Boost Your Survey on Social Media

Most of your community stakeholders use social media, and so do you!

• In addition to the organizational Facebook and Twitter outreach, forward your survey link to departments, allied organizations and others.

• Many times local officials are on Facebook. Ask them if they will share your poll/survey links.

• Know where your target audience is and how to reach them. 85% of adults are online, but you need to know where to find them. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat are some of the most popular current platforms. Even people in their 70s and 80s are on Facebook (that’s where pictures of their grandkids are!).

• You can post polls individually over the course of several days. Respondents can see all open questions; however, different questions might capture the attention of different audiences. You can maximize your reach by publicizing one at a time.

• Send through both the city and individual department accounts.

• Email your partners and staff to ask them to share and retweet.

  • Be sure not to use words such as “like and share” on Facebook, or the algorithm will limit the reach of your post.

• Adapt the length of your social media messages to each platform. 

  • Boost your Facebook posts for a small cost, ask Polco to take care of it.

  • Add a hashtag on Twitter: #[municipality name].

  • Nextdoor posts can be a bit longer (you could use the email template).

  • Facebook posts are short.

  • Twitter has a maximum of 280 characters.

  • Instagram and Snapchat are short and visual.

• Include your Polco page’s short URL in all social media posts—polco.us/[shorturl].

• Be clear on the action—they need to go to Polco (and not respond in the Facebook comments). Feel free to comment under your social media post to encourage stakeholders to leave their feedback on Polco. Some stakeholders comment on social media anyway. In that case, you can reply with a comment to them, thanking them for their input and encouraging them to share it on Polco so their opinion can be considered in City plans.

• Tailor the message so that people know they haven’t already interacted with this post. Use these social media templates to help get started!

• Be sure to include only one call to action and only one link within each social media post. If you need to add more information (such as background information, images or video) to your Polco question, be sure to add it to your post in Polco.

• We recommend keeping links at the end of social media posts, to make clicking on them easier for mobile respondents.