Less than two years ago, Twitter introduced Twitter Polls as a new way to generate engagement and gain feedback from your followers and Twitter audience.

Unlike online surveys or feedback cards that often require you to go to another website, Twitter Polls simply require people to choose an answer, and it’s done. It takes away some of the negative perceptions people have of traditional online surveys. Not only are your results in real-time, but you can retweet the polls to your followers and help them reach an even broader audience.

Twitter Polls could be an untapped gold mine for your marketing strategy. Here are some tips on how you can best use them to engage your audience and generate useful information.

Ask for Insights

Asking for follower insights is one of the easiest and fastest ways to engage with your followers. It may not be the most reliable market data, but it can be easy market research and exposure for you.

Ask questions aimed towards getting valuable, useful insights into the habits of your followers. You can ask about their pain points, preferences, or what they look for in a product or service. You can start with the most basic questions that can be answered with a yes or no and then you can proceed with more detailed poll questions.

In this example of Eventbrite’s poll, they wanted to collect insights on the holiday seasonal habits of their followers. This poll was conducted during October which can be a strategy to help their followers think about holiday event planning, or to simply generate ideas for their holiday marketing campaigns.

Keep up with Current Events

Use events and holidays to your advantage when it comes to polling your followers. Whether it’s a sports event, Christmas, Thanksgiving, a major news story, a trending piece of pop culture, or viral hashtags, use polls to entertain or to add to the conversation. For sure people are already tweeting about it, so insert your brand’s voice through polls – just make sure the topic is relevant to your brand and voice.

For example, remember when “The Dress” broke the internet with the debate over what color it was? Gold or blue, what did you think?

Companies and brands were quick to ask their followers what color they thought it to be. A popular morning show, Good Morning America, saw this as a great opportunity to ask their audience and get in on the trend. Twitter Polls weren’t a feature yet back then, but you can get the idea.

Ask for Predictions

Timeliness is king on Twitter. As in the previous post, use trending events to generate engagement. A specific way to do this is to ask for predictions based on those events.

If there are upcoming sporting events or anything else relevant to your brand, this is an ideal way to engage with your followers. You can use polls to ask for a prediction, before and after the event.

The car company Nissan, which is also a Heisman Trophy sponsor, engaged with fans during the NFL playoffs. Their poll asked which university of former Heisman- winning players would end up with bragging rights, as you can see here.

Focus on Your Followers

On social media, focusing on a target audience is important. Your target Twitter audience fits your general buyer persona, which should give you an idea as to what type of content your followers like. With that information, you can come up with Twitter polls that will be engaging for them.

If you want to grow your follower count quickly, you can buy Twitter followers from a reputable company. They won’t be paying customers, of course, and they won’t answer your polls, but they will attract more people to your account – some of whom will become followers!

The target audience of Airbnb, for example, are mostly travelers or people who want to receive travelers. Before the President’s Day weekend, Airbnb asked their followers which perk they wanted to have most on their upcoming weekend trip. This also lets them see what features people are most interested in during trips, and maybe even got some of the followers to think about making weekend vacation plans.

Ask for Opinions

Ask questions about your brand and try to be entertaining too, depending on the culture you want to have. Give your audience branded questions, which create the perfect opportunity to both engage with them and learn about their preferences.

Instead of trying to use tweets to generating leads or page visits, use polls to simply create brand awareness and perception. The more fun and engaging your poll is, the more reach it will have and the higher your chances of expanding your Twitter following.

During the Super Bowl, Krispy Kreme launched its Doughnut Bowl campaign by presenting a face-off of their different donut flavors. Not only is this engaging and fun to watch, but it also revealed which doughnuts their customers like the most, and which flavors they like the least. This also created brand awareness and was very timely during a famous event like the Super Bowl.

Promote Your Stuff

Promotional tweets can sometimes bore your customers. A Twitter Poll, however, can make a traditional ad feel a bit more like a game, letting users interact instead of just seeing it go by.

Whether you are promoting a product, a blog post, or an ebook, make sure your questions are engaging and fun so that your followers would love to participate in.

Nissan shows up once again here, with a subtle approach to promoting their 2017 Armada by asking Twitter users how they would use the vehicle. Rather than appearing like a sales ad, which it is, it just seems like an interesting question that’s fun to think about. This is how you can promote yourself while remaining entertaining.

Let them Choose Products

You can create a buzz around an upcoming product or offer by giving your followers an interesting choice to think about, and you can combine this strategy with polls in a way that lets you seek feedback on specific products. This gives your audience the opportunity to voice their preferences, which in turn gives you data.

Taco Bell did a Twitter Poll to find out which flavor of Doritos Locos Tacos their followers like the most. Almost 17,000 people voted for their favorite, giving Taco Bell some instant customer insight.

Go for the Poll!

Have you used Twitter Polls in your social media marketing strategies yet? You may be missing out on a great opportunity to engage with your followers, as you can see from the examples above.

Engaging with your audience like this is great for establishing a better connection with your brand. Start small – you may get just a few or many responses, but it will start a conversation.

Remember, you can grow your following fast by purchasing Twitter followers and other signals of engagement for your account. The more followers you have, the more people will want to come check you out. Some of them will no doubt follow you as well, and your following is growing just like that!

Over time, Twitter Polls can help you build a more engaged community. They may not be for everyone, but they definitely have the potential to be a powerful addition to your Twitter marketing strategies.