A Survey of Your Newsletter Readers Provides Info, a Sense of Community

google formsAuthor newsletters have been a topic of conversation here before. These newsletters let you communicate with readers, telling them about upcoming books, sales or appearances, and a variety of other fun topics you choose. However, your newsletter doesn’t have to be a one-way street. You can use it to ask readers questions that help you learn more about them, help them feel useful, and help you hone your author business.

So, what types of things should you ask your readers and how? There are generally two categories of questions to ask your readers: ones that help you get to know them better and opinion questions that help make readers feel more part of the process (and also help your author business). Continue reading “A Survey of Your Newsletter Readers Provides Info, a Sense of Community”

Doing a Survey Using Google Forms

GoogleDrive create formIn a previous post I discussed various methods of conducting a survey on your website and a different post even conducted an extensive survey. Finally, here is the promised tutorial on how to do your own survey using Google Forms, the same method as was used in the survey we conducted.

While you can do this by the seat of your pants, if the survey you’re planning is going to have a lot of questions, especially if the answer to some questions is going to determine whether or not to ask follow up questions, it might make sense to rough out the survey, either on paper (maybe index cards) or in a word processor where you can easily rearrange. However, we’re going to fly by the seat of our pants today. Continue reading “Doing a Survey Using Google Forms”

Using Surveys and Forms on Your Website or Blog

Taking SurveysI first used Google forms to set up the Indies Unlimited 2015 Self-Published Production  Process Survey. If you’ve self-published at least one book and haven’t taken that survey yet, it’s not too late. You have until February 23, 2015. Go do that now. We’ll wait.

Welcome back. Thanks for doing that.

If you have a website, chances are at some point you have or will want to conduct a survey of some kind. (I’ve used one to get opinions from my readers on what they like and dislike about one of my sites.) Or maybe you want to set up a form to collect data of some kind. (Don’t forget, survey results are a favorite of the news media.)There are several alternatives for accomplishing this task, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. Continue reading “Using Surveys and Forms on Your Website or Blog”