LinkedIn Launches its Own Polls Option to Facilitate More Engagement

After it was spotted in testing last month, LinkedIn has now officially launched its new native polls option, providing another way to gather feedback, and boost engagement on the platform.

LinkedIn polls function pretty much the same as they do on other platforms – you select the ‘Create a Poll’ option within the post composer, type in your question, and enter up to four answer options. You then choose the poll’s duration (between 24 hours and up to two weeks), add a note to your post, then publish.

LinkedIn polls can be shared with your connections (subject to LinkedIn’s algorithm), specific groups, or to any specific people that you’re connected to.  

LinkedIn notes that polls could be a particularly effective option within groups, dependent on the quality of engagement and membership:

“By targeting specific Groups with your poll, you can get even more relevant insights – for example, if you are in a Group for marketers, you could ask about the group member’s favorite tool for email marketing management.”

An interesting point here is that polls actually used to be available within LinkedIn groups, before LinkedIn took the option away back in 2014. Now, they’re back – so if you have an engaged, active LinkedIn group, it may be a way to gather relevant insights, quickly and easily, while also helping to facilitate more interaction and discussion. 

You can track your poll results in real-time, and as a poll creator, you’ll also have access to listings of who voted, and which option they cast their vote for. That could be particularly beneficial for list segmentation and targeting, if used effectively – if you asked, for example, what ad types people find more effective (video, image, etc.), you could then use that insight to target those users with their preference in future.

That’s a basic example, but you can see how this could be of value, in terms of insight.  

Once your poll is complete, you’ll be able to access the full response data, providing immediate insight – and potentially, fuel for future content and strategic planning. And given the poll is on LinkedIn, where you’re connected to people in your professional networks, the insights gleaned here could be of more business value than the more fun-type polls you might run on Twitter or Instagram.

That’s probably the key point here. While LinkedIn polls are pretty much the same as every other poll option on every other platform, it’s the people who are responding that will add extra value to LinkedIn’s variation. Functionally, there’s no major difference, but it could be a lot more beneficial, depending on how you use it. 

LinkedIn says that polls are “gradually rolling out globally” on both mobile and desktop “over the next few weeks” – so if you’re not seeing the option yet, you will soon.

You can read more about LinkedIn polls here.