Here’s a Qriously case study, from Katy Gilbert – enjoy!

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I have been using our free Qriously account for the last month.  (Thanks Amy for getting us hooked up!) I wasn’t sure what to expect, but loved it straight from the start.  It is easy to use and understand.  The data is clearly laid out.  And it was so much fun to watch people answering the questions and getting real time data to things that would help our project.

Background on the project:

Stories of Our City is a worldwide project sharing true stories from around the world.  We believe that if people will listen to each other they will understand each other better – and hopefully take steps as world citizens to build a more peaceful world.

With this in mind, we asked questions in 3 primary areas:

1. content- “what kind of stories do people like?”
2. ideas about peace “what do people think about world peace?”
3. social media “how can we use social media to engage people in our project?”

Questions & Qriously Answers

Here is a run down of questions we asked and the way people responded around the world:

Content

“what kind of personal stories do you like best?  Funny or Dramatic

“what kind of stories do you like?”   Funny or Dramatic

Dramatic won the first one, but then funny won the second question. It was helpful to know that people want to listen to moving, dramatic stories if they are listening to life stories.

Peace

“What will stop the next war?” Understanding or weapons

With understanding winning out by 8.6 %.  But the interesting thing is you can see what people in certain locations think of your question.  For instance, in India, weapons won out.  But in the U.S. it was understanding.  It was great to be able to see the geographic breakdown on these kinds of questions.

“will there ever be world peace?” Yes or no

Although most Americans answered “no,” the Argentinians were the most optimistic of all the countries.

“what effects world peace?” World leaders or citizens

It was interesting to note that most people think world leaders (18% more than citizens).  This helped us realize that our project (dealing mostly in helping citizens understand each other better) has barriers to overcome in helping other people see that their actions effect world peace.

Social Media

The last category of questions that we asked was regarding Facebook and Twitter use.  We needed to know more about how people use facebook, so we asked them:

“what are you most likely to share on Facebook?” Photos or links

The results were tied.  So, we know that we can add photos and links to help engage people on our website and we don’t have to worry about not engaging a certain group.

“what do you share on Facebook?” Photos or random news

We found out that people are more likely to share photos.  So, now we know to spend time getting great photos and not so much time on being cute with the random facts.

We also asked people if they had ever heard of Stories of Our City and if they visit our website daily or weekly, etc.   It is a great way to find out how you are doing in your marketing strategies! – like having a global focus group at your disposal!

So, basically, I love Qriously and I am so glad that we got to give it a go- Thanks a ton!

5 Nonprofits, 5000 Responses

I think there’s a lot of potential for the way organizations can use a tool like this, and I’m sure there are plenty more that you can think of! The folks at Qriously think so, too. They are going to give five organizations 5,000 responses each (these could be divided up into multiple questions or used all for one), for free, with just two stipulations:

1. You can only use global or national surveys (not local)
2. You have to share what you learn!

That’s it!

Share Your Questions to Win
So, as a way of opening up the possibilities and participation, I’m asking that organizations “submit” via the comments. If you’re interested in participating, please share:

1. The name of your organization
2. The question you’d like to ask
3. How the question will help inform your work

As you know, I’m a big believer in community-driven processes, and there’s nothing that helps you be community-driven than tapping in and listening directly to the people you want to serve. Hopefully, sharing your questions and reasoning in the comments will help others think about the way they can survey the community at large, and sharing back what you learn will help us all!

Winners

The 5 organizations to get free trials of Qriously include:

Storiesofourcity.org – submitted by Katy Gilber

Katy did a great job of identifying a series of questions that the 5,000 responses can be divided between that can really help with content planning as well as community engagement planning.

EpicChange.org – submitted by Stacey Monk

I love the way Stacey blended the goal of getting feedback that can improve their messaging and content with the goal of spreading awareness/exposure of the brand. Great job!

Austin Civic Orchestra – submitted by Mazarine Treyz

This is a great example of targeting mobile users by asking specifically about those generations most likely to be on a phone! The question needs some work in refining the ask and providing answers, since it isn’t an open response field, though.

Neighborhood Montgomery – submitted by Takoma Horn

I think this is a great topic to break up into multiple questions. You could ask for a sentiment measurement, like “how do you feel about commercial development” and then use some of the other 5,000 responses for specific, similar to the examples Adam shared in the comments.

buildingcommunity WORKSHOP – submitted by romoseki

I’m really interested to see how these questions can be reshaped to better understand sentiment around architecture as well as even start some conversations (guide content development). Adam shared some great examples of reworking the questions to provide answer options, too.

