Content marketers report struggling with a variety of things as content marketing is still maturing. At the end of the piles of research, the problem really comes down to two things: time and creation. Having the time to create enough content and finding the ability to always create engaging content.

Do these struggles resonate with you? If yes, welcome to the content marketing club, and you should know that we all struggle with them. The best way to overcome struggles in marketing is to simply analyze what others are doing.

As both, a marketer and a consumer, I’ve always loved research reports mainly because they’re engaging. To create these interesting forms of content, content creators get their information by surveying their networks to get the data to publish something new and engaging.

Why Surveys Are Awesome

Surveys cut down the time it takes to create content and ensure that you are publishing something original. Surveys are content marketing’s secret weapon because they tackle two of the biggest struggles we all have.

A balance of keeping in touch with and nurturing your marketing relationships is delicate.

You want to provide them with a mix of personalized emails and great content, keep them informed of all things your brand, and make sure they feel like they have a voice and are part of your brand, and not just an extension.

Sending out a survey to your key marketing relationships allows them to have a voice and contribute to an issue or topic that their own network cares about.

From there, you have a gold mine of content and information that needs to be put together strategically and will be the backbone for many types of content that you plan to put out.

Lastly, since surveys are usually offered to the public in the form of a white paper with a form to download, your brand can add new people to your network and engage with new leads who, by downloading this piece of content, are already self-identifying themselves as having an affinity with your brand.

How to Implement This Strategy Today

As we all know, time is of the essence and so it is my goal to ensure that as soon as you wrap up this post, you will be able to compose a strategy that will allow you to implement surveys as a content marketing strategy immediately.

So let’s get down to the essence of what surveys entail, shall we?

Step 1: Consult your influencer personas and buyer personas to determine pain points, information, new data, etc. that would appeal to your network and consumers. You’ll know that you’ve chosen the right topic when influencers are interested in weighing in on your topic and you’re presenting new information to your marketing relationships.

Step 2: Design a few cohesive questions around this topic. Make them easy-to-answer and the survey, as a whole, should take under five minutes to finish. This will ensure maximum participation.

Step 3: Allow a window of 5 – 7 days before you implement a deadline for all answers to be in. During this time, line up a designer or someone on your team with a bit of design knowledge to create a white paper and images for a SlideShare once the results are in.

Step 4: Work with your designer to turn these results around in a timely manner in order to keep this project on the minds of the influencers who weighed in.

Step 5: Analyze the responses and gather your key takeaways and figure out how they apply to your industry. Write content around your discoveries. Keep in mind that a single survey should get you two blog posts, a white paper, a SlideShare presentation and a webinar. Knowing this ahead of time will ensure you schedule accordingly.

Tools to Consider

Obviously you need to funnel your responses and there are a few platforms out there that specialize in surveys and allow users to create visually appealing surveys and graphs with the results.

Surprisingly, these tools are not very expensive and come with monthly plans. My favorite is SurveyGizmo.

In terms of housing, use you your lead generation form and funnel your new leads and contacts into a simple list if you are already using an email-marketing platform like GetResponse, Marketo or Pardot. They have easy ways to create a form and landing page, and collect lists.

If you have not invested in a marketing platform yet, there are a few WordPress plugins that allow you to house a form and collect lists. Most of these are free and should be already integrated or easy-to-integrate with your website.

A cheap alternative to using a huge marketing platform is MailChimp, especially if your network and email marketing plan isn’t ginormous yet.

Obviously, you have a lot of options and I encourage you to research all options so that you can create a workflow that works best for you and your team.

Promoting Your Survey Results

As I’ve mentioned several times, survey results are highly sharable pieces of content. I suggest that you give the influencers, who weighed in, a day of exclusive access to your new data as a way of thanking them for their help and support. Not to mention, having exclusive information for a day creates a sense of urgency to be the first one to share it.

Depending on your budget, here are a few free and budget spending ways to promote the results of your survey to really make sure that your engaging and awesome content is actually heard.

• Email the influencers who weighed in
• Publish on your site with download forms to capture new leads
• Share the survey in blog posts and social posts with the CTA to get the readers to download your form
• Buy email marketing blasts from authentic sources that align with your brands message
• Buy newsletter spots
• Banner ads
• Sponsored tweets and new hashtags
• Reach out to new influencers who would find this type of content useful

I always find it best to lead with your favorite key takeaway or statistic that you’ve acquired to engage with the right people and then give them the option to read the rest of the survey results with a simple download form.

I just covered a lot of ground in a short amount of time, so please feel free to weigh in on this topic or reach out with any questions that you may have.

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