen to the podcast or something after that, like there wasn't any anything else for them to do. But on the back end, what happened when someone clicked one of the options that they voted for, they were given a tag inside ConvertKit that let me know how many people voted on each option. So this is a great way, if you have email service provider, you could send out an email that if someone clicks on it, then they are added with a specific tag. And then you can look at all your tags and see like, oh, like option one had 16 votes, option four had 27 votes, and option three had 157. Like you can easily see which topic or which thing that you're asking about. If you have like four topics that you're like, I don't know which one I want to use for an upcoming podcast episode. Or if I have guest on the podcast, or you could even ask about your previous content, say, hey, of these five episodes, which one was your favorite vote by clicking one of them, you can easily do this. And it's like I said, it's a little more complicated. But it's not hard. It's really not hard to do, once you know how to do it, and you can see how it's set up, then you'll be able to use this technique over and over and over again. And actually, if you remember this email, I sent it in early summer. But I sent one out that there were, I think five topics if I'm not mistaken, that I put in here. And I used the results from that survey. In my recent launch. One of them was the quiz topic for how to make money, you know, with your content, your content persona. And the other one was the free training for saving time or better known as easy peasy content. So this community voted for the quiz I was going to use during my lunch and the masterclass topic of what I was going to talk about. And it paid off, it was the right content. So that is how you can use email to survey your audience about your content.

2. Get in the YouTube Comments:

So number two, getting in the comments on YouTube. Now I know not everybody has a YouTube channel that some of your like personal stop talking about YouTube, I'm not going to have it, I'm going to keep talking about it. Because one, I enjoy it. And two, I know that there's a lot of you that have a channel or want to have a channel in the coming year. So I'm going to share with you what I know about creating on YouTube. And really using that platform to your advantage, like use the different strengths and weaknesses of each platform. Learn them. That way you can leverage them to your advantage. And YouTube is great. It's awesome that you can interact and engage with your audience right there on the content that you've created. I have created tons of subsequent and SQL pieces of content from feedback I've gotten on a YouTube video or during a live stream. I was doing a live stream every Tuesday. And somebody would ask a question, and then I'd say oh my gosh, I have to go back and watch this later. Because these questions were incredible. And it gave me more content to talk about. It gave me other ways that I can just really dive deeper into that specific topic. Or I could take it from my YouTube channel, and then bring it to the Prophet podcast and say, Hey, I had this great question the other day on YouTube, but it didn't really fit in that kind of platform, that format of video. So I wanted to do a deeper dive and tell stories and do that type of stuff here on the podcast. And this is possible let's just like bring podcast into this for a second because you can The comments on specific podcast apps like good pods, but people don't often really go into detail. There's not like a ton of text or comments on every one of my podcast episodes, I'll see star ratings. So I do get a little bit of listener feedback there. But it's not typically a lot of text. So that's why I think of YouTube. And I'm like, Man, ask for those comments. And actually, when you're recording your videos, make sure you add a CTA, or your calls to action for people to get in the comments to engage with your video and leave feedback. I know it feels weird, it feels you feel kind of dumb when you're first getting started. And you're like, you know, hit the thumbs up, subscribe, leave a comment, it feels weird. But so does recording a podcast in a room by yourself with just you and your microphone. Like, it all feels weird until you do it and you feel comfortable with it. Now, every single video, every single YouTube video that I create, when I am making it, and I'm looking in the camera, I have a section where I'm like, I have to ask, like for people to leave comments. Sometimes I will just say leave a comment if you have any questions or leave a comment, this specific word or this specific phrase, like if you're with me, if you have this experience, it just depends on the content that I'm working with. But I always ask for people to get in the comments. And I know I'm not the YouTube expert here. And I'm not going to continue. I'm not going to frame myself as a YouTube expert. But it also helps feed the YouTube algorithm whenever people are engaging with your content. So it has this, I was gonna say dual benefit, but it's actually probably more than that it's probably a 10x benefit. Because you get feedback from your audience, you're getting that algorithm monster is being fed, and it just like it can explode the conversations between you and your audience member. And then other people can start feeding like it's just really cool when people get in the comments. So don't underestimate the comments on your YouTube channel for that audience feedback, or even other future topics that you can cover in your content. So we've covered number one, number two.