I’m inviting all of the 5 organizations to share a guest post here after you use Qriously to ask your questions to share what you learned and how it contributes to your work!

That’s the question I asked this morning on Qriously, a new application that measures public sentiment, in real time. It works by replacing ads with questions in smartphone and tablet apps. The application is currently in a closed beta, and I was lucky enough to get access to start playing around with it. It’s so easy to use, and has so much potential for the nonprofit sector, that I couldn’t wait any longer to show it to you!

Qriously is super easy to use: you pick the type of question (two answer, slider, or star/rating), write your question and possible answers, select the location (global, regional or local – if you get a trial account, you are limited to global questions), and then how many answers you want to gather. That’s it!

I’ve run three questions so far, and here’s some of the insights to the process:

What influences your charitable giving?

The first question I asked on Qriously was: “What influences your charitable giving?” and provided the two possible responses of “friends” or “data” – I used the question style where respondents had to pick one answer or the other exclusively. As soon as the question is live, you start seeing the impressions and the responses, aggregated in real time. It’s incredible! You’ll also notice that you can see the impressions, as well as the responses.

And once all 100 responses were gathered, I took a look at all the data.

First, overall:

And when you click on “What does this chart mean?” it actually tells you, with much richer context:

I personally love data-map mashups and Qriously uses them brilliantly! The data on these maps shows the number of responses as well as the direction of response, where orange = “data” and blue = “friends”.

You can start out with a global view:

And drill town to see the data, and let it speak for itself.

What I think is really exciting about this view of the data, is when you can look across a global region and extrapolate on the cultural influences and beyond. Imagine if you were a nonprofit organization, creating a global campaign; you could use a tool like this to test messages and sentiments for various areas around the world to better design and craft the campaign as well as the communications. For example, thinking about the question of what influences giving, look at this section of the map – with exclusive data responses vs friend responses:

And looking at the US, you can see the changes in response across the states, too:

Which would you rather give?

The next question I asked was “which would you rather give?” with the answers being “time” and “money” but this time I used the slider question option, meaning respondents have a slider on the screen that they can drag anywhere along the line between the two answers. I thought this would be a good question type to use for this topic because it would let us see not just if one had more “answers” than the other, but if it was an extreme or subtle inclination towards either direction. Here’s the response:

Personally, I agree! I respect and understand the arguement that time is money, but I am able to give more of my time than my money to things that aren’t discrete. I’m happy to share my thoughts, feedback, ideas, and “expertise” and love to help others learn something that they can then do on their own (without me next time). And I often feel that organizations don’t provide a way for me to give, in a way that I think could be valuable, unless it’s financial.

Do you think you can change the world?

That’s right. I asked mobile users around the globe “do you think you can change the world?” and I chose the two-response question type, so they could only answer “yes” or “no”.

And the results? Yes!

Qriously for Nonprofits

I think there are so many potential applications for Qriously in the nonprofit sector!

Marketing

As I noted at the start, the stats provide both impressions as well as responses. So, although you may only have 100 people give you an answer, if your question said, for example, “Have you heard of NTEN?” you have far more people that aren’t responding that still saw your organization’s name.

Listening

Organizations are looking for ways to learn about their community and those they want to reach but haven’t yet. Listening is a big part of social technologies as you can tap into and follow all kinds of conversations. But Qriously offers a way of listening and learning that cuts out the middleman – go straight to the people you want! I’m using a trial account, but full accounts provide the option to target your geography and more.

Targeting

Beyond listening, maybe your organization or campaign needs to identify just who it is that actually is interested! Qriously could be used to test different messages and groups to measure where responses are strongest.

Campaigning

You don’t just have to do market research with Qriously. What if you used the tool as a way of campaigning? The questions could actually be calls to action! For example: “Have you changed to energy efficient light bulbs?” with answers of “I will” and “I did”.

And more!

There are so many ways the social impact sector could put something like Qriously to use – and not just as another shiny toy, but as a tool to meeting our missions.

If you want to check it out for yourself, use this form to apply for Qriously access. Please note that trial accounts only let you ask global questions.

What do you think? I have another question I can ask on the trial account, so please share your suggestions! If you have questions about the application, I’m happy to respond with my experience, or message the Qriously team to weigh in with more information!