Where Can I Post Surveys Online — and Other Concerns

where can I post surveys online

Where can I post surveys online? We know you’ve got questions — and not just for your survey target audience. You’re probably brimming with questions on how to use an online survey platform with all of its capabilities, features and methods in the survey process. 

Fortunately, we’ve got you covered on things survey and market research-related.

If you haven’t used survey research before, we suggest doing so, as online survey software industry in the US has grown 5.0% per year on average between 2017 and 2022. 

And for good reason. Surveys provide an easy and quick method to obtain key insights on those who matter most to your business: your customers. 

You should therefore opt for an online survey platform to learn the nitty gritty of all members of your target market — the group of people most likely to buy from your business.

While we can’t address every concern you may have in just one article, we can make certain related topics clear. When it comes to posting surveys online, you’ll need to know how this can be done, namely, the two major methods making this possible.

There are a few other related things you ought to know, which this article will cover. 

This article lays out answers to key questions about conducting surveys, such as where can I post surveys online and others. 

How Can I Post Surveys Online?

When it comes to posting your surveys online, there are two main methods underpinning this endeavor. 

The first gives you less leeway on where your survey will appear, but is one of the most powerful ways of reaching a wide audience across the internet — and the world. That’s because it involves organic sampling, which reaches people randomly on the internet.

Depending on the survey platform you use, you may be able to cast a wide net when it comes to reaching a diverse population, across a multitude of online platforms.  

The second method involves more specificity; researchers get to choose which platforms their surveys will be on. That’s because it involves posting a link to the survey in various digital channels that you as the researcher select.

Or, you can send the link to specific people via email, social media or some other means. 

Not all survey platforms offer both of these capabilities of posting your survey online. We suggest leveraging a platform that powers your research with both methods. 

Random Device Engagement (RDE)

Random Device Engagement is Pollfish’s signature approach to the aforementioned random sampling method.  With RDE, surveys are sent to a massive network of over 250 million+ websites and apps, prompting users that exist in their natural digital environments to take the surveys.

As such, you survey will exist in different websites, mobile sites and mobile apps, where consumers are engaged and can be easily incentivized non-monetarily. 

This eliminates the survey bias that can occur if you were to use a survey panel. 

Professional panelists are not taking a survey in their natural environments online; instead, they are pre-recruited, which means they are not fully anonymous. They can easily feel compelled to answer surveys in a certain way, tainting the accuracy of the survey study. 

They are also prone to panel fatigue from constantly having to take surveys. They may also be influenced by certain questions, which then affect how they answer future ones. This is known as panel conditioning.

post surveys online

On the contrary, Random Device Engagement reaches and recruits respondents in the places they naturally frequent online. This means that respondents’ participation is completely voluntary, anonymous and randomized.

As such, respondents are more likely to answer truthfully and are less prone to survey fatigue. After all, respondents’ identities are completely anonymous, since they haven’t been pre-recruited and vetted through a panel recruitment process.

Thanks to RDE, you can reach a wider scope of people and segments in your target market. This is because it is conducted across a wide network of sites and app publishers that deploy your surveys. 

Specific Online Channels and Respondents

You can also send surveys to specific people and through specific digital channels, like your homepage, landing pages, emails, newsletters, etc. This requires using the Distribution link feature.

Given that it is our second major method of posting surveys online, it will not work on our network of survey publishers, as does the RDE method. That’s because, in this method, you’ll solely use the Distribution Link to connect potential respondents with your survey.

This feature allows you to create a link for respondents to be able to take your survey online. You are fully in charge of where your surveys will appear. In addition, with the Distribution Link feature, you also have the option to send your survey to specific people.

As such, this method is twofold. 

Post surveys to specific channels

Send your survey via your channels of choice to reach a large number of random users, much like you would via organic sampling. The only difference is that the places you survey will exist on won’t be random, as you will choose the channels to place your link.

This method applies agile research, in that it is highly iterative; the platform will continue sending surveys across various digital spaces until a certain number of responses (completed surveys) is collected.

You as the researcher have the power to set your own desired number of completed surveys per campaign. You can also set quotas on different respondent qualifications and add multiple audiences to your survey. 

Post surveys to specific people

The second method in the dual approach allows you to send your surveys yourself to specific people. As such, your survey won’t sit in a public digital space like your homepage or a downloadable asset. Instead, you can reach specific people, usually via email.

You can also reach out to customers via social media with the link to your survey. 

This method is also agile and iterative. 

