The Google Docs micro-survey experience

Hiya folk!

As I've just published my first multimedia tutorial here (a quick start guide to using Google for surveys), I thought I'd share some of my experiences over the last year of using it in the big-wide world!

Previously, I would have used one of the main subscription-based survey services, but the sort of work I am doing requires what I call a 'micro-survey' - just two or three questions -- sometimes just one question.

A micro-survey, I have discovered, seems to have this amazing ability to engage. I (don't know if such a terms exists :-) .... I just made it up on the spot when a corporate client asked what it was).

Example Survey from the tutorial



You see, I had this very high-powered group of luminaries scattered across the globe who would normally be sent a long questionnaire or survey to get their 'expert' opinion. I had been down that route before and the response rate was always very poor.

The question then (as all of you online business people know) is how to engage them. I figured that grouping key questions into thematic areas, and then only exploring one theme at a time - with one or two questions in a Google Docs survey might be a way of getting past the 'busy barriers' that mentally get put up when a big traditional survey lands in the inbox.

Add to this the ability to provide instantaneous feedback, and we were onto a way of engaging and getting responses.

Form this and similar experiences, here are my key take-home points:

• People no longer have the bandwidth to spend an hour on a task that may or may not generate a report in 3 to 6 months (traditional survey).
• People will engage for short periods (each of my micro surveys was less than 5-minutes ... sometimes just 2 minutes) - if the question is clear and targeted.
• People will especially engage if there is instant feedback (in the case mentioned above, the experts wanted to see what the other experts had written in their responses!).
• As online entrepreneurs, you can leverage this phenomenon to engage people at all levels.
• And a Google Docs survey based on their platform is just the place to do this sort of micro-approach.

Leave your insight here or head over to the training module I just released and add your comments there! The more ideas you share with others the better for all of us.

All the best,

Excaliba.