Surveying the members of your private social network

Your stats will tell you a great deal about the health of your private social network but it won’t tell you everything you need to know. Occasionally, you’ll need to dig a little deeper and talk to your members directly.

You need to send them a survey.

A survey will give you three kinds of information that stats can’t deliver.

Surveys Provide Explanations

Stats might show that users aren’t uploading videos or are engaging less with content but surveys will tell you why. If some aspect of your member behavior is puzzling you, sending out a survey can clear up the mystery.

Survey Predict Responses… And Prepare Them

Whenever Facebook makes a change to its platform, members always complain. Sometimes, those members are right; the changes make usability harder. (Facebook does that a lot.) Sometimes, they just need to get used to doing things a new way. A survey will tell you how users are likely to respond to a change, and as the rumors of an impending change spread they can prepare members for those changes too.

Surveys Supply Ideas

Many of the features you’ll see on PeepSo came directly from users. Ask your users what they’d like to see in the community and you’ll got a bunch of suggestions back. Not all of them will be usable but some of them will be fantastic and will massively improve your private social network.

Ask a mixture of open-ended questions and rating scale questions so that you get both qualitative and quantitative data back. And don’t forget to thank your members for their time! Their thoughts are valuable and they will make your community better.

That’s all for now! Next time, I’ll be talking about video content.