Thanks for keeping us up to date, Karen! This seems like a great new feature. I've added it to the emails for free and paid subscribers.
In case it's of interest to anyone, here is the email I send to new paid subscribers. I'd love to see others' emails. Maybe we should do a pop-up workshop for surveys? :)
The subject line is "How can I help?"
Building community is a big part of why I continue to write on Substack.
I’d love it if you could take this short survey to let me know why you upgraded your subscription.
(survey button)
Now that you are a member, you’ve also unlocked the the full archive. Here are three posts that have been especially useful to readers. If you can tell me a little more about your interests, I can also point you to previous posts that you might enjoy.
The Big Quit (My first feature for The Chronicle of Higher Education, which tracks the impact of the Great Resignation on academe, specifically the departure of tenure-line faculty like me.)
Don’t go to school just to be poor (Gertrude Nonterah, creator of The Bold PhD, recounts her disillusionment with postdoctoral research and her awakening as a medical communications professional.)
How to break writer’s block as a memoirist (A surefire strategy for generating ideas for personal essays while also identifying story-worthy scenes.)
Thanks for joining The Recovering Academic community!
Hi Josh, here's Kristina. Could you send me a screenshot of this via email. I'd love to include it in an upcoming video about this news feature. It's mail@kristinagod.com.
Keep me in the loop how you're faring with it. I was thinking about adding it to my paid subs welcome mail because I always ask them how they find me and what they are expecting by asking them to say "hello". Love your About page by the way and hero post. Included it in my Subszack School 🎒 videos
What's the data-end of this look like? Can we track responses over time? I can think of a few cases where the responses may change over time... Assuming we can keep these surveys up for a long time.
Thanks so much! I'll likely be asking about the types of posts my subscribers want (I have a couple professional learning stacks), and I can foresee sentiment about this changing over time. :)
Hey Karen - I think I found where the data will be...
In the "Stats" section of the Dashboard, there's a "Reader Surveys" tab that has the surveys, with options to Edit or View Results. The View Results option looks like it'll populate with some charts, but there's also ellipses (...) that allow results to be exported.
Thanks for experimenting first! My frustrations with the Substack app continue, unfortunately. (I use on Android.) Tapping links to custom pages, including surveys apparently, only switch me back to the publication's Home tab.
Thanks Karen! I appreciate your heads-up and test running it for us. As a former Market Researcher I'm interested to see how the results, analyses and stats evolve to go beyond basic questions. Cross-tabs? (Once an analyst, always..)
I worked in a market research lab. I'm also curious. Did you check the questions Substack suggest. You can find them in your dashboard. Remembered me of my time in a call center 😂 asking all those questions and people had to stick till the end
Hi Kristina - EEK I didn't do call center - interesting factoid, if you're a researcher you can't answer surveys...even ones on the street...that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it ;-)
I did a foundation market research qualification I think it was with Cranfield..eons ago. Folks forget that we need those basic questions (screeners) to ensure we can make segments and category analyses...but it's best to put them at the end and not bore folks! I was always more of a quali market researcher conjoint and Quant analyses bored me sick!
Thanks so much for the heads up. I've been thinking over the past few months on how I might do this. So now I guess I still need to play around with it to polish it up! I understand I need to block out a space of time to accomplish this. You have been most helpful! Hopefully, Substack creators are reading this post too and can address some of the snafus!
Spot on! I'm in the middle of creating a video about it. We have to be careful with the default setting. Same with recommendations from our readers at the bottom of our newsletters when sending emails. Did you see my private note on Medium?
I have a question regarding polls. Can we see who voted? If so, where? I have been trying to look where it sat on the dashboard - more speficically on the post overview where I did the poll - but couldn't find anything. Is it a matter of waiting the duration of the poll and then I'll see the results (as in who voted)?
Can you say more about the data part. Is it broken down by responses? Is it anonymous? Also is there an option where can you choose to let anyone respond vs only subscribers? Also if someone doesn’t have a substack account does it prompt them to create one? (Just like if they try to like a post, if they don’t have an account Substack makes the user create one).
Marc, I couldn't explain the data until I had run a survey and got some data! I will share the 'back end' in a future post.
People definitely can't respond to a survey unless they are subscribed. (again, I couldn't find that out until I had published the survey).... thanks for the reminder about that question, I will address that in the follow up post too.
This is super helpful, thank you, Karen! I've just been mulling a change to how I handle events and this is the perfect tool. I just ran over and checked my welcome email and apparently if you've EVER edited it they don't just stuff it in there (which is nice.) Thanks for looking out for us!
There were definitely some glitches in the link-directing system in the Substack backend on Friday/Saturday. Android app users seemed particularly affected. By Sunday (Australia time) they seemed to be fixed.
There were definitely some glitches in the link-directing system in the Substack backend on Friday/Saturday. Android app users seemed particularly affected. By Sunday (Australia time) they seemed to be fixed.
Thanks for keeping us up to date, Karen! This seems like a great new feature. I've added it to the emails for free and paid subscribers.
In case it's of interest to anyone, here is the email I send to new paid subscribers. I'd love to see others' emails. Maybe we should do a pop-up workshop for surveys? :)
The subject line is "How can I help?"
Building community is a big part of why I continue to write on Substack.
I’d love it if you could take this short survey to let me know why you upgraded your subscription.
(survey button)
Now that you are a member, you’ve also unlocked the the full archive. Here are three posts that have been especially useful to readers. If you can tell me a little more about your interests, I can also point you to previous posts that you might enjoy.