3. Social Media:

Now, number three, social media. Social media is so easy for surveys, y'all, it is so easy. If you're not doing this, I have a few ideas, the way you can like baby tiptoe into this baby step into it. The first one is Instagram and Facebook polls. Now, there are a few different ways that you can do polls on social media. The first one is Instagram and Facebook stories. So this is where you can say, Pick this or pick that option. I'm sure y'all probably seen this before. Like if you say oh, you know, here's a or b, you know, like yes or no, like it's very black and white, there's two options. And then when someone clicks on it, you can see very clearly, which one is the winner of, you know, people choosing this one or that one. So what you can do here is, if you have two topics that you're thinking about, you can say, Okay, I'm thinking about making a podcast episode or YouTube video about this or that, click on which one and give me your feedback. So that's a way that you can get direct feedback from your audience. But you can also do a quiz in your stories on Facebook or Instagram. And I think that you can add, maybe you can add more than four options, I feel like it was for for a long time. But maybe it's more than that now. But again, you could go through and you could list out different things that you want to talk about. And you could say, hey, you know, I want you to vote tell me which one which option that you think I should cover or which one was your favorite episode out of all of these. So that's another fun way that you can survey your audience on stories. Another one is doing a poll in a Facebook group. Now I have to be really honest, I don't love this feature, because you don't get notified when someone answers the poll. And you have to check it regularly whenever it's live. But it is a good place to start. If you have a Facebook group and you're like I don't really know who to audience I don't audience I don't know who to survey like, well, I don't know where my audience is. If you have a Facebook group, you have an audience and you have people that you can pull in side your group. And again, you can throw out a few topics that you're thinking about talking about or if you're going to have guests on your show and you're like I don't really know who I should add to my guest roster for the rest of the year or going into the new year. You can throw out some ideas Is and say, what type of expert would you like to see on the show and of course, you would want them to be related to your topic. But then people can vote like, oh, maybe they want to have this specific type of storyteller or this specific type of expertise. Or maybe they're in this business or this part of the industry, like you know, your audience best. And you would know what options to put on there. But those types of polls are a really great place to get started, because they're not a heavy lift, and it's free. Always love anything that's free. And I think it's awesome to take advantage of the audience, you do have the interaction like FaceTime with, you can also do polls on LinkedIn, I wanted to throw this one in here. Even though I'm not super active on LinkedIn, I do a lot more of like, just looking around and reading articles there. But these are pretty fun. I've participated in a lot of other people's LinkedIn polls, but they're fun, because you can see how long that they're live. And then they close after a specific timeframe. So it'll say, you know, you want it up there for 24 hours. Do you want it up there for a week, and you can see how much time is left? And then that way, if you're really interested, I've seen Gary Vee Gary Vaynerchuk. Like he puts poll polls up there a lot. And I will vote on his and then if it says, Okay, this poll is closing in like two days, then it kind of like piques my

