Using Social Media to Gather Responses for my Questionnaire

I use social networking sites regularly to connect with friends and to see any major events. Yet I was new to using these sites as a way to increase responses and make my data more accurate.

I was given a link by SurveyMonkey which I used to give people a direct route to my questionnaire to add time efficiency and ease for the people answering it to ensure them that this would be a quick and easy process.

Tumblr

I added a link to my blog on Tumblr so it would appear in peoples feeds who followed me on this site. It also appears at the top of my blog so when people visit that site then they come across the link which hopefully brings people in to answer it. I added tags which means that when someone searches that tag they can come across my post and hopefully cause them to answer my survey. This broadens my audience as my friends and followers can enjoy the same things and share the same characteristics, by adding labels I broaden the people answering it as they won't be influenced or share the same personality that would be within a group of people. Most of my followers on Tumblr are into the same music and artists as my blog has a specified genre of music, so results from this group of people could be very similar.

Twitter

I then used Twitter to broadcast my survey, by having a simple short tweet and a link. I have kept it brief as the whole aim of Twitter is that statuses and other social networking is kept short and brief. I didn't add any tags as there was not enough characters to add them, but I feel that if I did add tags then it would clutter my tweet and make it look complicated therefore unappealing and a bit like spam.

Facebook

I then went to Facebook to broadcast my survey. I put the link in with my description which I put as a status. I put it as a status as it is the one way that the majority of Facebook use to communicate, it is simple and short which makes it look like the survey is simple therefore looking more attractive to answer.

Instagram 

I then used Instagram to also promote my survey. I took a simple picture of a postcard saying smile and then added a filter, using a real picture will interest my audience and look less like spam which is generally avoided by the majority amount of social media users. I added tags so more people could access my survey which meant a wide amount of different people could put in their input meaning that I get more accurate results as like Tumblr I could have followers that share the same interests as I post very similar pictures so this could make my survey inaccurate or unreliable.

Overall looking at the type of language that I used it was informal as all these social networking sites are full off informal lexis. If I was to use formal lexis then it might alienate my audience and make them not want to answer my survey. If I used formal lexis it might look like I didn't post the survey and that I had been hacked or have spam this would make my audience avoid answering the questionnaire.

Looking at how I used social media to broadcast my survey to gain more answers looks exactly the same to how I post normally but I have learnt that you shouldn't always be formal when you ask for something to be done that is more sophisticated than gossip or friendships as this can create a barrier between you and the people you want to reach.