As a publisher, you're undoubtedly feeling increasing pressure to captivate audiences in a way that both builds your community and generates revenue. You publish great online content, but is that enough to keep your audiences engaged in the modern age of constant distractions and diminished attention spans? Unfortunately, the answer is no. You need to do more, which is why so many publishers have been looking for ways to make their websites more interactive and dynamic.
That's where we come in. Since we launched Disqus Polls last Fall, we've been helping publishers deepen audience interaction and earn more revenue while they're at it.
Let's take a look at why interactive online content like Disqus Polls is becoming an absolute necessity for publishers looking to stay competitive in today's digital landscape.
The Benefits of Interactive Content for Publishers
First and foremost, interactive tools like polls (quizzes, surveys, etc.) grab readers' attention and transform them from passive readers into actively engaged users—this helps you drive up time-on-site while driving down bounce rates. Disqus Polls achieves this by providing publishers an extremely easy-to-use platform to create and install interactive polls about fun topics that resonate with their audiences and provide a more enjoyable site experience.
Interactive content does more than merely entertain—it can also help publishers gain valuable insights into audience preferences and behaviors. Publishers use Disqus Polls to solicit feedback directly from users (e.g., "Would you like to see more of this type of content from us?" or "Would you be interested in subscribing to a relevant newsletter?"), giving them the signals they need to deliver more targeted content and ultimately make sure they're continuing to meet their readers' needs.
Finally, interactive content opens the door for new monetization opportunities. For publishers using Disqus Polls, the Ad-Supported plan offers a no-cost way to boost engagement while also earning meaningful revenue from their polls unit—a win-win for budget-conscious publishers to looking both engage their audiences and earn more ad revenue—without opening their wallets.
How to Get the Most Value from Disqus Polls
Here are a few best practices for maximizing the value of Disqus Polls on your website.
Ask Relevant and Timely Questions
The key to an effective poll is relevance. Whether you're tapping into breaking news or trending topics, engaging your audience with questions that matter most to them drives higher participation and creates a more memorable interactive experience. With Disqus Polls, you can create and publish a poll in under 60 seconds, making it easy to launch timely, engaging questions instantly.
Are you a sports website? Put up a poll that asks audiences who they're rooting for in the Super Bowl. Are you an entertainment website? Poll your audiences about which upcoming movies they're most excited to see. Make it relevant.
Integrate Seamlessly with Content
Polls work best when they feel like a natural extension of a website's look and feel. That's why we designed Polls to automatically assume styling elements from your website, ensuring a seamless integration that doesn't feel like an afterthought. Disqus Polls also gives you complete flexibility to place the poll wherever you'd like— we see publishers choose poll placements all over their site, including page headers, side rails, and embedded within articles. You're the expert on your website and how your audiences navigate it, and that's why we give you the freedom to install polls wherever they'll do the best job of engaging your audiences without disrupting their experience.
Leverage Data to Improve Content
Interactive polls do more than just engage your audiences—they also produce meaningful audience data that, thanks to built-in analytics, you can parse to uncover trends and audience signals to learn more about your site visitors and what they're looking for. For example, some of our publishers have crunched the numbers to find that article-specific polls—polls that ask questions about the specific article they're embedded within—perform better on their site, and so they double down on those types of polls and see higher levels of engagement. Other publishers have used analytics to learn that polls about certain subjects or topics always perform better with their audiences than others—and so they tailor their editorial strategy to offer more of the same moving forward.
Why Disqus Polls is the Right Tool for Publishers
The days of captivating audiences with written content alone are long gone. With distractions at an all-time high—and attention spans at an all-time low—publishers need a diverse set of interactive tools to engage readers and build stronger connections.
Disqus Polls help you engage and delight audiences, gather valuable insights, and drive ad revenue—and it takes less than 60 seconds to create and install poll onto your website. Whether paired with Disqus Comments or used on its own, Polls empowers you to create a richer, more rewarding experience for your audience.
Ready to Get Started?
Discover how Disqus Polls can transform your audience engagement strategy. Start your free trial today or apply for the Ad-Supported plan to begin creating polls and earning revenue with ease. Learn more here.