4. Google Forms:

But let's move on to number four. So let's do a quick recap, right. We've talked about email, getting in the curiosity. I'm like, oh, I should go back and see, like, comments on YouTube. We've talked about social media. Now that was an interesting poll. That was a cool topic. Like, I we're gonna talk about Google Forms, y'all. This is because I know people were like, Well, Chris, what are my all these want to go back and see what how many people voted and what they surveys? Like? Where do you do a formal survey? I love a Google had to say, because he has a very big audience. And it all form. You can do Survey Monkey. You can do type form. You can do Microsoft forms. Like there's just so many different types of goes back to numbers, right? The bigger your audience, the more forms you can do. I love Google Form. Mostly because I'm in the Google Suite. Like this is what I use. I use Docs. I use sheets accurate kind of polls you'll have on you know, if you have 10 I use like google drive like this is my platform like hub of people, and two people vote, you know, it's not a very good data choice. And so I love a Google form because everything is housed in my Google Drive. But I recently sent a survey this was set of information for you to really make a decision on. But I really fun. I recently sent a survey to the members in this community that participated in my read repurposing launch, and also learn from other people's polls. The last thing I'll say that means they attended the webinar, they had email sent to about social media, you can also ask people to DM you in a them, they engage with me during the promotional period in the survey was for anyone that was really engaged during the response, which is very similar to saying, hit reply to this launch, but they didn't buy the program. And I sent it for two email, you're just saying, like, hey, you know, I'm doing this specific reasons. I'm genuinely curious why the program was at a good fit for them right now. Because that helps me learn and thing on an Instagram story, like DM me if this is something get better with each launch. And by the way, like, shout out to you want to hear more about, or if you know, you have two or those of you that responded to the survey, like it really means a lot to me, like it was so incredible to see your feedback. three guests in mind, like, you know, tell me, tell me in the And I'm taking that into consideration as I plan another launch for this program in the future. But this feedback is DMS, like who you would want me to interview next. And it's just priceless. Just like you will get feedback from your audience. a great way to get that feedback and hear from your audience and And it will be priceless. It's precious to hear this from your audience. But the second reason why I wanted to send it and this maybe even start a conversation that you just don't know where is a really big one that applies to everything we've already talked about here today. But I wanted to give people the it's going to lead, maybe that DM could lead to several more opportunity to share their opinions anonymously. Because topics or questions that your audience members have that you this is just doesn't apply to the recent launch survey. But I think it's important to give people an opportunity to not would have never otherwise known about. And it's just a really only like check boxes and say, yes, no or other to your survey questions. It's nice to just have a Is there anything else fun way to engage with your audience. But it's also going to you want to share with me box, so people can give you their depend on how much you've primed your audience to give you input. And this is where I want to go back to this is being vulnerable, right? It does take some tough skin and feedback in the past. So again, we've talked about CTAs a few vulnerability to read someone's comments and true feelings. And sometimes comments are mean and hateful, while others are the times now. But if you don't currently, ask people to give motivation that I need to keep moving forward. So I do want to you feedback, start doing it now start making those calls to like, let you know that that as you create surveys, as you kind of let your guard down to receiving feedback, if you are actions. And I know some of you are like, I don't have a big someone that is super, super sensitive, and you're like, oh audience, well, you need to start it like started now start my gosh, if someone says one mean thing to me, I will probably quit. Then create your surveys, send them out and have it even when your audience is small. And then that way, as someone else read the results, have someone else be that buffer or that filter that you need. Because at the end of the day, I your audience grows, you'll still have that content out don't want it being something that like tears you down. And there. That's asking for feedback. And it will allow you it's like, Oh, my God, this was one person said something. So mean, and I never want to create another podcast episode or to have those like you did it two years ago. This is a great YouTube video. Like, I never want that to happen. So again, example, actually, I have a video on my YouTube channel if you're someone that's super sensitive, and you know, you will know this about yourself, if you don't have tough skin, as that's at least two years old, and I still get comments on it much as someone has, like tried to tell you, you need to have on the regular. And I still go back and talk to those people. tough skin to create content. If you know this about yourself, then put it through the filter of a loved one or your partner But if I hadn't made that call to action, then they wouldn't be or your best friend and say, Hey, I'm gonna send out the survey. But I don't want to read the comments. I don't want to chatting about it two years later. It's a video that's two read what people have to say, I think it will discourage me if years old and has the most views on all of my videos, and people something mean is said, have them share, like be that filter, sort through and say, Okay, here's what you need to know, are still commenting on it. And I think that that has a reason there was some other BS, like stuff that you don't need in your life. And I'm going to, I'm going to shelter you from that why it's still performing really well. It's because people are I'm going to keep you from reading it. But here's all the still continuing to put that feedback and chat with me on really helpful stuff. And I don't think it should just be the rainbows and butterfly unicorn version of you know, that particular video. like, you're doing an amazing, you're doing amazing. You do need that constructive criticism. You need to read it and you need to see it. But that mean hateful stuff. You don't need that in your life. Trust me, I just, it's not good. I've read it too. I've I do read my own comments. And I've gotten hurt, like I've gotten just like, oh, it ruins your afternoon and you read something and you're like, well, that guy's an idiot to look I'm gonna go back and it's like, no, my my rule online is kill them with kindness. If you want to go see some creative ways that you can be very passively aggressive. Positive is that a right term, like, passively aggressive positiveness is how I will go back. I had someone one time my mom and I were talking about she's gotten some ugly comments on her YouTube channel. And I was sharing with her some of mine. And I said, You know what I'll say if someone in particular left something that said, I can't believe it took you to two minutes and 50 seconds in this video to even get to the point. And I responded with thank you so much for watching two minutes and 50 seconds of my video because at the end of the day, it just doesn't matter like those people that just have nothing else better to do but like spew that hate online. I just don't have time for it. But I will take a comment on a YouTube channel and then feed that algorithm back by saying something that just says, Thank you for your input. I've done that many times. And I think it's perfectly fine to do. But at the end of the day, what matters most is that you're not creating your content in a vacuum, never getting any feedback from your audience, I don't think that it's helpful. If you just keep creating, creating, creating, and you never survey your audience.