The Big Quit (My first feature for The Chronicle of Higher Education, which tracks the impact of the Great Resignation on academe, specifically the departure of tenure-line faculty like me.)
Don’t go to school just to be poor (Gertrude Nonterah, creator of The Bold PhD, recounts her disillusionment with postdoctoral research and her awakening as a medical communications professional.)
How to break writer’s block as a memoirist (A surefire strategy for generating ideas for personal essays while also identifying story-worthy scenes.)
Thanks for joining The Recovering Academic community!
Josh
Hi Josh, here's Kristina. Could you send me a screenshot of this via email. I'd love to include it in an upcoming video about this news feature. It's mail@kristinagod.com.
Keep me in the loop how you're faring with it. I was thinking about adding it to my paid subs welcome mail because I always ask them how they find me and what they are expecting by asking them to say "hello". Love your About page by the way and hero post. Included it in my Subszack School 🎒 videos
Good work, as usual, young lady!
Thanks Karen.
What's the data-end of this look like? Can we track responses over time? I can think of a few cases where the responses may change over time... Assuming we can keep these surveys up for a long time.
Thanks for a great 'Stack!
Hi Joe, I'm curious too about how the results are presented. Substack has not said anything about that.
Hopefully it's a bit like responses to google forms which are date stamped and can be analysed with basic spreadsheet knowledge.
I'll jump into the results from this post next week and share insights in a future post.
Thanks so much! I'll likely be asking about the types of posts my subscribers want (I have a couple professional learning stacks), and I can foresee sentiment about this changing over time. :)
Hey Karen - I think I found where the data will be...
In the "Stats" section of the Dashboard, there's a "Reader Surveys" tab that has the surveys, with options to Edit or View Results. The View Results option looks like it'll populate with some charts, but there's also ellipses (...) that allow results to be exported.
Interesting!
Thanks for your insights here! Especially that the default survey is now embedded in Welcome emails!
Thanks for experimenting first! My frustrations with the Substack app continue, unfortunately. (I use on Android.) Tapping links to custom pages, including surveys apparently, only switch me back to the publication's Home tab.
Okay, I just checked the survey button ("this is a survey") on my Android Substack app and it worked!
Substack's servers were a bit screwy when I wrote the post, wonder if links were not working correctly...
Great to hear, but unfortunately still not working for me even after updating the app and clearing my cache. :( Guess I'll have to report the bug.
Oh wow good to know, thanks for sharing!
Same here. Seems this survey function is useless in the Android app. It just takes me to the Karen's home page.
Same here. Tired it yesterday for a video
Thanks Karen! I appreciate your heads-up and test running it for us. As a former Market Researcher I'm interested to see how the results, analyses and stats evolve to go beyond basic questions. Cross-tabs? (Once an analyst, always..)
I worked in a market research lab. I'm also curious. Did you check the questions Substack suggest. You can find them in your dashboard. Remembered me of my time in a call center 😂 asking all those questions and people had to stick till the end
Hi Kristina - EEK I didn't do call center - interesting factoid, if you're a researcher you can't answer surveys...even ones on the street...that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it ;-)
I did a foundation market research qualification I think it was with Cranfield..eons ago. Folks forget that we need those basic questions (screeners) to ensure we can make segments and category analyses...but it's best to put them at the end and not bore folks! I was always more of a quali market researcher conjoint and Quant analyses bored me sick!
Thanks so much for the heads up. I've been thinking over the past few months on how I might do this. So now I guess I still need to play around with it to polish it up! I understand I need to block out a space of time to accomplish this. You have been most helpful! Hopefully, Substack creators are reading this post too and can address some of the snafus!
Spot on! I'm in the middle of creating a video about it. We have to be careful with the default setting. Same with recommendations from our readers at the bottom of our newsletters when sending emails. Did you see my private note on Medium?
I have a question regarding polls. Can we see who voted? If so, where? I have been trying to look where it sat on the dashboard - more speficically on the post overview where I did the poll - but couldn't find anything. Is it a matter of waiting the duration of the poll and then I'll see the results (as in who voted)?
The respondent information is in the exported results but can't be seen in the Substack dashboard (at least not when I last checked)
Lots of question I have about this feature:
Can you say more about the data part. Is it broken down by responses? Is it anonymous? Also is there an option where can you choose to let anyone respond vs only subscribers? Also if someone doesn’t have a substack account does it prompt them to create one? (Just like if they try to like a post, if they don’t have an account Substack makes the user create one).
Marc, I couldn't explain the data until I had run a survey and got some data! I will share the 'back end' in a future post.
People definitely can't respond to a survey unless they are subscribed. (again, I couldn't find that out until I had published the survey).... thanks for the reminder about that question, I will address that in the follow up post too.
This is super helpful, thank you, Karen! I've just been mulling a change to how I handle events and this is the perfect tool. I just ran over and checked my welcome email and apparently if you've EVER edited it they don't just stuff it in there (which is nice.) Thanks for looking out for us!
Very helpful to see a mock up of all the question formats in a sample survey. Thank you!
Is it just me or do the survey links not work correctly in the Substack app?
There were definitely some glitches in the link-directing system in the Substack backend on Friday/Saturday. Android app users seemed particularly affected. By Sunday (Australia time) they seemed to be fixed.
Hey Karen, I clicked both the buttons you have linked your surveys but it redirected me to your profile btw. Happy to get helped by you 🤗
There were definitely some glitches in the link-directing system in the Substack backend on Friday/Saturday. Android app users seemed particularly affected. By Sunday (Australia time) they seemed to be fixed.
Let me check it once
This does a good job of explaining the difference between polls and surveys. At first they both seemed essentially the same.