That’s because, you can set up the feature to reach a certain number of completed surveys as well. Or, you can set a survey to be live until you choose to turn it off. As long as the link is active, respondents can enter your survey.

You can also set the link to be live until a specific date.

How Will My Survey Appear?

Wondering what form your survey will take? We’re referring to the way it will look when your respondents come across it online.

Given that our RDE method sends your survey to various digital platforms and spaces, the survey may take different forms. 

how my survey will look

This, of course, differs from what your survey will look like when sent via the Distribution Link method. Here’s what you can expect your survey to look like from both:

Via Random Device Engagement 

In different digital spaces, your survey can exist as the following:

  1. A pop-up
  2. An image
  3. A button with a call to action that solely contains your survey. You can take this route if you want to cut to the chase quickly.
  4. A small, visually appealing circle 
    1. Respondents can see this while in-app.

Via the Distribution Link

When you send your survey to specific places or people, it can exist within the following:

  1. Your homepage
  2. A static webpage
  3. Landing pages
  4. Blog posts
  5. Downloadable assets
  6. Content marketing assets
  7. Gated content
  8. Social media channels
  9. Emails
  10. Contact pages
  11. FAQ page
  12. External websites (when backlinked or via a partnership)

In these spaces, you can insert your survey into your website content or even external websites. The survey itself can take the form of the items mentioned under the above RDE approach. 

Where Can I Post Surveys Online?

Finally, we land at the crux of the matter, where can you actually post your surveys online? 

While this list is as exhaustive as possible, note that with the expansion of the internet and things like VR and the Internet of Things( IoT), there may be more digital spaces that will become available for survey research in the future.  

The prior section (How Will My Survey Appear) touched upon some of the digital spaces we dive into in the section. However, here we provide a thorough illustration of where you can post surveys online. 

  1. Website content
    1. Use various available pages and elements on your website to place the link to your survey. These include:
    2. Webpages:
      1. Homepage
      2. Landing pages
      3. Static pages
      4. Contact page
      5. FAQ page
      6. Blog
      7. Evergreen content places
      8. Page with gated content
      9. Video content pages
      10. Event sign-up pages
      11. Reports and whitepapers
      12. Other content assets
    3. As different web elements
      1. Page openers
      2. CTA buttons
      3. Within the text of long-form content
      4. Sliders
      5. Large images 
      6. Below subheadings
      7. Links within content pages
      8. Within subheadings
  2. Social media platforms
    1. Leverage all your social channels to post your surveys. These include:
      1. Facebook 
      2. Instagram
        1. Mention the survey in your bio, a post and in your stories.
      3. LinkedIn
        1. Make posts with a link to your survey.
      4. Twitter
        1. Make posts showcasing your survey.
        2. Create polls to quantify interest in taking a survey. 
      5. Reddit
        1. Create posts, answer questions and create content to motivate people to take your survey.
    2. Create a unique hashtag for your survey.
  3. Emails
    1. Email your survey to the customers that you have contact info on, along with those you don’t have direct email access to. (There are services that provide email addresses, especially business emails, which are ideal for B2B surveys).
    2. You can use a mass emailing tool such as MailChimp or a CRM platform like Hubspot.
    3. It’s always useful to add personalization to emails. 
  4. External websites
    1. Reach out to the editorial departments of popular websites and blogs, especially those relevant to your niche.
    2. You should also reach out to your own business partners and business customers for collaboration projects that can involve your survey.
    3. Some may provide backlinks to your site and survey, while others may promote it on their websites. This will depend on your project. 

If you’re using our Distribution Link feature, it is ultimately up to you to decide where to post your surveys online.

Establishing Strong Survey Campaigns 

Whether you’re a veteran researcher or a newcomer to research, you can create informative survey campaigns, the kinds that will give you an in-depth understanding of your customers and other research subjects. 

You just need the right online survey platform to do so. 

A worthy survey platform will grant you all the functionalities necessary to build a good survey campaign, one that draws in interest and gets respondents to complete the survey.

Pollfish survey software allows you to create a thorough survey data collection, one you can customize to your liking, view however you please and organize to the max.

In addition, with our vast array of question types, you can create virtually any type of survey to aid your research campaigns.

Researchers can leverage a wide breadth of information on their respondents by accessing a wide pool of insights in their survey results dashboard.

In addition, we also offer the advanced skip logic feature, which routes respondents to relevant follow-up questions based on their answer to a previous question. 

With the Pollfish market research platform, you’ll never be left wondering where you can post surveys online, as our RDE method posts surveys everywhere.