Outro:

So if you've never done this before, I highly encourage you to do it, I want you to go and take all the notes from today, go to KrystalProffitt.com/episode376. That's where you're gonna find everything that we just talked about. But I really want you to go and like make a plan to make this happen. And I actually have a great resource because I talked to all about Google forums, and I didn't really get into the detailed nitty gritty. And that's because I have this great video that I want you to go watch. So it's gonna be linked in the show notes. But it's all about audience engagement and feedback in your content. So I already created this video. And in it, I share with you the action steps that you can take to get feedback on your content. And there's a tutorial at the end that showcases a live training where I walked through exactly how I create a Google Form survey. And this is what I use whenever I'm collecting testimonials from our programs. Whenever I am doing assessments for people, whenever I'm doing like content audits, I will use a Google form because it's just very simple to use. And this is actually a great time of year, if you're listening to this when this episode goes live, it's a great time to survey your audience and get a pulse on what's working what's not. And then if you decide to pivot in the new year, which is a great time to make any changes to your content, then you're going to feel more confident knowing you are creating content that your audience is really excited about. So this is why we're creating and publishing this episode. Now because it's a great time to survey your audience that way in January 2023, you're like, I want to hit the ground running with content that's going to make a difference. Well, here's how you get there. You need to survey your audience if you've never done it before. So again, go to the shownotes KrystalProffitt.com/episode376 to go watch that video, go check out all the notes, all the highlights of what we talked about here today and go survey your audience. A B S, always be surveying, implement it, put it on a sticky note, put it out there and start serving your audience on a regular basis. But that's all I have for you today. Oh, this was such This just made my little marketing nerd heart so happy. So I hope that you enjoyed it too. I would actually love for you speaking of surveys, I would love for you to take a screenshot and share this on Instagram, tag me at Krystal ProffittTX. And tell me the number one thing that was super helpful from today's episode, something short, quick, doesn't have to be long. You could just put email or you could but social you could put YouTube you could put Google Forms whatever. But tag me on social share a screenshot wherever you're listening to this. I would love to hear from you and get feedback. But that's all I have for you today. So if this is your first time tuning in and you haven't subscribed or follow the podcast already, make sure you do that. So you can come back every single week whenever we publish a brand new episode, but as always, you remember, keep it up. We all have to start somewhere.

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